it'll be fun

so here's the game...what does this face mean? Leave it in a comment, or keep it to yourself. Unacceptable answers would be anything unclever like "i'm dumb", "i like john deere", "why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you want to see (that would have been clever, you know, seinfeld). answer is coming soon.

my quarterly globalization report

so this is where i complain about how america is invading my life in ways i wish it wouldn't. not "invading" in a good way folks. if papa john's decided to open up around the corner, i'm not complaining. if netflix "invades", i'll hold the door open for them. this report mostly involves how i heard a terrible song from the america (if you say the ukraine, can't you say the america). HOWEVER, when i am sitting here trying to use the internet, and whatever that song was from the titanic movie comes on IN AN INSTRUMENTAL VERSION PLAYED BY KENNY G OR SOME OTHER CLOWN!!!, i am upset. That just happened. Makes me want to do non peaceful things.

i got nothing

there are things to blog about, the doctors that were here again, good news for chickens, the caramel rolls i made last weekend, that ¡t's raining, the entire box of cereal i ate today, blah blah blah....

but i'm lazy right now.

seeds for sale

i sell seeds. you can buy them. i sell them by the meter. yeah, the meter. enough to plant a meter of whatever plant. i measure the seed with soda bottle caps. i put it in little home made envelopes. i seal them with masking tape. then i sell the heck out of them. they cost 25 or 50 cents (guatemalan cents). $1 is about 7.50 of the currency here, so you do the math. they sell like hotcakes (hotcakes are the current topselling good worldwide). today, i sold $8 or so. i don't make a profit, they're sold at cost. I know there was somebody (J.D.O.) out there that was saying "oh, so jake is in the peace corps goudging people, good for him". it's a good time.

walk to work

here's a series of photo taken as i was walking to a community where i work. the first photo is the reference point. the following photos look down upon this point. the 6th photo looks at position 5. i think this works.

reference point


2nd position, looking down at reference point

3rd position, looking down at reference point

4th position, looking down at reference point

5th position, looking down at reference point

6th position, looking at position 5 (hill in center of photo, it's grass on top)

teachin'

so i gave a training on chicken diseases today (it's rediculous how much i know about chickens). it's interesting the kind of possible distractions a person can have in the teaching environment.

1st distraction: started to rain, then to hail a little bit. normally, not a big deal, however, when the door is open to let in light because the house doesn't have electricity and the roof is tin, it makes a lot of noise.

2nd distraction: chickens of all sizes entering and exiting the house at will and people trying to get them out

3rd distraction: the dog, entering and exiting the house at will, and people trying to get it out

but we got through it.

your trash

i was on a bus the other day, and there was a sign in the front of it. it said, "don't throw your garbage on the floor". this does not mean, don't throw your garbage. it actually means, "throw it all out the window".

sounds kinda romantic...

I can say "i live in the western highlands of guatemala", but it's a little misleading. don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and all, but it's generally dirty, dusty or muddy, very poor, and kind of noisy. however, it is home, the western highlands of guatemala.

been a while

so here's the update

-my big sister is engaged. good job josh (not my brother but the fiance). confusing right? anyways, you smell like apricots.

-my parents came, they braved the chicken buses and bathrooms. they did well, no one got sick, many photos taken, not one casuality. good job guys.

-i'm still working. chickens, gardens, worms, the occasional goat, a tree here and there, and some rascally rabbits.

-some awesome minnesotans came (aside from my parents) as a Helps International team to give free surgeries, dental treatment to people in and around my town and to make stoves. i helped translate for a few days with some dentists and ate their delicious american food. some awesome people left me a bunch of snacks. tonight, a snack pack will be eaten. i miss them and their food already. by the way, that pillow is awesome (yeah, i got a new pillow!).

married, tired, or both?

so in spanish, one can easily mess up the two words for married and tired. married is "casado". tired is "cansado". think about the possible screw up's....

person a: are you married?
person b: yeah, i'm sooo tired.

kind of sad huh?

on the other hand...

person a or b: i was walking all day, my feet are so0o married.

pics

They made a box yesterday to start seeds. those pigtails are darling.

