June 24

It’s about time I updated again!  Life in Santa Maria continues to be new and exciting.  The feria, or town fair, is next weekend so all the schools are preparing for the parade and the new central park is going to be opening that weekend as well.  My birthday was really nice- on Wednesday night, I shared tamales and chocolate with my host family and then on Thursday I was invited over to Israel’s house for tamales and chocolate.  I also made a banana-coconut bread concoction in my toaster oven that turned out really good!  They sang me happy birthday and other songs and it was a really nice meal.  It was wonderful not to have to eat alone on my birthday!  Tamales and chocolate is probably my favorite meal so far- the tamales are really good with a piece of meat and sauce inside.  They are usually eaten with fresh bread or crispy tortillas.  The chocolate is SOO good too- when I say chocolate, I mean the blocks that they melt in boiling water and drink.  It’s really rich and creamy if you add a bit of powdered milk- perfect for a cold rainy night.  That day as well I had a 4 hour meeting in the municipality so it was nice to relax for a bit after that.  I was starting to get really stressed out as well, with planning for classes and trying to do more than I have time for, so I had to cut down on my Tz’utujil classes.  It was hard because I know that my teacher really needs the money, but it wasn’t worth being so stressed out all the time.  Now I only have class 2 times a week.  There is a German volunteer in town who works in the preschool, so one day I went with her to work just to see what kind of stuff she does for a little while.  It was so cute!  The kids were absolutely adorable.  They ate breakfast there- beans and tortillas and everyone had beans all over their face.  We helped them brush their teeth afterward and played some games and then I had to leave.  My English classes are starting to get more technical so I have to look for fun ways to teach grammar.  I like our classes a lot though- we have about 4 students who always come to class and so we can joke around a lot and I can personalize the lessons a lot more.  I learn something new about teaching every day!  Sometimes it really stinks being a woman here because sometimes the guys don’t take you seriously.  I’ve been asked out several times by married men with children, and it just makes the work environment uncomfortable.  Fortunately, though, a strong “no” has deterred most of them for the time being.  Just part of being a single gringa in Guatemala!  My site mate Grace just certified three of her schools as “Healthy Schools” or “Escuelas Saludables”, so on Tuesday there was a big celebration for that.  It was so neat!  Each school did a presentation- two of the schools did traditional dances and one school sang 5 songs.  It was really sweet.  I took lots of pictures, so hopefully I will be able to post recent pictures this weekend.  I’m itching to buy a corte and guipil, but they are so expensive!  A little bit less than 1000 quetzales?  So I’m going to have to save for a while.  Other than that, I’ve been pretty busy planning for the taller for teachers that we will have.  Getting approval from the CTA, writing practice lesson plans, invitations, the agenda, lots of things to do!  There was also another clinic at the Puesto de Salud, except this time it was for diabetes.  I helped out there in the morning.  Diabetes is becoming a problem here so they want to be sure to catch any problems early on. 

Today was market day, so I got lots of fresh fruits and veggies!  It has to be my favorite day of the week.  I usually have smoothies on market days too because of all the fruit (watermelon smoothies are my favorite so far!) and now there are sweet potatoes, or camote, in the market so I’m excited about making some kind of bread with those.  I can’t make sweet potato muffins, but I’m going to try and see how it turns out if I just make it all in one pan.  I also got the Mennonite cookbook More with Less for my birthday from mom and dad (thanks so much!!) which is wonderful!  It has simple recipes with simple foods, most of which I can find in the market, so today I’m going to try out a broccoli stem/celery dish.  Most of the recipes don’t call for stuff that you can only find in the supermarket, which is great because it’s a big trip to the nearest one.  I don't know why I'm so obsessed with all the fresh food here, maybe because I survived on pickled okra, frozen veggies, eggs, and grilled cheese last fall in Georgia when I cooked for myself!

Also, Wal-Mart is officially in Guatemla!  It has been here for a while now, under the name of Hiper Pais, but they officially changed the name to Wal-Mart recently.  It’s taking over the world!  They are the closest place I’ve found with peanut butter though, so they are good for that and spices/specialty foods that you can’t find anywhere else.  The Wal-Mart nearest me is in Quetzaltenango, though, so I only go there if I really, really, really, need peanut butter since it’s about 2 hours away!

