After quite the hiatus, I am back! Hope everyone had a lovely Valentine’s Day (if it’s possible, that holiday sucks even more in Guatemala because no one gives you candy or flowers…) Despite the fact that all of you up north are suffering from frigid temperatures, it is starting to get really hot down here and I think I might even have to break down and buy a fan at some point. Aside from the heat and sun, I have actually had a lot going on these last few weeks, which has been a pleasant break from not having a darn thing to do!
Last week was my training groups’ three month reconnect in Antigua and it was a lot of fun! It’s always a good time when my training group gets together (even though we are still somewhat clicky between regions… go east!) But it was nice to see everyone and get to spend time with the people who live on the opposite side of the country. We also got to have lunch with the Ambassador, which was awesome (mainly because they gave us pizza and brownies… I had 5 pieces) but also because we got to ask him tons of questions and he is a really nice guy. I also got to have 4 days of Spanish class with my favorite Spanish teacher and it was really helpful! Other than that, we ate way too much food and spent way to much money (as of yesterday I had 20Q left, which bought me a jug of milk and laundry detergent) but it was worth it. I also finally got to meet some more volunteers (out of the 200+ volunteers in Guatemala, only 19 or so are in the east, so we haven’t gotten to meet too many of the older volunteers). There were a bunch of people there for various meetings (including the one about the lifting of the state of siege in Alta Verapaz, which means that most of the volunteers that were evacuated get to go home, yayyy) so hanging out with them was a good time as well. In order to amuse ourselves further, my training group decided to have an "ugly paca party", which basically means that we each had to find the ugliest/silliest outfit we could at a paca (a salvation army but way more outrageous in most cases). There were some hilarious outfits such as Emily's tourist-chic tshirt-dress, complete with whale spout hair-do or Lexi's 1980's floral dress suit, complete with shoulder pads and side pony tale but I am proud to say that I claimed the prize for most ridiculous in my spandex, one-piece, tube top-pants outfit with the globe on it (it had pockets too). I did a lot of lunges that night to show its elasticity and even ended up breaking part of the spandex (which I didn't think was possible). Needless to say, not many people were trying to talk to me that night but it was well worth it.
After reconnect and Antigua, I headed back to Emily’s site to help out with translating for some doctors from the states. It was a lot of fun to show off my Spanish speaking abilities (I looked real good next to the girl that couldn’t say “me llamo”). I also found out that a group of doctors will be coming to my town sometime in March to do the same thing so I am looking forward to being involved in that as well! My sitemate, Felicia, and I also have another project (one of her many, but my first) on the horizon with starting some community gardens. I am so pumped for this because this is something I wanted to get involved with since training. Yesterday we went out with Felicia’s counterparts and a couple other people from the muni and our friend Jesse to sort through some of the seeds (I snagged some eggplant, chives, peppers, zucchini and onions for my own garden). Also, today is going to be my first English class! I am going to one of the schools in my town to work with a teacher in teaching the students English. My friend Brenda is in the class so hopefully she will help me with the Spanish side of teaching (she has such a knack for understanding my broken Spanish, it‘s pretty incredible).
Other than that, I have a few of my best friends from home coming to visit at the end of March, which I am insanely excited about and also a trip back to the states in April to look forward to. Also, my best friend Amanda and her friend Tara bought their tickets to come visit me in October (I’m so popular) so that is amazing as well! I hope everyone has a lovely rest of the week/weekend and until next time, adios!