Here we're making a fancy compost pile called "bokashi" that is ready for use in 15 days. Most take 3 months. at this moment we were adding the yeast.

Here we have a group of women planting their little pieces of land for one of my projects. I think i'm in there somewhere. This day they planted spinach, carrots, turnip, cilantro, radish, and beet.

Look at those straight lines on that seed bad! If i had gold stars, these ladies would have gotten one, possibly 2.

same stuff

Here i'm giving them instructions on how to plant

sadly, we made the times

article

he'd never seen one

a white person that is. i was really in the country, the motorcycle got a flat, i had to wait while my coworker went and got it fixed. so i sat on the side of the road. some kids were playing nearby, close to their homes. they saw me, as i stand out. they shyly looked at me from afar, avoiding any eye contact. then they got a little bit closer, still no direct looks, but i could tell they were extremely curious. then they dared to stand on the other side of the road and look directly at me. i said hi. they laughed. i asked how they were doing. they laughed. i asked what their names were. they laughed. then one daring 7 or 8 year old boy came right up to me. all he did was look at me, i think he was especially amazed at my blue eyes. all the others he'd seen in his entire life were brown. never had seen a white skinned person, never seen a person without dark hair. just laughed. finally started talking. when i asked them what their names were, they said "nothing". liars.

i told them i work for a local ngo. they told me they didn't believe me. i asked why. "porque su piel es blanco". because your skin is white. ha.

before leaving i asked the kid what he would be doing the rest of the afternoon. "tirar polvo" he said, which is "throw dust".

last sunday

2 eggs: 10 cents
2 packages cream cheese: $3
Graham crackers for the crust: free from a friend
1 lb of strawberries: 75 cents
1 Cup of suger: really cheap
Eating an entire strawberry cheese cake that you made yourself in guatemala: pricelessish

what it looks like

One could almost say my kitchen/dining room is pretty (nothing to do with the guy standing there) at this moment.
Here's me being excited about the cinnamon roll I'm about to eat.

This is what's awesome about every Saturday and Sunday morning (along with the best coffee in the world). And yes, that's right, 4 pieces, I'm in the big leagues down here.

This is what is awesome about every other Friday night. Delicious tasty ribs. If i ate them with my feet, they would be foot licking good (that's the highest classification a food can receive, look it up)

Here's a chicken. I think it looks like it's posing. Doesn't have that blank chicken look to it. It's a Lohman Brown if you're interested in chicken breeds.

This is a photo of Lake Atitlan taken from a boat.

Here's me and my firepit on Christmas Eve. what? Like you didn't start a fire on christmas eve for the fun of it...and take a picture.

treat goats with natural medicine

i can do it. what´s up now? your goat got a little cough? let me know. need to clean those parasites out? give me a call. diarrhea? ok.

non malaria medication provoked dream

had a dream that i had been nominated as the 3rd most eligible bachelor here. however, as i consider this kind of thing essentially silly, i refused and did not accept the title. that was the dream. it makes one ask: why only 3rd place? if one is going to dream, one might as well go all out, right? i just went for third place, in guatemala.

pig ribs

one of the guys at work has some pig projects. they killed some pigs. sold the meat to include the ribs for about $1.50 a pound. got myelf a pound of that. made some barbeque sauce and cooked them in my peace corps oven after a little boiling. i can only describe them in 7 words: i should open a bbq restaurant here. the abbreviation counts as one word.

why i'm such a conservationist

1. the replaced heel of my boot is made out of old tire.

2. when finished with a can of pop, i throw it in the street instead of in the garbage. the kids in town collect them and sell them to be recycled for 50 cents for 32 of them.

yep

The volcano always looks pretty awesome. It's the first thing I see when I walk out my door in the morning. However, some days, it looks extra awesome. This was yesterday afternoon.

picture of home

here's a view of my town. we're pretty much built on a mountain.

the motherload

made some "pineapple chicken". not exactly what it tastes like at your local chinese buffet, but there's pineapple in it, and there's chicken, therefore, it is pineapple chicken
here's what i do when the power goes out. found that sweet returnable coke bottle (it's a 2 liter one) in my back yard when i first moved in.

