Some Pictures

Where I live!

I went to Todos Santos, Huehuetenango where they celebrate November 1st with their town fair and horse races.

The people of Todos Santos wear their traditional dress everyday. The men wear red pants and a blue jacket and women wear a blue corte and huipil.

Some of the women from the group Fe y Esperanza that I just started working with.

Middle schoolers show off the bottles they've been filling.

The recycled wall we've been working on.

Update and Request for Help

Things are going well in Cantel! Our bottle inaguration ceremony was a success last Friday, with the mayor pledging support for the project, a women's group that I just started working with coming out and bringing almost 30 filled bottles, and about 40 architecture university students lending their construction expertise. My Peace Corps program director came to visit on Tuesday and it was great to be able to show him our progress and get his advice on what to do in the future.



Besides filling bottles, I've also spent time this week teaching a women's group to make banana bread using a pot on top of their wood-burning stove as an oven, attending middle school graduation, and doing an HIV/AIDS workshop with a group of 24 midwives at the health center. The Peace Corps AIDS workshop is very participatory and a lot of fun. I've done it several times now with groups of middle-schoolers, but it was the first time I've done it with a group of women, the majority of whom couldn't to read or write. It was interesting to see how the dynamics played out a little differently but all of the women seemed to enjoy it and were very excited about recieving their diplomas at the end.



Kate and I are also busy planning a theater camp, 'Adolescentes en Accion', for the month of December. A couple of weeks ago, we dressed in costume to present the idea at four Cantel middle-schools. So far, we have 30 kids signed up and are hoping for about 20 more. Beginning November 30, we are hosting theater games, auditions, and rehearsals on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. Then on December 19, we will perform 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' for the Cantel community. Of course, you are all cordially invited too! :)



I had a great time on speech team in middle school and can personally attest to the success theater has in inspiring self-confidence and public speaking skills. It isn't something taught in schools here, either, so we are hoping that by offering a unique opportunity for middle-schoolers we can help promote these as well as creative expression, leadership and teamwork. We are also throwing in some environmental themes and making sets and props out of recycled materials!



I'm very excited about this project and have my fingers tightly crossed that it will be a success. This is where you come in... we need your support to make camp possible! Without funds for paint, cloth to make costumes, and a few other materials Dorothy won't be able to make it to Oz. Just a few dollars goes a long way in Guatemala and Kate, the kids of Cantel, and I would all be incredibly grateful for any help you can give.



To make a tax-deductable donation, you can write a check made out to 'Friends of Guatemala' with 'Rebecca Allgire-- Cat. II' written on the memo line. Checks can then be mailed to:

Friends of Guatemala
P.O. Box 33018
Washington, D.C. 20033



The 'Friends of Guatemala' fund is run by a former Peace Corps volunteer who now lives in Guatemala. He will then deposit the money in an account that Kate and I can access to buy theater supplies.



Thank you so much and feel free to leave a message or send me an e-mail if you have any questions at all. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!







P.S. Whenever I explain Halloween to people here, I always tell them you have to tell a joke to get your candy-- St. Louis style. I still can't get over that other places don't do that. Take care and enjoy the chocolate!

Under Construction

Construction is underway on our bottle wall! On Wednesday, the school director, an agriculture teacher, and I went to present the project at the Universidad de San Carlos here in Xela. Two sections of architecture students and their professors are going to come and help us out with the more technical aspects of construction. I was nervous about presenting to a lecture hall of students in Spanish but it went really well.

Afterwards, we ran errands for the director and went out for cake and coffee, even though the teacher's class was just hanging out at school not doing anything. I don't think I'll ever get used to the Guatemalan school system where it's no surprise at all if teachers just aren't there for class ....

Yesterday and this morning we've then been working on digging a trench for the wall's foundation and making sure the bottles are especially full with plastic bags. It's great to be able to see visible progress on this project!

My good friend and sitemate Kate, who lives in one of Cantel's surrounding communities, was nice enough to say that I could post a link to her blog on here. She's much better about blogging than I am and has some great pictures of Cantel. Her blog is: www.katalinachronicles.blogspot.com. Thanks, Kate!

Environmental Education Workshops

Last week, our office sponsored workshops on environmental eduacation with Cantel's elementary schools. We had about an 80% participation rate from schools, with 120 teachers representing 18 primary schools. Each day was a little different-- some days were a bit stressful with 40 teachers, some days were small with only 8 or 12, and on the last day a preschool gymnastics competition was going on right next door making it difficult to even think. Overall, though, they were very well-received by the teachers. We had a good time and I think it's a good start. Unfortunately the school year here ends in about two weeks, but when classes begin again in January I'm hoping to get more involved with the elementary schools and do follow-up activities on what we talked about in the workshops.

I've been attacked by people more than a few times who ask me what I'm doing here teaching about the environment in Guatemala when it's really developed countries, and the US in particular, doing the most damage. It's sort of difficult to explain, and in some ways its a fair point, so I was grateful when a teacher asked me instead what differences I saw between the environmental situation in the US and Guatemala. I thought that was an interesting question and made me think about it myself as well.

