Hello from Guate!
Okay, time for another entertaining and informative blog post yayyy! Things have been really crazy for me over the past few weeks and probably won't stop being crazy for another 3 months or so, so I am pretty pumped/a little nervous for all of that. Since field based training we have basically just been going on field trips to other organizations and having spanish classes. The field trips have been relatively interesting for the most part (some more than others, of course). We have gotten to see more coffee cooperatives than I can count on one hand and have learned lots about importing and exporting (which is quite informative but really won't be helping me much over the next couple years seeing as most of the sites we are going to be placed in are no where near that step in selling their goods). Speaking of sites... we will be finding out our sites in T-Minus 5 days :-o This is very exciting but I am also a little nervous because this will tell my fate for the next two years and that is just a little daunting. After we find out where we are going, we get to meet our counterparts (the person from the community/coop/association that we will be working closely with) and go on a site visit for a week. This site visit will be our first real travel experience all by ourselves (which is ridiculous for me since I can't get down my street in springfield successfully, but also because I will have to speak spanish the entire week with me help in English whatsoever... wish me luck). We will also get to see where we will be living, meet our families, and learn some about the place we will be working. We were told some information about the 10 possible sites that the 8 members of my group were potentially going to but I tried pretty hard to not pay attention since I don't really want a reason to be disappointed (I'm obviously going to kick butt no matter where they send me so it's no big deal). Needless to say, however, we are all on the edge of our seats awaiting this information so wish me luck and pray for me that I go somewhere with extremely patient indigenous people with a warm climate, small population, flat terrain and near some really cool tourist sites... is that asking too much? Seems pretty reasonable to me...
So what I did today was probably the most interesting thing that has happened to me recently... we did an "information interchange" with the other agricultural group (food security) and it was pretty intense to say the least. First, we learned how to flip tires and make tire gardens, which was extremely interesting and I think will absolutely come in handy for me because I intend to have a nice little vegetable garden in my yard (considering the fact that I am going to be a vegetarian for the next two years, which I will explain in the next few sentences... if you have a weak stomach or don't want to know anything about killing and cooking animals then don't continue reading). After that we went to another community and were shown how to kill, clean and prepare a chicken and... drum roll please... a bunny! It was pretty crazy I won't lie (let me also say that I love animals more than most people) but not nearly as bad as I was expecting (parts of it). The rabbit was first and I won't go into too much detail here but it was actually pretty cool to see how the fur is taken off and which parts of the rabbit you can and cannot eat. I will also say that the whole process is very fast and the rabbit doesn't suffer at all so that was nice to know. Overall, I had to shield my eyes a few times but it was definitely a great learning experience (even though I never intend to do that myself... I think I'd starve first). Second was the chicken, which was much easier to watch cause chickens aren't nearly as cute. I will again spare you the juicy details but what I will say is that after the chicken was dead and we looked inside of it, it was really cool to see that it had some eggs in there (probably like 15 or so) that were developing and I learned you are able to still eat. One of the woman who was helping us kept insisting that we watch because we need to know how to do these things if we live in the mountains, to which I responded, "no gracias, solamente las verduras y las frutas por mi" (no thanks, only veggies and fruits for me). It was definitely really cool to learn how to do these things but I am definitely hoping I can stay alive without having to execute anything I saw today... vamos a ver (we'll see!)
Other than that, life at home is the same old and I am still missing the US but adjusting more to life here all the time. I hope everyone is doing great and is having a wonderful weekend! Miss you all!
Adios!
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