this is the suit i wear when we travel by motorcycle. i not so fondly refer to my helmet as my captain america helmet. when wearing all this stuff, it's one of the only moments that i can't be identified as a gringo (which would really be nice), but then i got this american flag wrapped around my head.

took this picture from my kitchen window

Here's a newly built stove, they are fantastic, saves a lot of wood and doesn't spread smoke all over your house
Here's how they were cooking before that stove was built. this is inside their house.
I don't know how this ends up here, i didn't do it (like i could spraypaint a heart that well). it is next to a house where the kids always yell goodbye to me though, they may be the culprits
Here's my bridge. built a few months ago because the old bridge was wiped out by stan, nice work dad, ha.
this is a newly built adobe house. just about everyone in the country lives in these. the walls are mud, the roof is tin, the floor is dirt.
here's my poster i made for a training. that thing in the middle is a chicken. the title is "what do chickens give us". and clockwise from top left it says "manure, money, eggs, and meat". notice the stink lines above the manure...that's art.

this blew my mind. went to this lady's house to vaccinate her chickens, and here's this kid with a minnesota gophers shirt on. i was pretty excited, they were confused by my excitement, probably thought i was a little weird.

today´s training

today and tomorrow i´m doing a training on how to raise chickens for a fellow volunteer close to where i live. where she´s at, is a much more indigenous area. What this means, is that they don't so much speak spanish, nor can they read. so this makes giving a traing a bit of a challenge. they can't read what i write if i make posters, and they don't understand what i´m saying. so, what i have to do is have a translator. generally the women don´t speak spanish, but the men do. so there´s a man that translates for me. I do make posters, but they are all pictures more or less. you should see my chicken drawings. my chickens look like potatoes with beaks, but we all get the idea. i think some of my jokes were even translated and still funny for them. in conclusion, i´m hilarious in 3 languages. ha.

more like...

what CAN'T you do with a machete?!

not often thought about uses for machetes that i have witnessed:

1. Cutting block. you know, the block you use to build a wall. you masons and your chop saws, silly.

2. Chipping paint. yes, it's true. how much more fun must that be with a machete?

and my favorite...

3. Mounting a tire. This is the best. know why? because you get to use TWO machetes at once. have you ever held two machetes at a time? No? well i have. it was pretty much the coolest feeling i have ever had.

chompipe day

Happy Thanksgiving! I don't have any turkey, but i do have the day off.

La playa

Went to the beach a few weekends ago. It was warm. Here are some pictures!

i'm sorry

it's been over a month or something. i just don't always get on the internet so much. i don't even know who is the governor of MN at this moment. so here's what has happened. i went to the beach this weekend. it was hot and fun. My friend locked the key in our room and the night hotel man said there was no copy. He unknowingly LIED!!! we slept on tile. i'll get some pictures up here of the beach.

there was a bus crash outside of town. 6 people died. there's bus crashes here rather frequently. it happens for a variety of reasons. sometimes the driver was going REALLY insanely fast. sometimes the driver was drunk. sometimes the driver was doing both of those things. sometimes brakes don't work. sometimes it was an accident.

work is going well. chickens are happier and happier with every day that i spend here. i am propagating worms all over the place. the people laugh a lot at worms. first it's funny because i'm white. second it's funny because i'm telling them how these worms (but seriously, they're amazing) will change their life. third it's funny because in spanish the worm is called "coqueta roja" which means "red flirt".

there are other things that have happened that were probably blog worthy. i will try to remember them (but if someone bets you whether i will or not, tell them that you don't gamble).

i wish i could call everyone more often. phone minutes do not grow on trees, nor on any other kind of plants including root crops.

i broke my toe

soccer is no good for me. i played football for a while, got injured once. i've played soccer barely, got injured twice now. pretty sure my toe(s) is/are broken. goodness. want to sign it? there's no cast, but anyways, you can sign it. sorry you had to find out like this mom and dad, unless i call you before you see this. it's really not that big of a deal though. ok.

my most surreal moment to date

so i met the president of guatemala. they had a bridge inaugaration, and i went. he came in his helicopter. we talked to one of his staff members, and he agreed to request a photo with the guy. so then we took the picture. now, we get to the surreal part. here's the situation. bridge opening, guatemala, president of guatemala, picture, him talking about chevy chase during the photo, in english. so get that.

a razor to the ears

got a haircut. he trimmed up my ear hair (which isn't THAT long)...with a straight razor. not gonna lie to ya, i was a little nervous at that point.