The way I see it, it's true that the states are doing more damage, and what is needed there are huge advances on how to reduce and recycle trash, cut down on car-usage, etc. However, because waste management doesn't exist in Cantel or in most parts of Guatemala, and because of deforestation of the nearby mountains for firewood and more space for agriculture, you can see the environmental problems more strongly here-- and right now, if we don't teach kids about how to manage their own trash by at-home recycling, compost, etc. and the importance of protecting the trees, rivers, etc., it's only going to get worse here.

I also joined a basketball team last week, but our first game was cancelled because the other team didn't come. Hopefully this week, we'll get to play!

Guatemalan Independence Day

To celebrate its 188 years of independence, Guatemala went all out with school parades, marching band competitions, and kids doing relays with torches. It's been a fun week but I think I've good on all of these things for at least another year now.

On the 14th, one of the middle schools that I'm working at asked me to be a judge for their 'civic altars'. Each of the ten classes was assigned a department (like states) of Guatemala and had to decorate their room to represent their designated region. They then also had to present on the geography, economy, traditional dress, etc. In every single class, they also gave each of us judges typical food from that department. In other words, I was given TEN lunches in one day and since there were only three of us judging, we really did have to try everything. That afternoon I was not feeling so great, but now just thinking about it makes me laugh.

On Tuesday, for Independence Day itself, I went to Xela with my sitemate Kate. Xela is the home of the Central American fair, which people come from all over to see. We decided to brave the crowds and watched at least a couple hours of the parade before we got bored and decided to head to the acutal fairgrounds. We each bought some typical fair food and wandered around marvelling at how many stands selling the exact same things manage to stay in business.

Yesterday my host sisters Maydi and Iris, who are 21 and 23, invited me to go try out the rides at the fair with them-- so I found myself back in Xela again. Luckily it's only about 20 minutes away. We actually had a really good time, even though the cheaper 10Q price (a little more than a dollar) was reflected in my also lessened confidence in the acutal safety standards of the rides. Everyone survived though, with lots of screaming and fun had by all.

Next week, we're starting with workshops for all 220 public elementary school teachers on how to implement environmental education in their schools. I'm nervous but am hoping it's the start of a good working relationship with schools in Cantel.

Visitors!

My family came to visit last week and it was great to show them what my life is like here. We started off with two nights in Antigua, where we climbed Volcán Pacaya, went to a coffee farm and the organic macademia farm, and took all of the tourist pictures possible.

Then it was off to Xela, my favorite and nearby Guatemalan city where we hiked up (in the pouring rain) to a Swiss restaurant with an awesome view of the city, stayed in a nice hotel that used to be a prison, got delicious chocobanano licuados at Doña Pancha's chocolate shop, and went to the Fuentes Georginas-- beautiful hot springs only about 20 minutes from Cantel but with a completely jungle-like feel to them.

My favorite part of the visit was showing them around Cantel. Their visit happened to land during Cantel's town fair, meaning the normally empty central plaza was full of vendors, concerts, and fireworks that I was 98% sure were going seriously hurt someone. My host dad took to calling my dad 'Don Jaime', which just makes me laugh, and it was great to show everyone that I'm not the only freakishly tall person from the States. For my mom's birthday on the 15th, one of my best friends here invited us over for dinner, baked a cake, and her dad played the accordian and sang ¨Las Mañanitas¨, the traditional Mexican birthday song that they use here sometimes too. My little friend Sarita, who's seven, just told me today, ¨I know who your family is! Your brother's really tall and wears a yellow shirt. (This is true, because he only wore Mizzou shirts.) Your mom takes pictures. Your dad wears a big hat. And you're their daughter!¨ I'd say that sums up the Allgire family pretty well.

My parents also brought me a new camera, so I can finally post pictures! The internet is not going too quickly right now, so only two for the time being, but more are soon to come.

My house! I live in the added-on room on the roof. It's all wooden inside making it all the more treehouse-like. My favorite part is the balcony, which looks out over the town square.

Cantel's church, decked out for the fair with streamers. This is right next to my house.

What do you do actually do there?

To be honest, in these first couple of months I've asked this question myself a lot of times. Things are finally starting to come together, though, and I'd say I more or less have four main work areas.

1. Like my program says, my technical title here is a Sustainable Community Tourism Facilitator. We're working on getting funding to build a visitors' center in our communal forest and staging a cleaning campaign to make an interpretive trail in a really pretty area people use right now to throw their trash. Sometimes I do other random things with tourism too-- for example, a group of girls from Xela came to help clean up our hot springs area on Sunday and so I coordinated that.

2. Environmental Education. I still work in one middle school twice a month teaching environmental ed. We're also recieving books for elementary school teachers and workbooks for all elementary students from a Swiss NGO-- 3,000+ students! I presented a plan for implementing this at a meeting of all the school directors on Friday and am going to a a workshop this upcoming Friday to get the books and learn how the NGO wants us to train teachers to use them.

3. Trash management. Our office is working hard to set up recycling and a sanitary landfill in Cantel. My program director at Peace Corps knows more about trash than anyone else I've ever met, so he's helping us out quite a bit. The mayor seems receptive, which is great, and I think more than anything else this would be a big help for Cantel. It's still in the veeeeery beginning stages, though, so we'll see how it goes.

