$2/day Challenge

I was recently looking up development indicators for Guatemala and ran across the inevitable percentage of population below poverty line (over 50%, with a per capita GDP of about $5,000), which got me thinking about poverty lines.  The United States defines the global poverty line as earning less than $1.25/day, but more common are less than $2/day and less than $1/day to determine the poor and super poor.  This is an extremely small amount of money anywhere, especially if you have a large family to feed; luckily even the worst-paid Guatemalan laborers receive a slightly higher wage – men more than women.  Among college campuses, it is not uncommon for students to try putting themselves in the shoes of the world’s poor by consuming no more than $2/day for a week or so, aka the $2/day Challenge.  I always found this intriguing but impossible to do in the States, where you can’t buy anything substantive for $2 (even at 99-cent stores!).  What keeps coming up in my head, though, is that if we are talking about feeding one person in say Guatemala, where standards of living are much lower and freshly picked produce is much cheaper, $2/day (or about Q16/day) is entirely possible.  I earn about $10/day here and here’s a breakdown of what I generally buy in a week (prices and availability change seasonally, of course):

Broccoli: Q2.50/head (small)

Cauliflower: Q3.00/head (small)

Potatoes: Q1.50/lb.

Tomatoes: Q2.50/lb.

Onions: Q1.00/lb.

Güicoy: Q2.00/squash (small)

Peppers: Q1.00 each (small and possibly on the way out)

Corn: Q1.00/cob

Carrots: Q1.00 each

Apples: Q3.00/lb.

Bananas: Q0.50 each

Oranges: Q0.50 each

Pears: Q1.00 each

Strawberries: Q5.00/lb.

Black beans: Q3.00/lb. (raw)

Eggs: Q1.00 each

Tortillas: Q1.00/4

Xecas (kind of like sweet bagels): Q1.00 each

Now this list doesn’t include packaged foodstuffs like rice, pasta, oil, powdered milk, etc., but I’ve estimated that I spend about Q60/week on food.  That’s about Q8.60/day, or about $1.10/day.  Of course, if I went out to eat more, or bought meat rather than eating vegetarian, or ate the amount of tortillas that a Guatemalan eats, then my weekly food budget would obviously be higher.  Even so, excluding my occasional binges in Antigua or Panajachel, and my fancy packaged foods like peanut butter and chickpeas, I am daily succeeding at the $2/day challenge!

Speaking of Antigua, I was just there last week for my mid-service (has it already been almost a year since moving to Cunen??) medical appointments…and to take the Foreign Service Officer Test at the U.S. embassy in Guate!  It seems that I am physically very healthy, a little bit blinder but at least cavity-less, and now far more mentally stable after finishing the test!  Even with leaving Antigua at like 6am, Allie and I arrived a little late for the 8:30 test with another volunteer Damian, who couldn’t take the test because it turned out he’d never fully registered for it.  We finally started around 9am; I finished fairly quickly and had to wait like 45 minutes staring at a blank computer screen for Allie!  Well actually, I’d started doodling on the scrap paper they gave us…which they collected with our sign-in sheets…as I handed it in, I was like, “this is slightly embarrassing!”  I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not, but I found the test kind of anti-climactic and not all that challenging…I’ll find out at the end of the month if that means I knew all the answers or none of them!  Oh and waiting for Allie was worth it because a Foreign Service Officer she knows, who turned out to be very senior-ranking, took us out to a nice lunch in the embassy dining room (though not as nice as those at the U.N.!) and told us all about her 25+ years with the State Dept. – very cool.  And our after-party in Antigua was pretty freaking awesome :)