¡Fotos!

The team, we are called "Los Malos"

This is the equivalent of a county courthouse in my town.


This was a parade on Independence day here on the 15th of September


Another picture from the parade.


Your typical house in the country


Photo taken from one of the windows of my house

attack of the fleas part II

so those fleas that got on me at that one place came home with me. they love to bite you when you're sleeping. it wakes you up. so, today, with any hope, i killed a lot of fleas with this spray i bought. had to take out my mattress and box spring and spray it down and smack them around a little bit with a stick. plus my couch cushions. good times. good thing the motorcycle that was going to take me vaccinating didn't start this morning. julie, you should give those kids some fleas, they´d be too busy itching themselves and too tired from no sleep to stab stuff. just a thought.

by the way, made a carrot cake. they were free range carrots too. walking around and stuff, less fat that way.

have a good day.

attack of the fleas

i got attacked by fleas. i was in a chicken coup, turns out it was infested. they crawled all over me and bit me a lot. how's work for you?

back to my other home

alright, so i got back about a week ago. trip was good. could have had a little bit more time back in minnesota to see more people. sorry to those that i couldn't get to see. things were super busy. it was definitely a good time. josh got all married. maybe i'll find some wedding photos to post.

at home

got to msp on what would be tecnically thursday morning at 12:30 am. i touched american concrete in atlanta. got to dalton to yesterday. i brought machetes as presents for my dad and brother, clearly not in my carry-on. i took my boots and belt off quite a few times throughout the trip. funniest part of the trip was in atlanta when there was a siren that started out and a voice on the intercom saying "there is an emergency in the building". what was funny was the reaction of all these americans in post 9-11 airports. EVERYONE STARTED LAUGHING. i don't get it. in conclusion, i've eaten entirely too much candy.

coming home soon

i'll be home soon. I'll be back home on the 17th of august. hope to see a bunch of people. prepare yourselves.

for the corn aficionados out there

That's some tall corn

newest project

so today i started a series of trainings on chickens. what i'm trying to do with one of my counterpart agencies is develop the "prometoras" in a number of communities. i want them to learn how to be the go-to person in their communities when it comes to peoples chickens. so, what this means is that they need to learn to identify the different sicknesses that plag chickens, how to prevent and or cure them if possible, the kind of shape they need to have their chicken coups in, as well as how to feed their chickens well. today was the first training, i thought it went well. it's also really good spanish practice, and found that a good spanish benchmark was that i was more or less able to wing it. i also made some posters and stuff before hand (i told them that today was my premiere as an artist here, and told them they could make a purchase afterwords, there were no offers). so anyways, i'm pretty excited about the whole thing. it's something that could relatively easily continue after my service here, which is kind of the point, sustainability and whatnot.

and me without a grill

It's friday afternoon, the sun is shining, had a good day at work, and all i really want to do is grill some meat. there's meat, i could get a pound of chicken for myself just down the road. but, alas, there is no grill. i might have to dig a firepit and find a thing. in conclusion, i still win.

Pictures!

Some mountains and trees and whatnot


So this was my ride home one day. I'm on top of a truck that is hauling returnable coke bottles and empty propane gas tanks


Here is where i would have crossed the river pre-hurricane stan.


My delicious birthday cake made in this manner

within a block

within a block of my house, i can...