4. I haven't actually started yet, but on Saturday, a youth group that my counterpart is involved with is having its last workshop with middle school kids on citizenship participation. Our idea is to get these kids to form an environmental group. We could do summer-camp type activities, leadership, etc. I'm hopeful about this too and I think it could be a lot of fun.

Other than that, I still spend a lot of time cooking with people, hanging out with my host family, and teaching English to kids and to a guy in town who won a scholarship to Canada but doesn't speak much English. It's crazy to think that I've been in Cantel for almost four months now and am glad to see that work is finally starting to come together.

Comida Chapina

I realized that besides mayo, I haven't really talked about food here in Guatemala. Here is my take on the normal diet, at least in Cantel.

Breakfast-- Eggs or beans. Sometimes soup instead. Always tortillas or tamalitos which are hunks of ground up corn mixed with water and steamed.

Lunch-- The biggest meal of the day. Usually includes rice with some form of meat and sauce. For example, chicken with tomato sauce. Alternatively, it could be some type of soup with meat and veggies. More tortillas and/or tamalitos.

Dinner--Coffee made of toasted corn and some combination of eggs, rice, beans, and even more tortillas/tamalitos. Served with sweet bread.

People of corn is not an exaggeration for Guatemala. In my K'iche' class, I have a whole section of vocab words just related to corn-- from the seeds to the plant to the cob at all different stages of growth. It's interesting.

I've tried a lot of new foods here and also found some favorites.

Some of the wierdest (to me):
-avocado ice cream
-white bread soaked in jello and layered so that it forms a cake-like substance-- it's odd.
-tongue
-raw eggs in fresh squeezed orange juice. I actually couldn't try this one, it seemed too bizarre to me. People here say its good though.


Some of my new favorite foods:
-papaya, mango, or banana licuados, which are like smoothies that either have milk or water, fruit and sugar. Yum!
-enchiladas. Here enchiladas are tostadas topped with ground chicken, beef, beans, or vegetables, sometimes with onions and a little bit of hot sauce. One of my favorite ladies who sells them at night (and gives them to me for free!) lived in St. Louis for a year so we talk about that a lot. She likes toasted ravioli too!
-fresh squeezed orange juice WITHOUT raw eggs.
-coconut ice cream dipped in chocolate and peanuts.

I'm also still enjoying cooking new things too. I made a ¨Peace Corps Oven¨ which consists of a giant pot with an empty tuna can inside. Then you put your baking pan on top of the can and put a lid on the pot. I made Guicoy Bread (basically just like zucchini) to share with my host family the other day and they liked it a lot.

In more general news, I was sick with amoebas last week so I guess the amoebas are still sharing my food too. I'm taking medicine though and feeling much, much better now.

I got invited to a wedding today that's happening in two weeks and am very excited for that! I'm also looking forward to Peace Corps' All Volunteer Conference and Fourth of July Party, a week-long reunion with my training class for more info sessions and Spanish classes at the end of July, and for my family to come visit during Cantel's fair in August.

Congrats to everyone who knew that Guatemala's national instrument is the marimba-- which is sort of a xylophone type thing. They are big fans here. Does anyone know if we have a national instrument in the States? Or does each state have their own? These are the things I wonder about when I have too much time here.

Quinceñeras

I got to go to my neighbor Yadi's Quinceñera yesterday and it was just as good as I had hoped. In most of Latin America, 15 is the biggest birthday for a girl. When she turns 15, it's the birthday that ends her childhood and makes her an adult. Sort of like Sweet Sixteen in the States, but an even bigger deal. Needless to say, after watching several My Super Sweet Sixteen episodes with Quinceñeras I was pretty excited when I got my own fancy invitation that just said "Señorita Rebeca". Sandra, Yadi's mom, told me she was very sorry, but she still didn't really understand my last name.

I spent yesterday morning helping prepare food for the reception. We cut up a LOT of carrots. Instead of having the meal catered, the family hired someone to come direct the cooking and invited lots of friends and family to come over and help prepare everything. We made rice, rolled hamburger meat with jam and cheese inside, and a vegetable salad with cooked carrots, peas, and mayonaise-- which is definitely Guatemala's favorite condiment. No sandwich, salad, hotdog, etc. is complete without being completely covered in it.

At the actual ceremony, Yadi wore a very, very poufy dress and there was a cake with a fountain on top. There was a part of the ceremony where her aunt changed her shoes from ballet flats to some of the rediculously high heels that girls wear here all of the time- even when they're playing basketball or hiking up mountains. She was also presented with her ¨last doll¨ wearing a replica poufy gold dress.

After the ceremony, we ate dinner, cake, and sang ¨Happy Birthday¨in English with a distinctly Guatemalan accent. It was all a lot of fun and I'm really glad that I got to go.

I don't know whether it's made news in the States or not, but the other big thing going on here is the video that Rodrigo Rosenberg made three days before he was assasinated, accusing the president Alvaro Colom of being responsible. It's a pretty crazy story, and I can't help but think about how much it sounds like a Law and Order plot. Today there were big demonstrations in the capital both supporting the president and calling for his resignation. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. This week's trivia question: What is Guatemala's national instrument?

