last weekend

I am a posting maniac today!

So, last weekend, i had an interesting sunday. There was a fair close to where i live, and my brothers invited me to come, so i said, 'yeah'. so, they kept on talking about how we were going to see these people dancing in costumes, and i was like 'neat'. so we got to the town, and they gave me this plain grey t-shirt, and i said, 'what's this for', they said 'everyone's wearing one', and i said 'cool, free shirt'. so we sat at this place, and then they were like, 'ok it's time'. so we went to the center of town, and were standing around a little longer, and i was like 'seriously though, why am i wearing this grey shirt?'. and one of them says, 'we're going to help', i said, 'ok'. so, there's a lot of people here, and there's all these people in these costumes, some of them were disney characters, some of them looked as if they were out of Lord of the Rings, some of them were simply random. Then, they say, 'hold this rope', and i took the rope. turns out, this gringo was working crowd control at this parade of people dancing in the street. we formed a big rectangle, and had to make room so they could dance.

So, imagine, in Guatemala, on one of the biggest days of the year for this town, there's some blond, blue eyed, white guy working crowd control. I didn't see one non guatemalan all day. oh, and it went all afternoon. i was doing this from 12 until 7:30 at night.

it was fun though, i like people watching, so it worked out. it's an interesting feeling. and, i only heard someone say gringo once. however, my name among the others working there was canche, or what translates to 'blondie'. i was also standing there once, and there was a mother and a daughter standing close to me, and the little girl was looking up at her mother saying "canche, canche, canche" and nodding in my direction. i heard her and said hi, she just smiled.

so there you go. i confused a lot of guatemalans last week.

Chickens!

Here's the chicken we killed on thursday. I got to hold as we slit the throat. Then we learned about it's insides and gave the meat to one of the guards in the training center. it was fun. We also made a little prank with the insides (think tupperware from lunch + head + heart + intestines + a toe as garnish). There were a few screams.

We have about 90 chickens that we are raising. Almost everybody has chickens around here. They wake me every morning. But they're an incredible food source. A lot of people lack the protein that a chicken can bring. they're relatively cheap to raise, and if done properly, you can be self sustaining (put a rooster into the mix).

And in defense, we vaccinated all of the other chickens too (yeah, i can vaccinate your chickens if you want me to). Not that we're going to set them free, unless you define free as dead and eaten.

my first earthquake

so, now i have experienced a hurricane and an earthquake. don't worry, it was a little guy, shook the tin roof a little bit, i thought there was a big wind that came or something. but it was fun.

another dream

Had a dream the other night that i had a baby. NOT that i gave birth to a child, but that there was a baby in this world that belonged to me. It was frightening. I don't know who the mother was, or if she was even around. If she left me to raise that child alone, i'm upset. It was a very short dream, all i really remember is holding my child and thinking "now what the heck do i do?" it was scary. So, i guess you might almost be able to call it a nightmare, but the baby was kind of cute, so that seems a little bit evil. If there's one thing i find it hard to think poorly of, it's babies. Plus, he had his father's eyes.

chew on that

Hurricane Stan

So, as a lot of you know, there was a hurricane that hit guatemala. The hurricane has caused a lot of damage, and there's a lot of deaths and people without homes. It may very well affect my service as a PCV; people may not be very interested in growing some vegetables if they haven't a home. And that's ok, Peace Corps is HUGE on telling its volunteers to be flexible, and that's cool with me. Maybe i'll get to build houses, who knows?

Those of us who are in Peace Corps training were not affected very much. It rained for almost a week straight, while we were on what was supposed to be field based training. We ended up spending the week in a hotel (we were away from where we have usual training, the plan was to visit a lot of volunteer sights, some in areas that were very hurt by the hurricane) without power or water for the majority of the time. But I really can't complain, there are many in guatemala that have it much much much much much worse than we did. It rained more yesterday, and is raining off and on today, i think because of all the humidity in the air, there's kind of a positive feedback loop going on. There's a lot of roads that are out. Many many landslides, one actually prevented us from getting to one of the sites, and it was good that it did, it was a badly affected area.

I put some links up to two of Guatemala's newspapers, there should be some pictures there.

Hurricane Stan Includes a slide show

Anyways, that's about it

amendment to my daily routine

Ok, it has become apparent, that to leave out a couple parts of my day would be a grave mistake. That is, because there are things that i depend on happening so much for my happiness and sanity that occur on a daily basis. One of them is; ICE CREAM. in about a 3 minute walk, i can get ice cream, covered in chocolate, for 50 american cents. and it's delicious, really really delicious.