1. buy groceries (nothing fancy, but i'm generally buying eggs, beans, or a coke, and they have those things)
2. Get my boots fixed (already had to get a new heel put on those pretty things)
3. Check my e-mail (yeah sara, they have the imation sign outside the place)
4. get on a bus to go somewhere that i can get a cheeseburger or fulfill some other kind of want or need
5. go to a variety of "restaurants" serving pretty much the same food
6. get my car filled up with gas...oh wait, i haven't bought a drop of gas in 10 months, ¡ha!
7. arrive at work (30 seconds to the office)
8. get my tv fixed should it be necessary

ouch my leg

i turned my ankle last week. it made a really nice sound when it happened too. it was in our weekly soccer game. then i couldn't play this week, but they somehow won without the gringo. so now we're in the championships. so, next thursday night, i better be able to play or i will be mildly perturbed.

this silly five things...thing

5 things in my fridge...I don't have a fridge...so on my shelf then?
1. Milk powder, regretably i'm am pretty much used to it. have not had a "real" glass of cow milk in 9 months or so...i should drink some o' that goat milk being sold in the park
2. The best honey in the world, no sugar added, made locally, 110% pure honey, how they get that extra 10% percent? i'll never tell (said in the voice from that one movie by that one girl). it is fantastic
3. Tea: chai, chamomile, black, and mint
4. beans
5. rice

5 Things in my closet...I don't have a closet, so on my other shelf then?
1. Shirts
2. Pants
3. Underwear
4. Socks
5. No clean sheets
ps: either this is a really boring category, or i just made it really boring

5 Things in my purse...I don't have a purse, but i do have bag thing that is culturally acceptable to be carried by men
1. My Leatherman, this is not a tiny person made out of leather, it is a tool...are you crazy or something?
2. A little notebook for writing down how many chickens i vaccinated that day and stuff like that
3. An umbrella because it's probably gonna rain
4. My memory stick
5. A camera

5 Things in my car...I don't have a car...so lets say my back yard?
1. A machete...YES!
2. A giant hoe...which oars are sometimes confused for (that's for you josh)
3. My pila where i wash my dishes and clothes
4. A fig tree
5. A bunch of worms that are turning manure into gold (not really)...(but seriously)

5 Things I wish i was doing right now
1. Seeing X-Men, but they dubbed it, grrrr
2. Hanging out like i would on a saturday night in Bemidji, those were good times
3. Understanding every word that is said to me
4. Not paying to use internet
5. Curing cancer. why not? don't you want to cure cancer? well you should

5 Things I like most about my bedroom
1. The pictures i have hung up
2. my tv
3. the fact that i have a couch in there too
4. that i can look out the window and see a huge volcano
5. i have two pillows

hour of God, or the actual hour?

so we switched to daylight savings time, in the past it had not been used at all. but it creates a lot of confusion, which surprised me. We'll get to a community and no one will show up until an hour later. they get there, and we're like, "how come you're late?", and they say, "we don't use the president's hour (since the government made the change), we're on the hour of God (or some variation of this, sometimes they say the old hour)". so it's pretty interesting. but i understand, they don't really need to keep track of the time so much, they work when the sun shines, sleep when it's night, and eat when they're hungry. but they do clearly use clocks, because they know they showed up late, or not necessarily late, just at a different time.

so it has been a while

i have not blogged for a good long time. or bad long time, however you want to look at it. but the good news, is that my clothes dried this weekend. that was good. it had been a while, and i do not have entirely too many clothes.

so anyways, i am going to try and get a substantive entry up on here for you all. hope things are good.

bye

jbo

in with rain, out with dust

dry season is over. we went about 6 months w/o hardly any rain. now it will rain almost every day.

my worms

no, i do not have parasites in my belly, nor am i on a tapeworm diet. however, i have a cardboard box full of worms, that is ready to be brought back to my home. and you ask, "what are the worms in friend?" and i say, "well of course they are in manure". it's magic i tell you. it's a form of composting, and it makes the best organic compost there is in ALL THE WORLD. the worms eat the whatnot, the whatnot goes out of the worms,and it is gold, that's actually what i say, but in spanish, and i don't know what whatnot is in spanish. but i'm gonna start growing these worms in my backyard, it's going to be great.

baby showers and car washes

Know what they call a car wash here? It's called a "car wash". They have baby showers too. They call them "Baby Showers". Of course they're pronounced a little different, but goodness, what's going on here?