Pros and Cons to life in Guate

I've been in Cantel for about a month and a half now and little by little, I´m discovering the things that I like and don't like about life in Guatemala. Here are some of my favorite and least favorite things

Things I like:

-Market Day on Sundays. It's crazy, with all sorts of tomatoes, bananas, chickens, broccoli, etc. I feel like I'm finally getting bargaining down and I like the organized chaos of it all.

-Learning to cook, like Peace Corps volunteers around the world. Last night I made pita bread which turned out really well. If anyone has any ideas for stovetop recipes that use simple ingredients I would be very greatful.

- Giving random presentations to people in the waiting room at our town health center. In the States, I was never a huge fan of public speaking, but here I'm learning to just go with it. People don't have anything better to do than listen anyway.

-Learning to decorate cakes and practicing English with my friend at my favorite bakery. I'm working on icing roses right now.

Things I like less:

-Missing out on life in the States. I wish I could be there to watch everyone graduate this week. Congrats to you all!!

- Still trying to figure out exactly how this tourism project could go and what I should be doing to help it along.

- THE RAIN. The rainy season here lasts from now until November and it pours just about every afternoon.

Since it's Tuesday, here is a Guatemala Trivia Tuesday question for you. What two condiments are the favorites of all Guatemalans? Let me know what you think and I'll post the answers soon.

Life Lately

After getting some angry phone calls and emails about my lack of posts lately, I thought it was probably time to update my blog. Tim told me to do a Guatemala ¨Trivia Tuesday¨, but seeing as it's Wednesday and I can't think of any particularly interesting bits of trivia, I think that will have to wait until next week. Here are some of the things I have been up to since Semana Santa:

-Going to a two-day trail making workshop at a nearby municipality. The goal for our communal forest is to make an interpretive trail so Orlando and I went to learn all about the specifics of trail-building. We're going back for another three days next week.

-Making three cakes with my host family on May 1, Guatemalan Labor Day. At first, we tried to follow the recipe in "Qué Rico", the Guatemalan Peace Corps cookbook, but it was a bit difficult without any measuring cups or spoons so we just guessed and used different amounts in each cake. We don't have a working oven, so we took all three to a nearby bakery and asked if they would please bake them for us. I was pretty nervous that they weren't going to turn out and my family was going to be very disappointed with me. Luckily, though, every single one came out delicious, proving that you can't go wrong with butter, sugar, eggs, and flour.

- Starting English classes on Saturdays with a group of about 8 kids. So far, we've worked on the alphabet, greetings, my name is, and "I like____".

-Going to a music festival in Xela with a huge group of people from my training class.

-Attending an AIDS workshop that the other Peace Corps volunteer in my town put on for school directors and teachers to learn how to lead one myself.

-Starting environmental ed. at a middle school with presentations on inorganic/organic trash and how to reduce our trash output. I'm really excited about this and am actually going to another school this afternoon.

- Preparing a presentation on domestic violence for a parent meeting, only to go and have the meeting be cancelled because it was a teacher's birthday. Oh, Guatemala.....

Semana Santa

Guatemalans take Holy Week pretty seriously. It started off on Monday when a group of teenagers came into the DAPMA office because they were interested in the environment and want to help in some shape or form. I´d really like to work with them so I hope we can make something happen. While they were here, we got word that they needed help controlling fires in the communal forest. I got to go with the teenagers, Orlando-- my counterpart and the director of the office, and some of the park rangers to help make divides so that the fire wouldn´t spread. It was pretty exciting and I think Smokey the Bear would be proud.

Tuesday was pretty relaxed. My host family has ten kids who range in age from 19 to about 40. Five of them live at our house, but lots more were in town for Semana Santa with their families. The kids all really liked learning English and juggling, so I spent a lot of time doing that all week.

On Wednesday I went with a Catholic youth group to deliver traditional Guatemalan sweet bread to families in need. People here eat a LOT of bread to celebrate Semana Santa. My friend who works with me in the Muni invited me and it was a really good way to meet people. Afterwards we had lunch and watched ¨St. Ralph¨, a Canadian movie dubbed into Spanish.

The week´s real events began on Thursday. People had been telling me since I got here about how exciting things were in our town square. Honestly, I still don´t really understand exactly why these events happened or the Biblical stories behind them, but nonetheless they were interesting to watch. On Thursday was the ¨Running of Judas¨. Two different groups of about 100 guys each (one from the center of town where I live and another from where there used to be a textile factory until it closed last year) dressed up as Jews and competed to see who could catch someone portraying Judas. Pretty much the entire town came out to watch. Interesting, no?

On Friday there was a fight between the Centurians and the Jews. I kept asking people why they were fighting but no one could really give me a good explanation. This made even less sense to me because the Centurians were on horses and the Jews on foot. Essentially, everyone just kind of ran around in the town square while we all watched. Unfortunately my digital camera wasn´t working so I couldn´t take pictures but I have some on a film camera that I borrowed from my host mom.

After the fight, there was a procession all around town. My family, who is Evangelical, told me that I needed to wear something dark colored. I said, okay, that was fine, but then they got really excited and decided I should borrow a traditional blouse and corte to wear to the procession. I got a lot of double-takes from people in the community when they realized the gringa was wearing traje tipica (traditional dress). Different groups take turns carrying floats and made ornate carpets out of colored sawdust for the procession to walk on all around town and eventually wind up in the cemetary. I was going to post pictures, but it looks like my camera battery is dead. I´ll put them up soon, I promise. I walked with the procession from about 5:30-8:00 when I went home for dinner, but the rest of the group continued until 11:00pm. Dedication!

