HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

I wish we could share the day with family! Have a great thanksgiving everyone.
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Here is a delicious black bean hummus dish Sarah and I made. Thanks for the tahini Joanne.(those are real tortilla chips)

Firework over our street. These went off until about 5 in the morning. We were going to stay to see the toritos (see below picture post, metal death cages with fireworks attached) but drunk guys kept trying to grab me and we left early because it was annoying. So no pictures of the toritos.

A moving dance squad called a Convite - bunch of ladies dressed up in amazon costumes dancing around. The shot is from our roof - our family provided them with drinks (yes drinks the feria is 24-nonstop drinking for some) and snacks and they came over afterwards from 8-11 and danced the night away.

that's all for now! look for more pictures after thanksgiving - love you all, take care and safe travels

Super sweet!

Even though Mat just sent out an update, I thought I would expand on it. Yes, we have found a community that is interested in working with us. We had just about given up on having work until January, when our cowboy of a docter came through for us! Yeah baby! The community is about 5 miles away and yes we will be walking it. We had an initial meeting with the commuunity last Sunday to explain the project. Instead of waiting to find out if they wanted to work with us, we took a vote on the spot and bam! we had work. We returned the very next day to start on the encuestas (surveys) of the homes. It is a good way to meet people in a more personal way, plus we needed to know the condition of the homes, what kinds of structures they do or do not have, etc. The community has been promised a lot in the past and therefore are still weary of us: Not everyone is convinced that we will deliver or even return again. Due to all of that, we were only allowed to take surveys of a third of the homes. After a while I am sure they will let us finish with the surveys because in order to get money for projects we need to use the data collected from them and only the people that participated in the surveys will be able to receive the works.

So what did we find out about the community: they need everything. Nobody in the whole community has a latrine or efficient wood burning stove and most could use cement floors. What would benefit the community most/what will they want most? Hard to say at this point. Everyone goes to the bathroom in "aire libre"or as I like to say, pop a squat any old place (which PCVs are not above doing at all-it is an integral part of our lives here, especially while working in the country). But could latrines improve their health? Probably. I am kind of thinking the community will want the more efficient stoves. Respiratory infections are the biggest problem here. Plus, this community does not have any trees left on the hills and must travel to another community to get the firewood (which is hell-a expensive) to use on either their open fires or comals (which are used for tortilla making). Another fun fact that makes me think they will want the stoves is that it is a community of women. Of the 30 families, 20 of them have the fathers in the states (New Jersey to be exact).

Obviously, we will be dialouging more with the people and listed above are nothing but my tentative guesses. Plus we really will not be building for a while and will focus on education. When we do build, it will be all about collaboration. We will be working with and training the leaders of the COCODE (or the people that will be able to solitic money for grants) on how to write grants and where to look for them. And while we work with them on the grant that we hope to initiate, it will be the COCODE that actually writes it. As I am pretty weary of "development" from outsiders, our program really seems to try to empower the actual communities. The whole community will help get the materials and be a part of the labor-including the women. Everyone will need to know how to use and maintain the works! This will all be coupled with education too! And this way we can avoid having latrines turned into bodegas or tiendas.

Mat and I are also starting to collaborate on an education project with one of our counterparts. We want to train all of the COCODES from every aldea in our muni on how to have water that is safe for drinking. We may also be doing the training outselves in every community! That is almost 70-talk about having work! Everyone has running water in this municipality but people drink it right from the chorro (faucet) and it is sooo dirty! Sometimes it is slightly chocolate colored and one day we even had little worms crawling up out of our bathroom sink! Just imagine...

Right now is festival time so we should have some great pictures soon. And we will be avoid thinking about missing you all by spending Thanksgiving at the beautiful Lago Atitlán. We hope to see pictures of the fabulous day from you all! Miss and love you all!

Hogar Dulce Hogar (Home Sweet Home)

Virtual Tour of our House!

Here is the front door/entryway area

Here is the carpark and steps to the roof where we hang our clothes. The pila is under that staircase.

This is the over-sized sink/laundry "machine" (the pila)

As you can see, the left is for scrubbing clothes (into tatters), the middle functions as the water storage part, and the right for washing dishes. As it is under the staircase, it doesn't really function well for tall people.

View from the front door looking into the living room. Beyond that is the kitchen.

Showing our side of the kitchen. The fridge, stove, and all of those sauces and stuff are ours. Yay for stuff!

Their side of the kitchen. They just installed that sink (lavamanos - translates literally to "washeshands"). The container of gas is how it is used here. Can't imagine the kind of disasters there would be if the gas ran through the ground with all of the earthquakes and the infastructure here hahah.

View from the back door looking towards the front. To the right is our room.

Yes, we still live out of suitcases

Guide to Bucketbathing 101

Looking out the backdoor into our super-sweet backyard. The garden includes: Papaya, Mango, some crazy cool lime-orange hybrid, Lemongrass, guayabas, bananas, and probably other things which don't know yet. One reason not to move, heh.

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Feria de San Andrés Sajcabajá 2008

Every year there is a super long feria to celebrate something ... not really sure yet. We were talking with a nurse at the health center and he was saying he doesn't really like them because of the ridiculous amounts of drinking and fighting. What started as a religious tradition has now become a reason to get together and party hard. And by party hard I mean cockfighting and rodeos. Most likely while drunk, heh.

