We are going to Quiché!

This morning I traveled to Dueñas to meet up with Sarah's group to receive our site assignments. Basilio, our Program Director, and Anna Isobel, the assitant for the program, arrived around 8:30 and handed us all envelopes wrapped in newsprint (they were all adorned with little bows as well). When we first learned that we were going to Quiché we were both a bit disappointed because our first experience with the Departmento was a little negative -- our field-based training took place in the aldeas (rural communities outside of a pueblo) around Santa Cruz el Quiché, the capital of Quiché . Santa Cruz takes the cake in terms of poor planning, nasty smells, and overall dirtiness for a city. Luckily we're around two hours away from the place in a little town. We have two rural health técnicos to work with and there are many aldeas around our pueblo so we should have a lot to do over the next two years. We are also the first volunteers to be in this site so I'm interested to see the community's reaction to our arrival. We will know later next week when we visit our site! I'll make sure to post an update after that happens to let everyone know how it goes.

This past week has been a trial in patience for both Sarah and I and the rest of the training group. Everyone seems to be at the end of their rope in terms of their families, class, and training - i.e. there is no control over what we are eating, when we have privacy and when we don't, what we can/can't do during the day and night, constant Spanish classes, etc. I'm not complaining at all but I do think training is just a couple of weeks too long. We're all itching for freedom and the independence to cook what we want, rest when we want, sleep when we want, etc. Two months is a long time, and it's even longer when you look ahead and realize you have three weeks to go. Don't get me wrong: I love it here, especially my family (I will post pictures in a week or two) but I wouldn't complain if I never saw white bread again. Anyways, enough of my catharsis.

I hope everyone that reads this has a great week!

(¡Yo espero que todo estén leendo esta tengan una buena semana!)

Week 7 is over!

We are done with charlas! Alleluia! These past two weeks were ridiculously hard, probably the hardest weeks since we've been here. We had to plan and give two charlas about HIV/AIDS to some people in the health center and the school and plan and give a taller (workshop) about how to give a charla to some women who wanted to become health promoters. During this past week I had to travel down to Dueñas after my 4-5 hour spanish class to work on my charla. The trip is two hours both ways so by the end of the day Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I was exhausted. Ashlee and Jane both had to travel to Pastores and San Luis (respectively), small communities on the way to Antigua, for their Taller for promoters. Needless to say we are all exhausted and ready to receive our site assignments this coming Wednesday. For that, I'll be going down to Dueñas at around 7 in the morning to meet with their group and receive a packet that details our site. Then, the week after, we are going to travel to our site and try to find a place to live, meet our health promoters, and start recording information and materials needed for the next two years.

To be honest, I feel that this stressful and incredibly hard process has prepared me for the coming two years. I can't believe I've given four charlas in a different language! This past week didn't even feel real we were all so busy. I can't wait until we can get to our site and do absolutely nothing for a week. And have freedom. And be together. Heh.

Thanks for all of the support in the past two weeks! I think today is the first day when I thought, "Okay, I can do this...".

San Miguel Dueñas

Welcome to San Miguel Dueñas. Hope you all enjoy the lovely volcanos. The active one is called Fuego and the olther one is Acatenango. I don't have a good pic of Agua yet, but it will show itself well one day.
The courtyard is of my house and to the left is my room. Straight ahead is a pila or the giant sink that is traditionally used to wash clothes and other stuff.

Finally, that is the church is in my town plaza and one of the camionetas, Esmeralda, is passing it. If there had not been a ton of clouds, you could have seen the volcano Agua behind the church.

Hope you all enjoyed the quick tour. Sorry this is so short but Mat and I have a lot of work this week preparing our HIV/AIDS charlas.

Field-Based Training está terminado!

(está terminado - is finished) Hey everyone! We've returned from FBT in the department of Quiche without injury or illness and had a great time! Quiche is north of where I live (Parramos, Chimaltenango) and is ridiculously indigineous. The primary language is Quiche, one of twenty-six varities of Mayan languages spoken here. Sarah and I worked on two separate projects with two different groups of people (we pulled names from a hat at the beginning of the week to determine the teams). We were all able to finish our projects successfully and it feels really great to be able to help out local indigineous communities and schools the way we did. The really neat part was that we did it with the help of the local communities, not for the local communities. The kids (los niños) came out and dug with us, formed bucket lines of cement with us, and the teachers came out and mixed cement and helped out when they could. Also, every day we had refraccion, which is a snack - usually of atol, a delicious maiz (corn) and leche (milk) drink. Don't ask me how it's made because I have no idea, haha.

Our group made two rain catchement systems for a relatively large school. One deposit is for the kitchen and the other is for the pila (a type of sink) next to the latrines so they can wash their hands or dishes without having to use this chorro (tap) that came straight out of the ground as a pipe. We made a bunch of other little improvements, like a concrete slab and ramp next to the latrines, planted saplings around areas where the dirt might erode in front of the school, poured gravel underneath the exposed lamina (corrugated metal) roof so it doesn't become lodo (mud).

I'll let sarah fill you in on her project when she gets a chance to post. What I do know is that she has buns of steel from carrying concrete blocks up a hill. They made a two-toilet latrine and created an efficient wood-burning stove for another school in the area. See the pictures for more details!

Now, for the pictures... (click each image to open a larger version. In Firefox, hold Ctrl and Click to open them in a new tab)

Team FancyPants: (left to right) Taylor, a current PCV that is about to finish up his two years, Christin, Ashlee, Sarah, Dan, and their albiñil (mason) whose name escapes me right now. The team name comes from Ashlee's fancy pants.Los niños carrying cement blocks for Sarah's team.
The albiñil showing off Team FancyPants colors on his sombrero. He is sitting on their under-construction latrine.
Another shot of the latrine.
Here's a view of the landscape from Sarah's site.

Zach, Jim, and some teachers helping with the big water catchement setup.
A view from our site. The guy with the hat is Lynn, the FBT training director.


Team FancyPants completes their latrine (the blue thing is a pila)

Sarah and her team with their finished stove!This is what it looked like the majority of the time. There was an insane amount of rain in Guatemala this past week.

Sorry there aren't more pictures but the internet is being stupid and I'm already up to 10Q. Have a great week! I'll try to write more after this coming week.