First two weeks of June

Wednesday, June 1

Washing my socks by hand, I came to the conclusion that dryers do, in fact, eat socks.  I have been here for 5 months (I can’t believe it!) and just recently lost my first sock.  At home, whenever I do a load, I almost always end up with an uneven amount of socks!  It’s hard to manage washing clothes, work, fighting the mold, integrating into my community, exercising, and then having time to spend with my friends!  I’ve been very busy lately, with lots of different things!  I haven’t really been focusing on the environment lately, so I need to do that more, but I helped out at another gynecology clinic on Tuesday and today I taught 6 English classes in one of the schools and then gave a charla about recycling to the women’s group.  One of the ladies suggested that since they are learning to sew on machines, that I teach them how to make reusable bags that they can take to the market so they don’t have to use so many plastic bags.  So that’s my next project- hopefully I can collaborate with the sewing teacher so that they can learn that.  It’s amazing how far a simple greeting in Tz’utujil goes…it helps so much when getting to know people!  They either smile because I’m trying to speak Tz’utujil or they smile because of my pronunciation, and I’m fine with either kind of smile!  Today was really funny- during recess at the school, a youth group from Georgia came to work with the kids.  I had to make a phone call so I was going outside to call when all these gringos came walking up to school.  They stopped and greeted me in English and the first thing that I could think of to say because I was so surprised was “This is weird!”  And it was.  They came to play and read parts of the Bible to the kids and then they left just as quickly as they came. 

Thursday, June 2

One thing that is interesting here is that when you are sick, it’s always because of the cold.  It’s not because of bacteria or germs, but the cold.  For example, yesterday my throat was hurting and I was having trouble talking, and that afternoon I came home and washed some clothes.  My host mom told me I shouldn’t have done that because the cold water was making me sick.  Also she told me I shouldn’t shower while I’m sick because the water might be too cold and make me sicker.  Even though I’m sicker today, I feel a lot better than yesterday!  I was really stressed out yesterday.  And now that I can’t talk, today seems to be the day where everyone wants to come in and have a conversation.  But that’s okay with me…it’s nice when people pop in!  My Spanish has gotten a lot better since I’ve gotten here- I use pronouns a lot more now, and can even use past subjunctive without thinking about it sometimes!  Teaching English and learning Tz’utujil is also helping me with my Spanish because it’s kind of like learning Spanish backwards.

There have been so many times here where I wish I had my camera so bad!  Like today when I was walking to one of the schools, I saw the cutest pig tied to a fence!  It was all furry and cream colored with big brown spots.  Another time I wished I had my camera was when a pick up from the rural communities came by full of men in traje tipica- they were wearing the plaid skirt things with beautiful bright colored shirts and were all smiling so big!  One time it was really misty in the afternoon and you couldn’t really see anything except for sillouhettes of things and in front of me all I could see was the dark figure of a man riding a horse coming out of the mist.  It was so cool.  I felt like I was in a whole different time period! 

Sunday, June 12

So, a lot happened in the past week!  I wrote my first invitations in Spanish to a meeting, presented my ideas about an environmental education program to the three directors of “high school”, and met with my supervisor.  My visit with my supervisor went really well.  He gave me a lot of good ideas, and we met with the directors of secondaria, which is kind of a mix between high school and middle school, and are going to do several workshops with the teachers, beginning in July.  So right now I am working on designing the first workshop, writing formal invites to all the teachers, and getting the school superintendent’s approval. 

I also helped out at another gynecology clinic here in Santa Maria- there are a lot of them right now because the students from the university who are doing their residencies here have to collect lots of data about the number of infections and things like that.  That was the last one though.  A group of pre-med students from the United States came to observe as well, and it was funny to hear them talk.  Most of them were sophomores in college and were talking about finding a husband in Guatemala and living in Guatemala City.  For lunch, I split lengua de vaca (cow tongue!) with Enma, one of the student doctors here.  It was really good actually- I liked it a lot!

English classes are going pretty well- we only have about 4 students, but those 4 students come to almost every class so it’s nice to have a steady attendance rate.  Last week I made cookies with Wendy, who is one of the doctors here.  We also had yucca, which was really yummy!  On Sunday I went over to Israel’s house to just talk to them and he told me a lot about the history of Santa Maria.    It’s really strange because here, in this one small area, they speak Tz’utujil, but we are surrounded by Quiche speaking communities.  Apparently Santa Maria was settled by people who came over from Santiago Atitlan, which is a Tz’utujil speaking town.  We had spaghetti with meat sauce for lunch, and I got to help grind the meat.  I’d never seen a meat grinding machine before but you just push the meat in one side, turn the crank, and it comes out ground the other side! 

This weekend I went to Panajachel for my first salsa dancing class!  I’m trying to take advantage of the fact that I’m in a Central American country and am going to try and learn salsa while I’m here.  It was really fun…I’m preparing for when I see Uncle Charlie the next time.  I also got to visit with almost everyone from our group, which was amazing!! We all went to dinner and it was so good to be all together and catch up on everything.  It was like a cheesy Olive Garden commercial where the family gets together over dinner, except there are no Olive Gardens here.