Hmmm since my last update, I gave a fun gender-themed capacitation to my Trigales group, cooked black bean burgers with the 6th-graders (they were supposed to be beet burgers, but you know, there were no beets…), trained the new ag trainees on GAD (so sad none of them are coming to Quiché!), and just a few days ago made a tire garden with mine and Melissa’s women’s group in Chiul.  I guess I’d never actually seen a tire garden made during training because let me tell you, it is no easy task!  In case you haven’t killed yourself cutting off most of one side of the tire, flipping it inside out will do the deed.  Plus I had a terrible cold and was probably mildly feverish (belated effects of my flu shot? Or maybe just post-test exhaustion finally catching up).  But we all survived and hopefully the radish seeds we planted will as well!  I’m thankfully feeling much better – three days in bed reading The Help and The Hunger Games, I highly recommend both, is a great remedy – but now I’m staving off the little girls who in the last few days have decided to frequently stop by my house.  I’m hoping they’ll figure out sooner than later that although the gringa has a nice house, she’s not actually all that fun to be around!

Ok I will cut my rambling off here.  I haven’t taken any new photos since last time, but will instead direct you to what looks to be an incredible film about Guatemala: http://lacamionetafilm.wordpress.com/about-the-film/

See you in a month!!!!!

The month of celebrations

With a heavy heart I must announce that September’s celebrations have come to an end.  (Not to worry – only about 2 weeks left until the next celebration, immediately following the Foreign Service exam!  SO SOON AHHH!)  While I’ve only worked about 1 day this month, I can’t say it hasn’t been fun :)

When I left you last, I was preparing to go to Xela and the Xocomil (sho-co-MEEL) waterpark for Melissa’s birthday…and it was awesome!  I’m fairly obsessed with my sitemates, so I knew it would be a great weekend, but add to the equation little-kid (splashing around on water slides all day) and grown-up fun (tremendous Indian food, burgers, drinks, dancing) and we couldn’t go wrong.  Xocomil’s about an hour outside of Xela, closer to the Pacific coast, so although it started raining about 10 minutes after arriving, it was still hot and we were already wet from the slides anyway!  Kate and Melissa’s friend Elizabeth and her boyfriend Alvaro were excellent company, especially as Alvaro used to go there as a kid and his reverted childlike excitement was highly contagious!  We were forced to end the day around 3pm due to a massive storm and headed back to Xela to celebrate Melissa’s birthday like adults lol.  And what would any trip to Xela be without a trip to Hiper Paiz/Wal-Mart for necessities?  It never ceases to amuse me how it remains a store almost exclusively for the rich here…

the girls and I ready to start the day at Xocomil

I did work a bit in the week that followed – making salads with the fifth- and sixth-graders at the Trigales school, as well as a meeting about a project Stephen and I want to do with our green-bean groups.  The plan is to apply for USAID/Peace Corps grants to pay for the process to certify 2 groups in Buenas Prácticas Agrícolas (Good Agricultural Practices).  One group is already almost ready to be certified (they were supposed to receive the certification last year but got kind of screwed over by a miscommunication between NGOs), but both need to brought up to speed with capacity trainings and the necessary safety/hygiene equipment.  We’re hoping to cover the costs of all that, plus the actual certification, with the help of the exporting company that already buys their green beans, and maybe also the muni and Save the Children.  Once the groups are certified, the company will pay them more money for the product; income generation is a main part of the PC Sustainable Agriculture project.  So now we need to start planning and filling out the grant application, but I’m not really sure what the timeline for that is…welcome to development work in Guatemala!

sixth-grade girls preparing a salad with freshly picked radishes

That Friday I also got a visit from Allie, who traveled for 2 days to hang out with me and avoid possible disturbances in her town during the September 11th elections.  Apparently out east where she is, celebrating cowboys shoot their guns in the air, causing problems when the bullets come down…  But Cunen was luckily super tranquilo the whole weekend and the best part was: the political parties were forced to stop advertising themselves for the weekend, so I finally got a rest from all the noise!  Wait, I take that back; Allie and I were woken up at 5am Monday by bombas and cohetes (kind of like fireworks, but without the nice accompanying lights) announcing that we’ll have a new mayor come January.  I was surprised he won, as many people in town described him as very egotistic, but I guess the other candidates weren’t as strong.  One of the losers was hand-selected by an aldea (village of Cunen) that wants to secede, but threats of rioting never took place.  And violence in nearby Nebaj and Sacapulas were localized enough that Allie was able to leave Tuesday morning without any problems.  Except maybe a rounder stomach from all the cooking and lazing around we did!