On Saturday I met up with Mark and Kyle, two of my Peace Corps friends from Magdalena, in Xela. It was really good to see them again and great to get to have a McFlurry with Cadbury eggs to celebrate American Easter. When I got back to Cantel, they were burning a doll figure of Judas.... which made me remember that I really am in Guatemala after a day of speaking English and eating McDonald´s.

Sunday I got up early to go to Easter Mass in the cemetary. It was pretty neat and I´d post pictures if I could. I ran into some people from the youth group who asked me to come inflate balloons with them to release on the plaza. I think we blew up close to 400 balloons. Then there was another procession with more decorated carpets, bands, and floats. I got really sunburnt, but it was a good day. After the procession I went to a friend´s house for lunch, and at night went to a dance in the Municipal building to celebrate the end of Semana Santa. I had a really good time trying to learn to dance to Duranguero music-- which is no easy task! Mostly I just laughed at myself and at repeated comments about how I was very possibly the tallest person there.

Today it's back to work where I´m hoping to start making progress on getting things started. Peace Corps told us over and over that the first three months, and the first month in particular, are more about getting to know the community than about getting any real work done-- which is both exciting and frustrating all at the same time.

I promise, I really will post pictures soon. Hope everyone had a very happy Easter!!!!!

Some Swearing-In Pictures

Our entire Healthy Schools and Sustainable Community Tourism group at the ambassador´s house for our swearing-in ceremony.

Me, Crystal, and Sarah waiting for the ceremony to start.

Celebrating finally becoming real PCVs in Antigua.

We´re Official!

It´s hard to believe that training is over. I feel like the time has flown by since I was eating Imo's and mashed potato pizza for the last time and being scared to death about just getting to Guatemala. Now, I'm sitting here at the hostel in Antigua having the same sort of nerves all over again about getting settled in at Cantel.

Yesterday we swore in as official Peace Corps volunteers. There was a ceremony at the US ambassador's house that all of our host families came to. We took the same oath that Joe Biden took at the inauguration, except that we pledged to serve as Peace Corps volunteers instead of VP. Then we listened to some speeches, and ate some tasty snacks, and took a whole lot of pictures.

Then it was back to Magdalena to say goodbye. I'm really going to miss eating chocobananos (frozen bananas covered in chocolate and peanuts) at my favorite ice cream/ chicken store, the views from the park we were working at, Spanish classes with my Magda crew, and of course my host family. My host family says they'll come visit me, though, and I'm sure I'll be back to go the PC training center soon enough.

After a quick stop at the center, I headed to Antigua for the weekend with just about everyone from our training group. So far, it's been a really fun weekend while we try not to think about goodbyes or how we have to make it on our own starting tomorrow. Last night, I went out for Indian food and then dancing with a big group. This afternoon we went on a tour of a Jade factory and took advantage of free internet and tv at our hostel. I even got to watch the Mizzou/UConn basketball game with a friend who went to UConn. We came so close! Tonight we're thinking about sushi, and then tomorrow morning I leave for Cantel.

Hope everyone had a good spring break last week and has a very happy Easter. Dye some eggs for me and eat lots of ham, potato salad, baked beans, and chocolate-- if that's what you do on Easter like my family does.

Wish me luck as I set out on two years of service as a Peace Corps volunteer!

A Few More Pictures

I thought I'd share a few more pictures of my site visit and life in Magdalena.

This is Don Abraham, Don Juan, and Lobo the dog after our 7 hour hike up to the protected area of the forest.

Deforestation is a pretty severe problem in our area.

The pool which is filled by a hot spring that the town is interested in having me work on developing further as a tourist attraction. They want to build a restaurant and develop an interpretive trail in the woods behind the pool.

I went to the city of Xela on my way back to Magdalena. This is the main cathedral.

The central plaza in Xela.

Site Visit

I think this week of visiting Cantel has been full of more highs and lows than any other week since I've been in Guatemala and is probably only a foreshadowing of more to come.

On Monday, everyone's Guatemalan counterparts came to the Peace Corps training Center in Santa Lucia for a day of training together. Counterparts are the people we are most going to work with during our Peace Corps service. Two people came for me-- my actual counterpart, who is the Director of the Department of Protected Areas in Cantel, and one of the men on the Muncipal Council. They left at 4am to get to Santa Lucia by 8 and they both seem great. However, I'm still slightly unclear as to exactly what they want me to do here, seeing as the protected area that they told me they were interested in developing for tourism is approximately a 3 hour hike from the town. Then on Tuesday we all left with our counterparts for a four day visit to our respective towns.

Here are some of the ups and downs of my week:

-Saying goodbye to people from my training group, making me realize how much I'm going to miss everyone when we go our separate ways.
-Meeting a cat who won't eat cat food, but loves tortillas. I don't think you can get any more Guatemalan than that.
-Hiking all morning to see the protected area of the pinabete, a tree very important to Guatemala that is in danger of extinction.
-Learning how to make tortillas. I'm really awful at it, but the family I'm staying with was very encouraging.
-Finally finding a place to live. This was by far the most stressful part of my week.
-Introducing myself to various shop owners, ladies at the market, and kids on the street.
-Sitting around watching women embroider traditional blouses and chatting about life.
-Feeling lonely when everyone starts speaking Quiche. I am definitely going to have to work on this.

