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!