Wednesday was another fun celebration: a birthday party for Kate’s old host sister :)  Maria Isabel turned 7 and she is the cheekiest, cutest little girl.  I thought it was very sweet of her mother to invite me, since I don’t know the family as well as Kate or even Melissa, and you never turn down an invitation here!  She must have had a good time putting together the guest list, though: 3 gringas, an elderly Evangelical pastor and his wife, an ex-mayor who ran again this year and lost, and a bunch of little girls.  The situation was so ridiculous that I almost started inappropriately laughing during the pre-meal prayer!  But we ended up making good conversation and only lightly touching on the elephant in the room (the recent elections), so that by the time we left, the pastor told us what fun girls we were!  Ohhh I love the random experiences here :)

That was followed by Guatemala’s 190th Independence Day on Thursday!  All of the schools in town participated in the morning parade, which I got to see from my front door as it passed right by my house.  My host siblings and their friends and all the other random children I know were adorable, if not the most talented musicians, dancers, or gymnasts.  (Did I mention the “rhythmic gymnastics” event one of the secondary schools put on for their anniversary?  Let’s just say it was highly entertaining, and you know my standards!).  Unfortunately the customary afternoon games and pig-catching – I can’t even begin to describe how excited I was to see people try to catch a greased-up pig! – were canceled because the current mayor wasn’t re-elected and obviously needed to vent his frustration. 

Cunen in celebration

my host sister (with the whistle) and her friends dancing in the parade

And FINALLY, this past weekend was Noor’s birthday celebration at the lake.  We had a great time prepping in Pana for her party on Saturday night in another lake town, Santa Cruz La Laguna.  The hostel there is really chill and has really great food and didn’t mind when about 20 of us volunteers took over the lounge area for our own use!  It was a fantastic night with people I really like; I definitely wasn’t ready to leave.  But of course I had to and I got back to Cunen yesterday, laden down with more peanut butter :)

The refrigerator-less life

So if you’ve seen photos of my house here, you may have noticed the lack of a fridge.  Nope, not even a mini-fridge.  In other words, my kitchen is less well-furnished than most college dorm rooms.  It also uses a lot less electricity…part of the reason why I haven’t invested in something I’d previous taken for granted is that I pay for electricity apart from my rent and I’m just cheap.  (In my defense, my Q800 monthly rent – a whopping $100 – is quite a drain on my meager paycheck!)  Fridges themselves are also kind of expensive.

But honestly, although my parents cannot comprehend why their spoiled child would choose to live without this marker of civilized life, I really just don't need it.  My host family had a refrigerator and I barely ever used it.  It would be really awesome to have a place to store cheese (I love the expensive “Swiss” cheese from Nebaj and maybe sometimes I find myself daydreaming about cream cheese…totally normal…), but that’s really the only thing I miss.  I drink powdered milk, cook small portions, go market shopping frequently enough and buy only what I need, and being 2 hours from the closest supermarket kind of limits bringing back perishable foods that might just perish on the journey home.  I’ve also learned quite a bit in my situation, such as:

Eggs do not need to be refrigerated.  I’m not sure how long they last, but all the stores have stacks of cartons of them, so I’m assuming a while.

Broccoli starts turning an…interesting…yellow after being left at room temperature for more than a couple of days.

Once opened, homemade jam will last 1-2 weeks outside of a fridge before the inevitable mold starts to grow.

Unrefrigerated left-overs must be re-cooked over high heat for 3-4 minutes.  If not, you run the risk of allowing the bacteria that naturally grows on cooked foods (but not on unnaturally chilled foods) to do some funky things to your stomach.  I didn’t know this at first and just thought my newfound addiction to lentils was taking its toll on my body; my health-worker sitemates soon clarified the issue lol.  Luckily I don’t cook meat, so I think I’m safe from food poisoning.  Even so, the re-heating thing is kind of a bitch because you unwillingly end up frying your left-overs.  That’s fine for say, tonight’s fried rice that could potentially benefit from some more frying to be eaten for lunch tomorrow.  Pasta, however, is a very different story!