I think this is going to be a very interesting two years.

My Site

So today was the day we found out our sites. They made us wait all morning and finally at 2 o'clock they lead us all outside to a giant map they had made of Guatemala. Then we were all blindfolded and lead individually to our sites. When everyone was there, we were allowed to open our eyes and see where we were. And my site is............

Cantel, Quetzaltenango!

It's a 90% Quiche Mayan town very close to the city of Quetzaltenango (Xela for short). I'll be working with the Municipal park in the office of Protected Areas and the Environment. I have an entire packet to read so I'll post more information once I've read that, but for now, if you google "Cantel Quetzaltenango Guatemala" you'll find the town's website and some pictures that make it look really pretty. I'm pretty excited about it all, except for the fact that its climate is just described as "cold". I think I will be investing in some warm clothes very soon.

Pictures!

Here are some long awaited pictures! I'm so excited to finally be able to show you visually a little bit more about what my life is like here in Guatemala.

This is my room.

A group of Peace Corps people hiking Volcan Pacaya.

The view from one of the lookouts at the park we're working with in Magdalena.



Kyle, Erin, and Mark who live in Magdalena with me at our park.

My house! Taken from the terrace upstairs. My room is on the right, right next to the stairs, which lead to where we hang laundry to dry and have a blind dog named Brownie.

This is my Spanish class and Magdalena crew with our first Spanish teacher Mirsa eating banana bread cake for my birthday. We're at my house on the terrace.

The Mayan ceremony our training group went to a couple of weeks ago. My favorite part was when the woman stopped the ceremony to answer her cell phone, which I thought showed the mix of traditional and modern pretty perfectly.

I'm pretty sure this is Volcan de Fuego.... honestly I'm not positive. I took it when we were hiking Pacaya and now can't remember for sure.

Some macademia nuts growing on a tree at the organic farm we went to. Yum.

I hope you like them!

What's been happening lately

It's been a while since I've written so I thought I'd just try and write a quick catch-up of what life has been like here lately.

Last Friday, we took a group of about 45 ten and eleven year olds up to the park we've been working with for a morning of environmental education/ just time to run around in the park. We were actually just planning on hanging out around the entrance because it is a steep hike up to the top, but the teachers were determined that we should make it all the way up to where the lookout points, playground equipment, and picnic shelters are. They even brought a pinata because it was someone's birthday. So, after learning all about why we should protect the forests and not throw our trash there, we broke a pinata and got paper absolutely everywhere. Oh well, a good time was had by all.

This past Saturday I went with a group of about 25 trainees to Monterrico, which is a small town on the Pacific coast. We rented two buses and spent the day enjoying the sun on the beach. The sand there is black which means that it is HOT but it was a lot of fun and a great way to get away for a little while and feel like we were somewhere completely different.

On Monday, the U.S. ambassador came and we got to have pizza for lunch with him and ask questions about the political situation in Guatemala and about U.S./Guatemala relations. He was pretty interesting and pizza was a really nice treat.

This week, my Magdalena crew has been busy working on finishing up the Annual Operating Plan and budget we've been writing for our park and making a promotional brochure and an interpretive brochure that guides visitors through the trails. I am definitely not a graphic designer and got slightly frustrated with making brochures, but I actually think they turned out really well. The mayor and the people we've been working with at the Municipal building seemed to like them, so I would say it was a success.

Now, just a couple more days until I find out where I'll be living for the next two years.... March 11 cannot come quickly enough.

Field Based Training

I just got back yesterday from Field Based Training. FBT is where all 16 ectourism volunteers traveled to visit four different current volunteers at their sites. It was great to see what people are actually doing and get some hands-on practice at some of the things we might be working with.

We left on Sunday for Totonicapan to visit Kate, who works with a park mainly used for environmental education. There we got to stay in some pretty sweet cabins, have campfires every night and help improve some of the trails. We learned all about proper angles, erosion, and making signs. Because their park also focuses on birdwatching tourism, a group of us got up early one morning to go for a bird watching hike. I wasn´t very good at it and mostly just felt like I was playing a giant game of Where´s Waldo, but it was still interesting.

On Tuesday, we spent the morning working with the town´s elementary school on making recycled crafts. I taught second graders how to make flowers out of plastic bottles and chip wrappers. It´s an interesting experience trying to explain to kids who have no idea what recycling is why it´s a good idea to use trash to make crafts. I really liked working at the school and am definitely planning to make environmental ed a focus at my site, wherever it may be.

Wednesday we left Toto to visit Justin, whose park has an incredible view of Lake Atitlan and also has the longest zipline in Guatemala. Atitlan is a beautiful lake surrounded by volcanoes, making it all the more amazing. Even better, we got a special deal to do the zipline for only 20 Quetzales, which is a little less than three dollars. The first time, we all did it normal zipline style, but the second time there was an option to go ¨Superman¨, which means being hooked in by a cable on your back and basically being able to fly through the air. I think I screamed the entire time but it was a lot of fun.