The pretty good band.

Some crazy Terry Gilliam-type costume they were dancing around in. It was mid-80s today, don't know how they did it.

Some cool costumes called "Toritos", which means "little bulls". You can see the little bull heads on the costumes. Tonight they are going to launch fireworks while dancing around IN the costumes. Gotta love it! (Don't worry, I'll bring my camera)

That's all for now folks! Hope you enjoyed the pictures of our life. More updates to come!

Back home!

Hola todos y todas,

We are back in home and relieved to be. Reconnect was filled with drama. I suppose I will start at the beginning. Firstly, Mat and I went to visit our friend, Ellen, who lives in the dept. of Chimaltenango. She wasn’t feeling well though as she had Giardia for the second time. Hooray for yellow, frothy diarrhea and rotten -egg smelling farts! We had planned on helping her out with some charlas and home visits (not all counterparts are worthless) but her stomach kept her at home most of the time. She did end up feeling better although too late for her birthday which was celebrated with a vegan/gluten-free/ peanut-free dinner and desert (Ellen lives around a bunch of gringas who all have some sort of dietary restriction). It was delicious though!

On to Antigua! Mat and I arrived the day before Halloween to spend some time hanging out and relaxing by ourselves. We had dinner, got hair cuts, and drank dark beer (well by Guatemalan standards). Halloween was pretty fun as you all can see from the pictures posted earlier. Let us fast forward to Monday where the joy of sharing our feelings could begin. Mat and I were not really looking forward to hearing how much work everyone was doing and having to feel crappy about not being able to do as much. And while there was a decent amount of touchy-feely sharing time, we learned that indeed, we are not alone in our frustrations. It was validating to know that we are all struggling and feeling somewhat insecure about being here/our jobs/what have you.

And now let me contar (recount) the drama from the beginning. One of the sessions from reconnect was face time with the PC Admin. Several PCVs had meetings with the country director, Martha, for being out of their sites for the night without contacting the Security Advisor (who is in charge of where we are at any given moment in case of emergencies here or at home). You can now be sent home for being out-of-site without letting him know, which has always been the policy but was not enforced...until now. The PC is really trying to discourage travel. While it isn't too dangerous, most volunteers get robbed or what have you do so usually when they leave their sites. However, it is very frustrating to be watched over, if you all feel me. So we had a session with the Admin to clarify the rules, dispell myths of past enforcement, and improve communication between PCVs and Staff. The PC Staff was very adamant about the out-of-site policy: call or be sent home.

Reconnect is over and Mat and I have Spanish for four days (and good news, we are both in the level of Advanced-low, only 3 more to go to Superior). During this time, a kid from our program got caught being out-of-site without calling! The worst part is, he got caught not calling out-of-site in Antigua! There is PC Staff all over the city as the PC office is 20 minutes away by camioneta. Of all the places to not call! They gave him the option to leave on his own or be separated administratively (yo’ ass is fired!). Shit. He had 3 days to get his stuff together and get on the plane. It really was a crazy shame because, since he was fluent, he was working and already accomplishing a lot. But he will be back in December; his girlfriend is here and they are already serious, plus he thinks that he has found a job in Xela (damn those fluents!). I can not imagine having to tell your parents though. Ouch! Hey, at least he will be able to drive here now.

Now everyone should have a crystal clear picture of the out-of-site policy and the PC Staff's attitude toward us PCVs: you will be sent home if caught. Tread lightly compañeros.

Tanto drama. Mat and I are happy to be back. There will be more frequent updates about our work since there is promise of some appearing in the near future. Plus, November is the month of our town’s feria (festival), which runs through the end of the month and should provide us with good stories and photos. We have heard that there is a rodeo AND cock fighting. While we may not be watching too much of either, there should be other great stuff to see and do. Miss you and love you all!

Pictures!

Hey everyone. We're currently enjoying our week-long stay in Antigua, Guatemala. Reconnect has been good. Less of that touchy-feely crap and more of technical how to solve problems stuff. We've had Spanish lessons for two days now... phew! It's hard to get in to learn mode again. It's been good, we've just been sobreviviendo (surviving) and trying not to get on each other's nerves - not me and sarah but all of the other volunteers. We are crammed into a hostel right now and running about 14 deep. The place comfortably fits 12 so needless to say it's a bit cramped. We'll be here until next Monday and then it's back off to our site in beautiful Quiche!
I'm going to link to a map of where we are to give you all a good idea of what travel is like here. Now that the blog is private I can open up and provide a lot more juicy details than before!

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Halloween 2008 Antigua Guatemala

We were tourists

Another married couple dude - Jim - who went as the crow (shaved off his face rat today so don't worry about that horrible thing in the picture)

Some of our friends. L-R Thea, Sarah (who is not touching herself but stroking her fanny pack), Amanda, Ashley, and Emily (another married)

Ashley and Casey

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Random Stuff!

Sarah talking to her Mom. I was bored.

A weird procession put on by a school that does something like this every year. 40 or so people held the float on their shoulders and did this weird synchronized swaying things to beating drums. It was pretty cool.

Cool foto from our hotel roof in Antigua of the volcanoes. The one on the left is Fuego and the one on the right (two humps) is Acatenango. Fuego is still active! From time to time you can see it glowing at night and it shoots off big mushroom clouds every couple of days.