The other thing is "Chikys". Chikys are one of the best discoveries i have made here. they are, as the package says, "chocolate enrobed cookies". they cost 1/7th of a dollar, and they are also delicious.

alright, talk to you later.

stop globalization NOW!

i thought that being all the way in guatemala might seperate me a little bit more from america than it has. last night, i was riding in a car, and on the radio, i had the "pleasure" of hearing "when a man loves a woman" by michael bolton. And for me, it gets A LOT BETTER than when michael bolton sings that song. so, in conclusion, globalization kind of sucks, and so does michael bolton. and if ANYBODY is a fan of michael bolton, i have one word for you - perm.

the race, that wasn't a race, that i won

the other night my family had beans and rice and tortillas for supper (the staple of the guatemalan diet). I finished mine first because i like them and i'm awesome. i looked at one of my host brothers and said "hey, you're still eating, i'm done." then i pointed at myself and said "gringo!" they laughed, and i was happy that i could pick on him in spanish and they could understand and laugh.

the weekend

so, i got to go on a PCV visit this weekend, which, is where those of us in training get to go and stay with a volunteer that is in our same program, and then see what they do for work and on the weekend. it was definitely a good time. Travel is ALWAYS a little interesting. in guatemala, they have what are known as 'chicken buses'. they are refurbished school buses, i think from the states, that they paint in all these new colors, and its the main form of transportation around the country. I keep wanting to see my bus from back in the day. they end up being COMPLETELY full of people, this means three grown individuals to a seat, and then people standing in an aisle. anyways, back to the visit. we left on thursday morning, got there around noon. we had pizza for lunch (the owner of the comedor had spent 2 years working at a pizza place in New Jersey, delicious). It rained almost the whole time, someone tell those hurricanes to knock it off, they're raining on my parade, and this makes me upset. if what this volunteer does is any kind of means for me to judge how my own job will be, it will be neat. pretty much five days a week, he walks to small villages and talks to families about starting/maintaining gardens. In addition, most of the time spent with the families is more about just chatting about random stuff. it was very cool. one of the families gave us coffee and some sweet(in both senses of the word) cornbread stuff. there were pigs eating off the ground in the same room, a dead rabbit up in a hanging cage, and the woman talked faster than anyone i'd ever heard, i probably wouldn't have been able to understand her if she was speaking english, i did a lot of smiling and nodding. the guy had a sweet house, it was adobe, and he had done a lot of fixing up on it. very cool. I was really impressed, makes me excited to get to a site of my own. we ate like kings too. we made lasagna in an interesting way, as well as burritos, and pancakes one morning. anyways, i have to go and read some news. keep on truckin'. and i'm not motivated to spell check this, so deal with it!

dreams and stuff

ok, malaria medication (for the prevention of the said disease, i don't have malaria), gives a person insane dreams. the other night i had a dream that my PC training was in europe, and i was jealous that the group before us had received skydiving training. also, in the same night i dreampt that i was at a party and the rapper Ludacris was there, he had a gun.

also, the other morning i had the pleasure of eating breakfast to some very interesting music. there are not noise ordinances here, and i had the pleasure of listening to the song "informer" by Canadian very white rapper Snow. They also played as an encore "Ice Ice Baby" by our other favorite very white rapper Vanilla Ice. Snow and Ice i guess. They played some other songs too that were rediculously american, i don't remember what though.

alright, gotta go.

You are mono, or you are a mono

In spanish, the word Mono has two meanings. one of those meanings is "Lovely", which is an adective for a person/place/thing/or idea (easily forgotten) and is a complement. The other meaning is "monkey", which is a noun, and stands for an animal that is a mammal and has been known to throw its own feces. So, there you go, be careful kids.

Things i did this week
-celebrated the guatemalan independence which included some fireworks, a very long thing at the school, a lot of dancing children, playing hearts with other volunteers on a roof, and studying.
-made a terrrace
-didn't get sick for another week
-got a garden ready for some plantin'
-learned (i hope) a bunch more spanish
-gave a presentation on the administrative structure for the town that i currently live in, in spanish no less (Nolan, don't let anyone tell you that public administration won't pay off)
-spent a cumulitive time of 4 hours walking, which i don't think is the tip of the iceberg from what i hear is in store for me in the next two years
-slept in on saturday until 7

ok, that's all i have for now. if you want to send me a letter, e-mail me and i can send you my address (this is not a hint or pathetic attempt to get mail, but if you do want to send me something, i can facilitate that along with food security).

Bye!

pictures

Here are some photos from a very large hill behind my town. there is a pretty good view.
my town

this is a field of avocadoes (sp?), campo de aguacates en español anyways. they are everywhere, the nickname for people in antigua is ¨green bellys¨ because there are so many aguacates.


TWO volcanoes. they are near antigua, where you can see 3 volcanoes.