made a cake

I made a cake. I made it essentially the same way everyone else makes a cake; with a box, except for the baking part. i do not have an oven, only a stove. but, with a big pot, an old tuna can, the lid for the pot, and a little bit of water, you've got yourself an oven. you just fill the tuna can up with water, put it in the bottom of the pot, turn on you stove, put the pan of whatever you're cookin' on top to the tuna can, and put the lid on. it turned out quite good, i was surprised. i also like to make apple crisp in this same fashion. once i made chocolate chip cookies, and a carrot cake too with some other folks. who knew?

a shout out

I'd like to give a shout out to my brother. he just got in to medical school, was accepted to both U of M Twin Cities and to U of M Duluth. Accepted the Duluth offer. So, start being nice if you want free physicals, if that's the kind of thing you'd be interested in; you decide. in conclusion, turn your head, and say congratulations to my brother.

have you ever pointed with your lips?

I have. If you want to indicate something that may be in some direction, you could do it the hard way and raise your arm, extend your index finger, and say "over there, next to the flaming car". Or, you could do it like they do here. Turn your head in the direction of the flaming car, pretty much purse yer lips and kiss in the direction (without the *smack* noise, don't be silly), and say "por el carro en fuego". try it, it's kind of fun (flaming anything is unneccessary).

fresh goat milk

If you want some fresh goat milk, and i'm talking as fresh as a sane person would want to get goat milk, come to my town. there's goats tied up every morning at the central park (had no idea why at first), but if you find the owner, go up and order a glass, he'll take out a cup, go pick a goat, and milk it directly into your cup. i don't know how much it will run you, i have not bought a cup, nor inquired about the cost.

i don't know where this came from

so, the word cowboy. it could really have two meanings. the person with the hat boots and wranglers, or a half boy/half cow or any other ratio of cow to boy i guess. i wonder if, initially, when frecuent readers of supermarket tabloids hear the word "cowboy", they think of a boy with hooves? I kind of think so. that's all i got

these boots were made for...me

i got some boots custom made for my feet and my feet alone. they are a little bit cowboy. judge for yourself. oh, and they only cost like $35. seems a lot like a sure thing.

not a hippy

even though i will be working with people on starting and maintaining a alternative medicine garden grown organically, i wholeheartedly deny being a hippy.

movie tonight!|

So, tonight, i get to watch Steven Spielberg's "Munich" in a movie theater, in a mall. I am what one might call "excited" to see what may be a "quality movie", in "English". I will "sneak" pop and "candy" into the "movie", "beause" I'm "a" volunteer, and am not "earning" "money", "ok"? "end quote"""""""".

6 months

Yo tengo seis meses aqui en este pais. Puchicas.

feliz dia de cariño/happy valentines day (part deux)

so, in celebration of valentines day, we had a party last night (16th), two days late, but the v-day spirit was still strong. so, as with a lot of things, it started late, about 2 hours late in fact. so, the festivities included; soccer games played before supper, a really tasty supper to include grilled meat, guacamole, and refried dreams (i almost lost my breath when i saw it, told the cook it was probably the best supper since i've been guatemala, a contest of who could explain love the best (i did not have the pleasure of participating), a beauty contest (also did not participate, nor was asked), a bunch of stuff i did not understand exactly, and a dance following, in which i did participate. left the thing around 1230, rumor has it, there were people there until 3 (and on a school night!). the thing about the dancing, is that it's all couple dancing, they don't just go out there solo and shake without breaking it like we do in the states. a little more pressure for the males though, they've got to ask, unless your the prized gringo, he doesn't have to ask nobody. ha, that is the first and final time i will refer to myself as the prized gringo, thanks for playing along.

feliz dia de cariño/happy valentines day

so they do celebrate valentine's day here. which i find amazing the reach that american commercialization has. i wonder if it's the same comercialization that allows me to hear terrible american music here and there. i got my girlfriend chocolate, a pot and some flower seeds. unbelievably clever. she's another volunteer, not guatemalan. so that's all i will say about the relationship side of things, trying to keep this focused on the corp.

hi

i just thought i would say hi to everyone. i hope what you're doing is going well and that you're happy. if not, i hope you have a plan to make things better. if you don't have a plan, i've learned that ice cream makes you happy, or in my case, happier. it can make you other things in excess, which have many other consequences that are not in your best interest, so don't get too happy. i'm doing well, it's almost mango season, and avocadoe season. my peach tree is blossoming, the dishes are clean, and so is the house. my bed is not made (this does not make me any less satisfied with my current condition). so yeah. be well.