Anyway, I’m not complaining; it’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately and I figured life without a refrigerator was probably a foreign concept (haha!) to most of you.  My sitemate Melissa lives 2 blocks away from me and I could always use her fridge.  And I’ve been told that placing a smaller clay pot within a larger one, filling the space between them with sand, and always keeping the sand wet serves the same role of keeping food chilled.  I still have to try that one out and then maybe I can start stocking up on cream cheese!

I clearly don’t have much going on right now if this is the most pressing topic for a life update lol.  (Then again, food has always been a central theme in my mind.)  Work’s been its usual off and on…I actually had a surprisingly good turnout at a meeting yesterday about how to do a market study, I planted an herb garden with a women’s group last week, and tomorrow I’ll be making cucumber salad with my school group.  I may soon have a new women’s group to do cooking classes/demonstrations with, and Stephen and I are starting to plan potential SPA (Small Project Assistance? USAID-funded) projects with our green-bean growing groups.  And really, the non-busy days are also pretty great for Foreign Service studying – I’m all registered to take the test in Guate on October 4th!  My social life has been far more fun: the weekend at the lake with my sitemates was such a fantastic time (plus I got to restock my coffers of American foodstuffs!) and the weekend after was equally great with a classy jazz benefit concert in Antigua with my friend Allie, where we were hanging out for a GAD meeting :)  Now I just need to get through the rest of the week and we’re off to Xela for the weekend, to celebrate Melissa’s birthday in style at the famed Xocomil waterpark! (probably in the rain, but we’ll already be wet, right?)

I’m going to forgo photos this time as all my new ones are on facebook, and instead leave you to ponder what your life would be like without a refrigerator.  Could you do it??  Haha please don’t think too hard about it; you’ll probably never be in my situation!

12 months down, 15 more to go!

Wow, tomorrow marks one entire year of being in Guatemala and today is the very first day here for the new batch of ag trainees.  (Just 10 food security newbies, no marketing or municipal development, as those programs were deemed unnecessary…just kidding…kind of lol.)  Looking back to when I was in their current position seems like both yesterday and a million years ago.  It makes me question how much I’ve accomplished in the last year (a fairly trivial amount) and how much I’ve learned (quite a bit).  I’m about to get all self-introspective, so you can stop reading here if you’d like!

First of all, I’d be lying if I say I haven’t changed at all.  I wouldn’t say it’s due to living in tough developing-country conditions, because honestly my greatest hardship is how freaking far I live from everything.  Which maybe is part of it; living in a somewhat isolated small town 2 hours away from the closest supermarket will get you used to a slower and simpler way of life.  But really, I think I’m now just a more mature person.  No worries, I’m still the same sarcastic, opinionated, attention-seeking girl who’ll laugh at the drop of a hat!  But I’m also more realistic and slightly less idealistic, more serious about life rather than treating it as a continuous joke, and most importantly, financially independent for the first time in my life.  Granted, it’s on less than $400 a month so I’m not exactly saving up for the future, but it’s a step towards adulthood…that dreaded word!  I also just have an incredible amount of time to sit around and ponder/over-analyze my life, which should be fairly obvious in the rest of this update lol.

Anyway, moving on: Guatemalans.  I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand them, and part of that, maybe most of it, is the language barrier, be it my still limited Spanish or nonexistent K’iche.  I have some very good Guatemalan friends – in town, host family, co-workers – who I continue to learn so much from.  Even so, I remained surprised by how people I don’t know receive me, varying between acceptance and dismissal, delighted with me and judgmental of me (I probably deserve the latter!).  It’s always interesting to see which one I will get and from whom.  Men are so different from women, indigenous people from ladinos (non-indigenous), younger from older, rural-dwellers from urban-dwellers, villagers from people from the center of town.  Each exchange is instructive and meaningful, and I think that the more people who know me, the better.  I may never be fully integrated into the community (how could I be?  It’s a small town, but not that small), but I’m convinced that individual relationships are what count.  And so I rejoice with every conversation on the street, every lunch or party invitation, every gifted tayuyo (tortilla stuffed with refried beans, so good!), handful of peaches or apples, or popsicle that may or may not later give me intestinal problems!