That night, we hosted an ecocamp with a group of highschoolers. They came for about 4 hours where we did some icebreakers, an investigation on trash management, ate tamales, and had a sort-of dance party. During dinner, I played the Cedarledge game of Chinese Numbers which the girls at my table loved. It was great to hang out with them and definitely one of my goals to learn to dance salsa, meringue, etc. while I´m here.

Yesterday we went to see another volunteer who had made several different playgrounds out of recycled materials, mostly tires. He was also involved in constructing more fuel-efficient wood burning stoves, which is a huge need here. These stoves have chimneys so that women cooking and the babies on their backs aren´t breathing in smoke the entire time and also burn less firewood. Respiratory disease and deforestation are both huge problems in Guatemala and so these stoves help with both issues. It´s yet another thing I´d love to get involved with during my time here.

Oh, and I almost forgot on Valentine´s Day (the Saturday before we left) we went to help build a school out of plastic bottles stuffed with plastic bags and chip wrappers. These are stacked between two pieces of chicken wire and then covered with cement for an end product that looks just like a building made out of cement. It was pretty awesome too.

So I think that´s about it. Things are still going well here-- definitely busy-- and I still love hearing from you all. Happy Mardi Gras!

My birthday!

First, I just want to thank everyone for all of your birthday messages and e-mails! I can´t tell you how much they mean to me and how happy I am to hear from all of you. I´ve been really lucky and have had a wonderful birthday. It all started yesterday when my friend Kyle wrote ¨Cumpleañera¨or ¨birthday girl¨with an arrow pointing to me on the dry erase board that we use for Spanish classes and carry to wherever we´re going to have Spanish the next day. It was embarassing but also really sweet to get lots of ¨Feliz Cumpleaños!¨wishes from people in my town.

This morning, I then woke up and my host mom gave me a bunch of really pretty roses for my birthday. I didn´t have much time in the morning because my Spanish class was going to an organic macademia nut farm that´s not too far from us. At the farm, we learned all about the medicinal qualities of macadmias and got to try lots of free samples. My friend Erin and I even got facials with oil from macademia nuts. They promised us that it would take 15 years off of our skin... I´m not so sure about that but it was definitely very relaxing. I bought some chocolate covered nuts to take back to my host family and they are delicious.

We then came back to Magdalena for lunch and my Spanish class came over for birthday cake and coffee. It was a banana bread type cake very, very tasty. It was just my friend Mark´s birthday on Tuesday so instead of Cuerpo de Paz we´ve decided we might have joined the Cuerpo de Pastel (cake in Spanish) instead-- and we´re okay with that!

Then we had a meeting in the Municipal Office about the Annual Operating Plan we´re helping them write for the park. I finally feel like we´re getting somewhere in this project which is a really good feeling. So far, I´d say being 22 is off to a good start.

Fruit and coffee in Guatemala

Just a quick observation that it is very difficult to try and remember all of the names of fruits and vegetables in Spanish when you are also being introduced to about 30 new varieties of squash and tropical fruits that you never even knew existed.

In regards to coffee, Guatemala is very interesting in that it is one of the biggest exporters of coffee but that almost everyone drinks instant. Then they add a LOT of sugar-- and on more than one occasion have told me they thought I was crazy for preferring it black. My host brother looked at me in awe and asked me where I learned to drink it like that. When I told him from my mom, he just shook his head. Coffee is also served almost every night at dinner, around 7:30. I think this is very interesting that it is considered more of a nightime drink than a morning pick-me-up.

Other than that, I learned yesterday that duck, duck, goose also exists here (pato, pato, ganso) and played with some of the kids on my street. We also played some hand clap games, soccer, and what I thought to be a more complicated version of dodgeball. I´m pretty excited to be making Guatemalan friends, even if they are only nine years old. :)

Climbing Pacaya

Okay, so I was all ready to post pictures today. I came with my camera and USB drive so that I could take them off my memory card and save them too, but it turns out that the computer I´m using is too old to have a USB port. This is all very disappointing because today I climbed Pacaya, an active volcano about an hour from Antigua. It was absolutely incredible, but words really just can´t do it justice. I suppose I´ll go ahead and try though.

One of the guys in our training class´s host dad is involved with running a guide service to the volcano. So, he organized it for us and at 7 am a group of about 25 (which is pretty impressive considering there are only 32 in total) met up in Antigua to take a van out to the volcano. The hike is pretty steep, but with lots of incredible views along the way to stop and enjoy. It took about an hour to get to the highest point we were able to go to. We had to stop where we did because the volcano0 errupted just three years ago, and so the rocks higher up are still a bit unstable. We ate a picnic lunch and our guide even showed us how you could start a fire by just poking around a bit in the ground with a stick that had dead leaves on the end. Awesome. We used this opportunity to roast marshmallows and I think it was one of the coolest things I have ever done. For anyone considering visiting, we will definitely have to go!

