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.