Guatemalan politics are equally as confusing…the presidential elections are coming up on September 11th and I literally cannot wait.  There is a huge multitude of political parties and each one of them promotes themselves with so much propaganda it’s ridiculous.  I really should take photos of all the painted rocks on the sides of the highways and the posters in town, some of which are really entertaining!  My absolute LEAST favorite part are the political songs continuously blasted through town by megaphones propped up on pick-up trucks; I live close to the municipal headquarters of 2 of the major parties, so I luckily get the full blast of it.  I would really love to know if politicians in any other country also change the words to pop, reggaeton, and marimba songs, and what sounds like funeral dirges.  I’m also extremely curious about whether or not copyright laws were considered when using the songs; probably not, given the abundance of bootleg CDs and DVDs and the freely painted logos and Disney characters painted on walls everywhere!  Anyway, I’m super curious to see who becomes the next president – the top candidates are a former general responsible for much of the civil war violence, a former Protestant preacher, and until recently, the current president’s ex-wife…a president cannot run for re-election, but neither can a family member run in the following race.  To “solve” the problem, they got a divorce earlier this year.  However, it turns out that they would’ve had to be divorced for 4 years so not only is she barred from running, 4 years from now she won’t have to be divorced to run.  But by then she’ll probably have lost the steam from her controversial, but definitely vote-amounting, state social program Mi Familia Progresa (My Family Progresses).  Ohhh well, who knows what will happen?  I just hope no riots break out in town.

Hmmm what else?  I’ve discovered many foods here that I’d never even considered in the States – lentils, cauliflower, snow peas.  Local güicoyes are an excellent substitute for zucchini and eggplant, two of my favorite veggies and which are extremely hard to find here.  Certain fruits, like pineapple and pears, are just so much tastier here, right off the tree.  I doubt market Sundays will ever become an uneventful experience for me, but it is very easy to get used to how cheap fresh produce is here – Q1 for a pound of onions, Q3 for an expensive bag of tomatoes, Q2 for a head of broccoli, all this with an exchange rate of about $1=Q7.75!  And I have fallen in love with comida típica (typical foods) – rellenitos (fried plantains stuffed with refried beans and topped with sugar), chiles rellenos (as best as I can describe, these are a fried pancake of shredded chicken and veggies, with a hot pepper), papusas (really Salvadorian – tortillas stuffed with gooey cheese), chuchitos and tamalitos (tortilla dough stuffed with pork or beans)…yummm :)

And finally, work.  I don’t really know where I stand on that subject.  The Save the Children evaluations are coming up at the end of the month, so I guess we’ll see in which areas we’ll continue and in which we won’t.  Either way, I want to get so much more accomplished in the next 15 months here.  The question, of course, is how!  There’s talk of legalizing some of our groups, getting them various certifications that demand higher prices for products, finding buyers and fixed markets for those that still lack them.  I hope I can play a role in these.  And as exhausting as they can be, I do love working with the kids and their school garden :)  This morning the 4th-graders and I harvested their Swiss chard and cooked it up for a nutritious snack…even though I’d never even previously touched Swiss chard!  A good recipe and a smart and hard-working group of kids helped (we all know I have no idea how to build a fire to cook over!) and a good time was had by all!  Also work-wise-ish is my new additional position on the GAD (Gender and Development) committee as the Sustainable Ag Project Representative…it was kind of by default because my boss is convinced that only 1 person per project can be on the committee and therefore wouldn’t let anyone else run, but I’m still excited!