Other views from up there

a typical day

so, here´s a typical day for me. i wake up around 6, make my bed, tidy up the room, and then make an appearance in the kitchen so my host mother knows she can get my bath ready. I´m not talking about a regular bath here, i´m talking about a bucket bath. it entails a five gallon bucket, a small pail, some soap and moderately warm water, and me. pretty much i just dump water over myself with the small pail and then proceed to lather up. then i shave, every single day, and go to the kitchen for breakfast. i either get corn flakes in hot milk, or mosh. mosh is similar to oatmeal, but is more runny, and i don´t really know what is in it. it´s quite good, especially if you crumble up some bread and put it in there. breakfast usually includes a banana too. then i go out to meet the others in my city to walk to the training center. it´s about a half hour walk down what would be an interstate in the states, except the shoulder is more narrow and the fumes are more powerful. then we have spanish class from 7:30 to 11:30 with a 20 minute break. i have 4 people in my class, and it usually goes pretty fast. i get about 30 or 40 new words every day, which is semidaunting, but it´s going ok so far. then we have lunch from 11:30 to 12:30. all of our host mothers make us sack lunches, and there´s a lot of bartering and trading taking place. it´s pretty fun. then we either have a lecture on how we can get sick or robbed or some technical training. we conclude at 4:30 and walk back, uphill this time. then i study until supper which is at 8, then i study after supper, then go to bed at about 9 pm. josh, i could almost rival you in studying down here, it´s pretty unbelievable. it´s kind of easy though when you can´t understand anybody or what is on tv. so that´s my day, it is pretty fun. oh, they have "walker texas ranger", and "highlander" down here. i would have to say though, that walker texas ranger is actually better when you can´t understand what he is saying.

it´s good

So, this is the 3rd day here in Guatemala. it´s pretty sweet. the flights were fine and everything. My host family is great, it´s a family of 6, 4 kids, 3 in their teens/early 20s and one that is 7. The 7 yr old and I played hangman last night. I don´t talk to them too much, as i can´t speak much spanish, but i watch tv with them while i study my spanish. anyways, i gotta get going, don´t want to be late for dinner(lunch for those city folk). Hi to all, hope all is awesome up at BSU, dalton, minneapolis, and everywere else.

bye!

D to the C

Alright, so, long and awesome day. Pretty sure I got about 2 hours of sleep on Sunday night. Oh well, it was to be expected. flights went well, no problem there. got to dc around 11:30, to the hotel by 12:30. registration was long, but got to talk to a lot of people (REALLY cool people too). erbody loves the title that us agricultural volunteers have as it is "Food Security Facilitator". There's a lot of majesty in that. So we had some meetings, learned some stuff, filled some stuff out, met lots of people who i won't remember their names tomorrow, but luckily we have nametags (kind of bittersweet, nametags are for squares, ha). went out to eat, had some thai. I ate the crap out of a duck, s/he didn't even see it coming. then went to a bar and had some good old american beer with some friends (only a couple mom). The champagne of beers tasted pretty good after the long day (if you're in the know, you're smiling, because it's tasty). Now, it's about 12, gonna hit the hay (the hay will feel about like that duck I ate, and it will be just as delicious) as we have a long day tomorrow. I have THREE pillows on my bed. Alright, check ya later.

Going tomorrow!

Hey. So i leave from the fargo airport tomorrow. Currently, i'm sitting in my hotel room as I am leaving early tomorrow, and this way i don't have to get up quite as early to make the trip to beautiful fargo, which is in the dakota of the north. got to eat at Famous Dave's tonight, best food ever! went and found some coffee at a little coffeshop a block from the hotel. they have all this stuff about being organic and getting their grounds from shade grown and fairly traded coffee beans, then they gave me my coffee in a styrofoam container. I chuckled to myself and i hope you do the same (laugh out loud for all i care). it wasn't easy saying goodbye to ma and pa and josh (hi guys!), but i got through it. I am just ready to get to guatemala and get into all this peace corps stuff. i have a stop at DC for 2 days for some orientation and whatnot. then i go. but, i am going to do a little studying and stuff, and then try to sleep which should be fun. check ya later.

14 days and counting

So, I leave in about 2 weeks for Guatemala to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I'm going to work in their sustainable agriculture program. I'll be doing some hardcore studying the next two weeks. I'm planning to go to the library this week and learn some spanish. i'm behind everyone else i think, they let me in without meeting the minimum requirements, which means i will have to work double, possibly triple hard at my spanish in training (we have training for the first 3 months). I'm hoping to get to bemidji this week, going up on thursday I reckon to see the bemidji folks one last time before departure. then, spend the weekend with friends back in Dalton/Ashby. I also need to get down to the cities to see some people there prior to departure. And, i have to concentrate on getting packed, making sure i have all i need, and that i can fit it in the bags that i'm allowed to bring along with savoring the comforts of the life i currently have (which means watching movies, eating like an idiot, and enjoying a hot shower).