Birthday :)

Hi Everyone!

Okay, I'm finally writing another update... My first week in Sumpango is now over and it's been full of ups and downs. I'll start by telling a pretty funny story about my first week in Guatemala (that really wasn't funny at all when it was happening but now is hilarious). So for the first week in country I was taking 2 anti malaria pills every day (500mg) when we were only supposed to be taking 2 per week... I finally figured this out after taking 7 times the prescribed dosage and only after I was literally almost throwing up from the dizziness. I looked in the mirror on Tuesday morning of this week and my pupils were so small I knew something was wrong so I went to the peace corps nurse and realized my mistake and felt like the biggest dummy of life! She basically told me that I was going to be fine because this medicine is just an antibiotic but that no human being should have that amount of antibiotic in their body and she was not surprised I was feeling so ill... I am sooo smart! The craziest part of me taking so many more than I was supposed is that they tell you before you take those pills that they tend to give people really crazy/weird dreams and so if that happens to you then you should take them one at a time (ex. one on monday night and the next on tuesday night or in the morning). For this very reason I was taking them in the mornings so they wouldn't mess with my sleep but instead they were completely messing my head up all day...  All of this was actually a huge relief for me because I had been thinking all week that I was having dizzy spells related to stress/anxiety and wasn't feeling like myself at all which really freaked me out but really it was just because I was overdosing on anti malaria meds. So that is my duh story for the week haha

The rest of this week has been crazy with spanish and technical classes, which basically take up 8 hours a day... it's intense. We usually have spanish in the mornings and then go to technical training, which is specific to the project we have to do in our communities for agricultural marketing, and then back to spanish. The tech trainings are pretty fun cause we get to see more of the trainees and speak english and that's a huge relief after sooo much spanish! It's been raining so much here (it's rainy season till October or November) so walking everywhere has been pretty annoying but I think I'm getting used to it. Other than that, nothing too exciting has really happened to me this week.

Today was my birthday and it was really awesome! I was pretty sad about not being home for the day but my friends here completely made up for it. We had spanish class this morning which was actually fun because we got to play pictionary and a couple other fun games to help with our vocabulary and after that I just said goodbye to everyone and went home to my familia. My padre and my hermanos and I went to the mall to pick up some glasses for my padre, which I thought was a little strange but they told me we were going to the movies after so I just followed along. Then we went back to get my madre and she told me to go into the rec room to grab something and all of my friends were in there with the room full of balloons, a cake, chips and dip and the whole 9 yards... it was so awesome! My hermanos even decorated the balloons saying "happy birthday kristen" in a caligraphy font they learned in school! We all kinda just hung out after that and talked and laughed so it was really nice. Unfortunately, some of my friends with the other towns couldn't make it to the party cause the peace corps won't let us leave our towns for the first few weeks but they tried really hard to make it and that is all that counts!

Overall, it was an awesome birthday, especially with all the facebook love from home :) Thank you sooo much everyone for your birthday wishes and I miss you all dearly! Please keep those emails coming, they get me through the day! Love you all <3