Hola dos mil once…oh hey 2011!

It’s a little late, but Feliz Año Nuevo!  People are still greeting each other that way, particularly if they haven’t seen each other since 2010, so I feel like it’s still appropriate :)

I held out a bit on a New Years update in case anything exciting happened since, but nothing really has lol.  It seems that the new year has not brought new work, but as one of my resolutions is to be more productive and take more initiative with work, hopefully that will change soon!  So far I’ve only managed to set my sitemate Kate up with more work – a Save the Children health project – not myself.

But as expected, New Years in Pana was pretty awesome, and I was a little upset to return to site after 4 full days/nights at that incredible lake.  There was an excessive amount of eating, drinking, lounging around, and sunbathing (I’m finally starting to be kind of morena!), all of which ensured a good time had by all!  It was also really refreshing seeing so many of my friends from training, many of which I hadn’t seen since the end of October.  It’s so weird that I’ll see them again in just about a month for our Reconnect at the PC office.

In fact, I was lucky enough to be with my friend Whitney at Pana, though it was actually quite unlucky for her.  Her site is out near Coban in Alta Verapaz, where, as you might have seen in the news, the government declared a state of siege in December to combat the heavy influence of drug-trafficking gangs in the region.  As a result, Peace Corps consolidated all the volunteers in both Alta and Baja Verapaz, so Whitney was able to take a little vacation way farther than normally allowed.  They’ve been out of site and waiting since just before Christmas, and it seems that those in Baja Verapaz will be able to return this week, but those in Alta Verapaz, where the issue is concentrated, have to wait at least another week!  I feel terrible because while I’m not really working and a consolidation would be a sweet vacation, Whitney and a lot of the others were actually making progress!

Another kind of unfortunate event is that my quasi-sitemate Jared has decided to what we call “early terminate” and go home early.  We were all pretty surprised as he only has about 9 months left, and will miss him quite a bit.

But anyway, on the bright side, it’s summer here and I’m sunburnt and not freezing in the snow!  Moreover, this week’s photos include:

1) a woman weaving in Santa Catarina, one of the 12 towns on Lake Atitlán named after the 12 Disciples; 

2) me and my two closest friends, Whitney and Noor, on New Years Eve (the sparkley dress was originally bought as a joke for Q20 at a paca, FYI mumsy!);

3) the lake at sunset; and 

4) my adorable little host brother…it’s too bad he’s too shy to dance in the children’s convite during the upcoming feria because he loves to dress up and dance to marimba music, puro convite-style!