Okay, I think that’s definitely enough rambling and reflection for now!  To celebrate my 1-year anniversary in Guatemala, my sitemates and I are going to Lake Atitlán, my favorite place to let loose :)  It will also end my longest stretch of time spent continuously in Cunen…while I may have given off the impression in my last update that I was depressed, I’m really just kind of bored!  And it’s really not that bad – 2 weekends ago I attended a wedding lunch and a lunch and party (on the same day…) for my host brother’s 4th birthday, which was way fun and awesome how I was included as part of the family.  And this past weekend I finally constructed a mini garden and proper compost pile in my backyard, killing my body and somehow managing to split my sturdy hoe pole in two…clearly I was not made for swinging a hoe around.  I have nothing but major respect for my dad, who does that shit every summer and is always rewarded with a great harvest.  I’m just praying my eggplant, squash, and pepper seeds actually germinate and grow and that my sprouting herb garden matures into usable plants!

Progress, in installments

I’ve been reading about the terrible heat wave making its way across the States and all I can say is, I’m sorry!  When I got here last August at the tail-end of Guatemala’s winter/rainy season, I was miserable and cold.  However, whether due to the same climate change forces the US is currently experiencing, or because the supposed resurgence of summer during the month of July, the weather here has been pretty perfect :)  Hot days, cool nights, and no sudden rain storms plaguing my afternoon community visits.  The clouds forming outside as I type might bring some relief to the farmers, though!  I’m curious (read: apprehensive) to see how August progresses and if the roads become impassable or not.

But this post is about progress, and more specifically how it comes in spurts.  And how in between those spurts, it’s very easy to forget about any progress made.  For example, I was so bored on Thursday that I remained shut up in my house like a hermit for 48 hours, until Saturday evening.  During those mildly suicidal yet productive 2 days, I neither dwelled on the successes of the previous week or 2 nor could I revive myself enough to predict how fun the end of my self-imposed state of recluse would be.  As my mood swing back to joy principally involved the return of sitemates and other volunteers passing through, I am further convinced that I could not have done this experience alone.  Also that I am a great self-entertainer but ultimately a terrible hermit!

I’ve diverged again – as I mentioned, the last week or 2 have actually been fairly successful.  Work-wise, Save the Children hired a new marketing specialist, Enrique, to work with us.  I was extremely skeptical at first because Enrique became our new Supervisor while Allan, the previous unhelpful Supervisor and whose daily work is a complete mystery to me, was promoted to Coordinator.  I further could not comprehend why Save was hiring new people when it a) supposedly has no money and b) is looking to end all projects northern Quiché by next June (I’m here until October…).  I have to say, though, after one particularly productive brainstorming (lluvia de ideas!) meeting, I am impressed with Enrique and his leadership abilities.  While Allan (though a nice guy) never inspired anything in anyone, Enrique came up with a solid 6-month plan and was very open to altering and adding on to it, especially to more actively include Stephen and I.  With a sidestep back to pessimism, that was the first installment; follow-up on the plan has been lacking.  Returning to my natural optimism: I also had a bunch of successful capacitations, teaching about responsible micro-lending, nutrition, and a manure “tea” organic fertilizer :)

Progress with my new neighbors has come haltingly as well.  On the one hand, my direct neighbors across the street persist in their blank stares/dirty looks whenever I greet them.  I for the life of me cannot understand why, considering I am far less threatening than other people actually from town, but I guess being a gringa and renting a nice house causes jealousy/envy/resentment.  Oh well.  On the other hand, a woman a few houses down has taken a particular liking to me and brought me over a tamal yesterday evening :)  She was also overjoyed that it wasn’t one of us gringuitas (little white girls lol) that died in a recent car accident in town – the victim was a woman from out of town, who wore pants and had light hair – it was actually really sweet!  Oh and I also forgot to mention that I had my old host family over for lunch last weekend, which was really nice; I always liked the family a lot and I think it’s easier to appreciate them now that I’m not living under their somewhat crowded roof!

