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.....