People showed up to my english class today!!!! That was really, really good since I've been having kind of a rough time lately. I was sick to my stomach for the first time since I've been here, which was HORRIBLE. Hopefully I'm getting better though, although I haven't tried eating anything besides bread and bananas yet. I also had a bad day at work on Monday which just kind of pushed me over the edge, but now I'm doing much better! That day motivated me to take more action and more initiative. So today I worked really hard to finish researching about environmental education programs and have decided instead of waiting for the director's meeting, which I don't know when it is, I'm just going to go to different schools and present my ideas and introduce myself and research the school system. Today I also made up questions to ask each school to get a feel for how the schools work. Hopefully I'll get to go out on Friday because tomorrow and Thursday I am helping out at the gynecology clinic again. But first, Mother's Day.
So, El Dia de Las Madres was on Tuesday, the 10th. I woke up at 4 a.m. on Tuesday to what I thought was a gunshot. Now I don't want to scare anyone, because I don't think it happens in my town, but lynching still exists in Guatemala. Sometimes in the pueblos there are no police or people don't trust the police so they take justice into their own hands and form mobs and terrible things are done. So I thought that was what was going on, except the mob had guns. But then I started noticing music in the street and there were firecrackers, so my panic settled down and I was just confused after that. It turned out to be a bunch of kids in the street celebrating mother's day by waking everyone up and playing music. After that hullaballoo, there were luncheons at schools and celebrations at schools for mother's day. That night I went with students from the school I've taught at, La Salle, to serenade mom's around the town. The music students led the whole school in a song on the doorsteps of different mothers. It was really sweet! They sang this song: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpEmdThN0Mg). On Thursday the municipality held an event for all the mom's in town. Many women came, over 200, lots of them bringing their children with them. It was a nice ceremony with speeches in Tz'utujil and Spanish by the mayor, the head of the oficina de la mujer, and a woman from and NGO that works with empowerment. I had to go around and pin a note on each of their shirts, which was kind of awkward, but it helped me get to know a lot more women. The note was from the municipality thanking the mom's for all their support and helping to develop the town and everything they do for their families. Then afterwards, we served cake and coffee to all of them, which was chaos. I was at the cake table, helping put the cake on plates, but then some women got out of their seats cause they needed to go home and they started crowding the table. Icing was everywhere and afterwards the gym was a mess! But it was really fun to see the women get recognized for all the things they do because they work so hard!
Then I got sick on Friday and now I am way behind on cleaning my house, laundry, knitting, and all my other projects! I did get to wash my underwear today finally though (thank goodness!). Today I also met a guy in a tienda who speaks really good English and wants to practice so we are going to do a language exchange, I hope. His wife invited me over for dinner on Thursday, so yay for making friends! Poco a poco (little by little) is my motto for my Peace Corps service so far. Also one quote that I have on my wall from the book The Tao of Pooh is "A thousand mile journey starts with one step" which pretty sums up the attitude I have needed to take so far.
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