To end this installment (!), I do not have any new photos to post, but I do have some exciting news: my plane tickets are booked to go home from November 13th-26th!!!  It’s funny how I was originally never planning on returning to the States during my 2 years and now I CANNOT WAIT!  Thanksgiving, Lehigh/Laf, friends, family, food, stainless/hole-less/form-fitting clothes…mmmmm :)

PS – Felicidades to all gay couples now legally allowed to marry in New York!!!

Monthly update…

So as the title suggests, this may be turning into a monthly update instead of something more frequently.  But that’s ok, as my life isn’t all that interesting and I know you all can only take me once a month, right? ;)

I do have rather excellent news: I am all moved-in into my new house!!  Apparently my landlord and I had some miscommunication (welcome to my life…) and he built a whole fence, instead of part one that could be extended.  SO once that was finally finished, I snapped some photos, sent them to Peace Corps, and got the approval to move in!  The OK came fairly simultaneously with the rest of the furniture I’d ordered from a carpenter in Uspantan, about an hour away.  THAT was kind of a hassle; of course it was raining and since the banks were closed and the ATM was out of service, we convinced the poor uncomprehending guy to take American dollars at the current exchange rate.  We found out later that Guatemalans can only exchange US$ if they have an account at the bank, so luckily my friend Stephen who lives in Uspantan was able to help the guy out lol, since the rule doesn’t apply to Americans.  Anyway, the moral of the story is that I’m living in a wonderful (almost) fully furnished house!  I need some more chairs, and mirrors, and pans, and a table, and I’m sure other things, like gardening tools and curtains, but I’m set for now :)

my furnished kitchen:

my furnished bedroom:

my giant pila and part of the backyard:

Hmmm since I last wrote, I turned 23.  That was super fun celebrating in Panajachel and Antigua.  I was just in Antigua again last week for July 4th.  We had a pretty interesting all-volunteer conference last Friday on hot volunteer topics and then a hopping party the next day – the 2nd not the 4th, as a Saturday was unaccountably deemed more appropriate.  I mentioned last time that I’m now on the Gender and Development (GAD) committee and my main job is running the 4th of July raffle and selling merchandise during the conference and party…HUGE SUCCESS!  We ended up soliciting 96 prizes and raised over Q7,000 between ticket and merch sales, almost $1,000!  The only downside was a conflict between GAD and VAC (the Volunteer Advisory Committee, who runs weekend activities) during the raffle drawings, but hopefully there won’t be any lasting issues on that front.  And credit must be given to them for a fun party and a great after-dance-party :)  A few friends and I decided to stay in Antigua for a few more days, the highlight of which was a redneck party at Mono Loco, the American bar/restaurant in town, on the actual holiday :)  As usual, I spent far too much of my meager monthly allowance on excellent food and drink (and less excellent hostels), so I’m a little broke for the second month in a row…oh well, at least I’ve got everything I need!  Including internet and a working cell phone…it turns out that losing 2 cell phones in a 5-day period isn’t as hard as you’d imagine, who knew?

my sitemates and I at the party:

The Antigua trip was also inadvertently a despedida for 1, probably 2, friends who have decided to leave early.  Or “early terminate” in PC-speak; how awful is that?  Anyway, they’ve both been very unhappy with their work situations (aka no work) and are out in the lonely eastern part of the country, where there are very few volunteers.  They will both be greatly missed and I hope things work out better for them in the States.

Of course it’s extremely hard not to question my own situation here in light of their decision.  I mean, work is…work.  It’s not especially good, but I guess it’s not terrible either.  And I do have 2 amazing sitemates and a lot of solid relationships, both with Americans and Guatemalans.  I don’t plan on going home early, but it has made me think a lot about if I actually like it here or not.  On the whole, I do.  Life can just be super difficult…my friend Carolyn does a great job of expressing our collective frustrations here.  So while I do kind of look forward to the end of my service here, I still have quite a bit of time left that I want to make the best of.  Although who wouldn’t look forward to October 2012 plans of traveling through Latin America for a month or 2?  (Positions for travel buddies are still open!)  I’m also starting to plan for the future by studying for the Foreign Service Officer Test in October of this year!  So much for photojournalism ;)

Busier Life, New House, 23rd Year…what??