a little out of it

so, in regards to the super bowl...i had to be told a couple weeks ago that the super bowl was coming up from a guatemalan i work with. i was also told that camp snoopy is to no longer be camp snoopy (o' how i cried!). i just heard that mlk's wife died. a guatemalan told me that the state of the union speech happened. i am out of it. i wish the new york times delivered here, and that it was in english.

super bowl

watched the super bowl last night at my house. yes, you read correctly. wasn't the same without the american commercials, but still a good game. had some other volunteers over, ate quesadillas and fajitas, tan ricas (so good).

alright, so the image i had of the peace corps that i had before getting here was not completely apt for my living conditions right now. i have running water, my new shower gets pretty warm, i have cable in my house (almost embarassed to say it) - don't get a lot of channels, and the majority of programs are in spanish (sometimes there's a movie in english), i'm soon to be without a tv though, might buy one, however i'm hardly ever home to watch. i eat pretty well. i am using high speed internet at this moment. i can buy american cereal (quaker oat sqares baby, and let me say that y'all are getting ripped off).

so, it kind of depends on where you go, and then where your sight is. i know people that live in houses made of mud, that don't have showers or bathrooms with running water.

a little more substance

alright, so i feel sometimes that i'm just not blogging about what might be a little more important than a picture of my machete (although, don't bet on not seeing another picture), which would be what i'm doing, how things seem, interesting things that happen that might give you a glimpse into the culture of this country. so...

Through one of my host country agencies, ive been able to see some pretty impressive things going on. they work in a bunch of different communities, which are very small and don't resemble what we would consider "communities". they are really just rural areas that have names. anyways. so, there are all these groups. in every one there is a group organized that has a president, a secretary, and other people with titles (don't understand them well). and, what they are doing is planting trees, white pines for the majority (there are tons of white pine and other evergreen trees in guatemala), also cyprus, avocado, peach, and melocoton. some of the trees that they plant are for selling, but they don't sell for much, so a lot just go for reforestation. and i'm not talking about a few pine trees planted, some have a couple thousand trees! kind of blows my mind, but what i find most impressive is that they are organized as they are. there's a lot of social capital going on here (now if there were some more of the garden variety capital, things would be very different). so, they meet weekly and work on their trees. these are people that work extremely hard, life is not easy for them. however, they make time to come and work on trees that they won't be getting much of any direct monetary return on.

today's work

so today, i had my first big responsibility at work. i had two presentations today, both the same, to two different groups, all women. i was teaching them how to make their own chicken feed. a lot of people here only feed their chickens whole kernels of corn, so, in comes the peace corps, and i teach them how to grind it all up, use some beans, salt, bones, and eggshells so that they have some killer chicken feed. the first one in the morning wasn't stellar, they weren't too animated and didn't participate. however, they did well once it came time to actually make the stuff. the second group however, pretty sure they think i'm some sort of rock star now. not really, but it went pretty well. we tell them to grind the stuff up so the chickens can digest the stuff better, and they laughed when i said " i don't believe that chickens have teeth". it was fun. anyways, internet costs money, so i will talk to y'all later.

i have moved

finally moved to where i will be living for the next two years. it is a fantastic feeling to be able t unpack completely after 4 1/2 months, i'll tell ya that much. should gather some pictures up eventually of my place. i have a rabbit in my backyard and a peach tree. turns out that i win.

in other news, finally got sick on saturday. by sick, i mean the stereotypical sick that mexico/central america suggests and a little vomiting. wasn't too bad.

so there you have it, haven't done too much bloggin for a while, kinda busy and whatnot. who knows what the whatnot is, but i'm sure it's something. so, hopefully, sometime soon, i'll get some sort of update.

respectfully yours,

jake

the two most beautiful pictures you've seen all week, at least

Above, you will see the long awaited picture of my machete. I forgot to put something next to it so that you new the scale. However, it's about 50 ft long and very sharp. Ok, so that was a joke. it's about 3 ft. long. Below is Lake Atitlan which i was staying next to for new year's.