Yesterday, my group from Magdalena went to Antigua for the afternoon. I´m pretty sure the market there is in the book ¨1,000 Things To Do Before You Die¨, and it really is quite an experience. It is more or less divided into two sections: the tourist section and the Guatemalan section. The tourist section is the artisans´market which is filled with really beautiful woven goods and people using broken English to try and convince you to buy from them. The more Guatemalan section is filled with vegetables, tropical fruits, pirated dvds, and just about anything else you could imagine. It´s much more boisterous, and slightly overwhelming. I guess this split makes sense as you aren´t going to need to buy a woven bag at the same frecuency that you might need to buy oranges.

Bargaining is huge in the market and while it really stressed me out at first, I think I was much better at it by the end. It actually became kind of fun and made me feel very proud and happy when I got a price much cheaper than the first.... which I know is exactly what they want, but oh well.

What else has happenned since the last time I posted? I still have really awkward conversatins with my host family every day. I´ve watched Aladdin and the Little Mermaid in Spanish and gotten laughed at (good-naturedly) by my host mom for watching cartoons. We got to watch the Obama inauguration, which was pretty cool to see from abroad. I learned how to wash clothes by hand, which my host mom chooses to do even though we actually have a washing machine. She doesn´t think it gets them as clean though-- so by hand it is. Jeans are the hardest I´d say. Other than that, I have just been trying my very best to learn Spanish and also getting a little bit clearer idea of what it is exactly that I´ll be doing for the next two years.

Corazon de Agua

On Friday, my group finally got to see Corazon de Agua, the park that we´re working with during training. Basically it is at the top of a mountain and although getting there is difficult, the views from the top are some of the most incredible I have ever seen. From the park´s five ¨miradors¨ or lookouts, you can see Guatemala City, Antigua, five volcanoes, Lake Matitlan, and you can even sort of make out the coast. On Sunday, we went back to the park to try and do a sort of survey with tourists there and also just to take pictures. I promise to post some soon, it´s just a bit difficult with the slow internet connections here.

Today we went to Guatemala City because of it being MLK day and thus a Peace Corps Training Center holiday. We saw the embassy and the hospital we use if we ever have an emergency, but the most exciting part was probably getting to eat lunch out at any number of American chain restaurants. I chose Subway and it was delicious. Guatemala City reminded me a lot of Mexico City. Basically large and sprawling with CRAZY traffic.

On Friday morning, my group also took a quick trip to Antigua which is only about 30 minutes from our town. It´s very true what they say, the number of tourists there is pretty incredible. It´s really pretty though, and I´m excited to go back and actually spend some time there.

Tomorrow we go to the training center and are going to get to watch Obama´s inauguration address. I´m very excited and glad that it works out on a day we can see it.

Alright, I have to go meet my group to work on our project a bit more because we are presenting tomorrow. Hope things go well for everyone starting classes tomorrow!

My first post

Hello everyone! I´m sorry that it´s taken me a while to get this blog started, but hopefully I´ll become a better blogger as time goes on. I´ve been in Guatemala for about a week now and it´s already been full of adventures.

I first went to Washington DC for a very quick staging event to meet the other 31 people who would be in my training class here in Guatemala. Half of our group is working with the Healthy Schools program which works with kids in elementary schools and the other half of our group is working the the Sustainable Community Tourism project, which is my group. Basically the aim of the project is to generate income for communities through tourism while also protecting the environment and educating people about environmental issues.

In D.C. I got to meet up with Angela, one of my best friends from grade school and high school, which made being in Washington and the whole prospect of leaving much less terrifying. I also got to go out for a really good last dinner of pasta and salad in the states with a group of people from my training class.

We then had to check out of the hotel at 1:30 am in order to get to the airport in time. Yep, that´s right, we were only in DC for a little over twelve hours. We flew first to Miami and then to Guatemala City, which is only about a two hour flight.

Once we arrived in Guatemala, we were placed with host families for the first three days in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas, which is where the Peace Corps training Center is located. I was placed with one other trainee with a super nice family who had two of the cutest kids I´ve ever met- Maria Jose who is 8 and Carlitos who is 4. His parents called Carlitos ¨terremoto¨or ¨tornado¨because of how much energy he has and I don´t think there could be a more apt description. His favorite thing to say is ¨Attaque Ninjas!¨. It was great to have such nice people to stay with for our first nights in country.

On Saturday, I moved to Magdalena with the three other people from my Spanish class. Guatemala practices Community Based Training, which means that instead of everyone in our training class staying in the same place and going to the training center everyday we are all split up in different communities. There, we have Spanish classes in each other´s houses and the Community Tourism group works on a project with the local park.

My family in Magdalena is very, very nice too. I have a host mom and dad, a host sister who is 19 and just started her first day of University on Monday, and two brothers who are 22 and 28. They are all wonderful, but I have to say that it is much more difficult to integrate into the family when there aren´t little kids who always want you to play with them.

So far, some of the most interesting things that I´ve done with my host family are go for a run in the mountains on my first day here which was VERY difficult when I was not yet used to the altitude, go to Evangelical church which is very loud and exuberant here in Guatemala, and yesterday I went to ¨una fogata¨which is basically an evangelical prayer service with a bonfire.

I think that´s about it for right now. I love hearing from everyone whether it´s through facebook messages, e-mail, letters, phone calls, or anything else. Even though it´s only been a week I miss you all already and promise to post pictures soon!