I might officially suck at writing a blog.  At least at updating it anyway.  The thing is, as unlikely as it might seem, not much excitement happens here!  I think I’m finally at the point where, although I continue to count monthly anniversaries of being here, I’m pretty settled and life here is normal.  Not New-York- or really America-at-large-normal, of course, but I’m no longer shocked by almost everything.

Except cows.  I will never get the image out of my mind of a cow drinking out of a pila…within Cunen’s “urban” limits!  I still can’t believe I didn’t have my camera for that.  Another time we saw a cow scratching its head with its hind leg, like a dog.  I didn’t even know cows had that much mobility!  Animals here in general fascinate me: pigs on leashes, bulls roaming down the town’s main street, turkeys and chickens running about, escaped dogs eating baby chicks, rooftop dogs…I’m always reminded of the oddity of such everyday sightings when people come to visit.  Melissa’s mom taking photos of everything kind of weird in Cunen yesterday brought this to mind!

But anyway, back to non-ramblings.  Life is finally getting busier and more productive!  I finally met the 3rd farmer’s group assigned to me, so capacity trainings with them will start shortly, and things with the other 2 groups have been moving along.  I think I convinced the Trigales group to completely reorganize because even though they’re a legal association, they do not act like one.  Namely, each member sells their crop individually to a coyote/intermediary, rather than combining their crops to take advantage of higher quantities and collective bargaining.  We’ll see what happens over the next year, I guess.  In that same community I’ve been working with 4^th-6^th graders – one hundred and freaking fifteen of them! – on a school garden project.  So far it’s been fun, exhausting, and productive :)  We cleaned and fixed up the land and planted, and the seeds (most of which I got for free from Semilla Nueva!) are starting to sprout.  The soil isn’t the greatest, but in 2 weeks we’re starting a compost bin, at least for next year.  And although I can’t stand the cold that it’s bringing, luckily the rainy season has more or less officially started (and the rain is still nice and light), so there’s no pressing need for irrigation :)

Another new development is that I’m now on the volunteers’ Gander and Development (GAD) committee, as the Communications and Accounts Manager…aka the fundraising and marketing person, but we’re not allowed to say marketing lol.  So my big objective for the next month is getting business to donate stuff for our raffle at the annual 4th of July party (celebrated on the 2nd…) and getting volunteers to buy tickets!  Being part of GAD also finally brought me to Xela (SHAY-la), Guatemala’s second-largest city, for the first time.  While I was lost almost the entire time I was there, it was a really fun weekend!  A productive GAD meeting, spending Q600 on (mostly) needed things at Hiper Pais/Wal-Mart (couscous! Nature Valley bars! pretzels! new undergarments!), getting the free seeds, and a crazy welcome party :)

My most exciting and also most frustrating news is my new house!  The Muni program’s APCD came to Cunen last Thursday and approved my adorable, fancy new space!!  It did come with a caveat, though: it has a street entrance that leads to my backyard that needs to be blocked off.  I finally met with my landlord last night and we decided that he would build a little fence on that side of the backyard, which will be extended poco a poco (little by little) in the future, when both of us have more money.  So, waiting for that and for the furniture I ordered last weekend that’s taking AGES to come, my move-in date has been pushed back until not this weekend but the next, when I get back from In-Service Training.  Which just happens to fall during my birthday, so I conveniently get to celebrate in Antigua!

the front of my new house

what will be my bedroom with its fancy tiles and chandelier!

While I hate being projected further into my 20’s, turning another year older will hopefully give me some more credibility (street cred? lol) in my work here.  It’s not uncommon for professionals to be pretty young, as being a teacher is very common and they only have to complete 1 year of study after high school for their degree, but I think a lot of people have trouble taking me seriously.  Oh well, time will tell.  In the meantime, in addition to celebrating on my actual birthday in Antigua, this weekend we’re off to Panajachel for another welcome party that’s doubling as a joint birthday party for Carolyn, Justin, and I…let the fun begin!