Comadrona Drama (Also, THREE WEEKS DOWN)

Hello! This is Mat checking in.... I finally got some time to myself today and I'll get some tomorrow, too! Puchica! Update: This week was crazy. In my town, we have a Puesto de Salud that doesn't have any Health Promoters - the people that give the charlas to the communities. Therefore, we have to work with comadronas, and they are essentially unpaid midwives. They work very hard and don't have much time for what we are doing right now. Many of them work and live in the rural aldeas (communities) and it is very hard for them to make it to our meetings on time or even at all because of other demands placed on them.

So, we had a charla planned at the school at 9:00 AM on Friday. The comadrona was a no-show so we had to get the doctor to do it. We had another one planned at 2:00 and that fell through as the comadrona dipped as soon as she showed up, so our technical director ended up giving a charla to the students of the school in Parramos. It was a simple and effective demonstration of how to make a portable liquid soap dispenser. Pretty nifty, actually. Anyways, he told us that our town is the 20% that doesn't work the way it should. PLAN B! We need to talk to our rural health technician first, but we're planning on giving a group charla to the teachers in the school about a topic they want. We want to work solely with the teachers because they seem to want to learn and be given charlas. I am incredibly relieved to be giving a group charla given my current language skills. However, it does mean that this week is going to be incredibly stressful. So send me some positive energy or prayer or whatever you can to make me not stress out.

In other news, it's our anniversary on Monday so I'll be going to Sarah's town after language classes to hang out and spend some time celebrating our nontraditional wedding, haha. Sarah got food poisoning on Tuesday-Wednesday night, the day before she was supposed to give her charla. She is fine now and that is why I can say it was almost hilariously ironic because the night before (the freaking night before!) she told me she would be the one with the iron stomach who could eat the street food and never get sick. Oh, the delicious (and then not-so-delicious) irony. To be honest my stomach is bugging me a bit right now so I should hold my tongue, just in case...

My family is great and loves to help me talk, especially Don Andres. I'm still just squeaking by - maybe in a year I'll actually be able to understand what everyone is saying.... My time is almost up at the internet cafe. Farewell and so long!