The past week

Sorry its been so long since I've posted but I have been out of town for a week. Here's the low down on whats happened so far: (its long)

Last Saturday before we left for our Field Based Training, which I'll get to later, a lot of the volunteers met up to go to Tecpan and visit a ruin site called Iximche. According to the park police we have to pay Q50 if were tourists, but we convinced him that were volunteers that live here so locals only have to pay Q5! This is the general problem with every tourist site, gringos pay more always. Anyway, the ruins were very pretty and the grounds were kept up really nice. We had a picnic lunch there, and just hung out. It was a beautiful day and didn't even rain! After I got back from that I got to go to an art show opening for a Guatemalan Artist at La Casa de Santo Domingo, which I had talked about earlier and is probably one of the most beautiful places I've seen. There are some pictures uploaded on my webshots of it at night and the reception. It was beautiful, the artist had died and his whole family was there. I left the poster at home so I don't remember his name, but he did very progressive impressionistic work for the early 20th century that he worked in. The colors were amazing, as they tend to be in Guatemalan art and I was really impressed with the show.

The next day we left for FBT, which is were all the people in my training program (Municipal Development) go to visit volunteers in their sites and learn about how they live and what their working on. This really helped me realize the challenges I'm going to face and what I'm actually going to be doing, which is still slightly vague and I want to talk more about that in another post. We visited many places including: Huehuetenango, Malacatancito, Chaintla, San Sebastian, La Democracia, San Antonio Huista, San Carlos Sija, and Xela. Mostly we talked to the planning office or womens office in each town with the volunteer.

On Wednesday we actually gave a charla (or training presentation) to a group of women in San Sebastian about Leadership because women here are very supressed and generally don't think they can be leaders or don't know how. The charla went well, but the women didn't speak spanish which was super difficult. Instead they spoke Mum, which is one of the 22 indigenious languages here in Guatemala. So we had to speak very clearly, simply, and slowly so that the ones that spoke both could then translate for the rest of the women. It was each town paired with a small group of about 6 women which frequently just went off speaking mum to each other so that we couldn't understand them. Frustrating, but a reality of what we will be dealing with because many of the aldeas (small parimeter communities) only speak in an indigenious language and many don't read or write, so our presentations have to be very hands on and oral. Aside from all the work, on Friday we excitedly got to watch the debates at a restaurant in Xela (an awesome city in Queztaltenango) with the Democrats Abroad group formed there. Afterwards we went salsa dancing for my Birthday. I really had a great time, it was a lot of fun and our whole group gets along really well. There are pictures of this on webshots as well.

My birthday was spent mostly in the car driving back, with bad reception and a headache, but thank you to everyone who tried to call and wish me happy birthday! That night I was more than happy to have a calm night at home and get some well needed sleep in a bed that wasn't hard/lumpy/or right next to a highway.

Sunday was great though because although we had work to do in the morning, volunteers and friends came over to the house in the afternoon for a small collaborative bday dinner and pinata bashing. It was Octavio's bday on Sunday and mine on Saturday so all his friends were there too, we watched Superbad (the only movie that I brought), made a chocolate strawberry cake, fought with a giant Elmo pinata, and had a muy ricco sena (dinner). Quinn, Lorba, Marisha, David, Johnny, and Nicole all came and although they had to leave by 6:30 because they all have curfews at our very strict houses, it was great to celebrate with them. My host niece got me a beautiful makeup bag that says Guatemala on it, and I got in the mail today the all the nail polish/tools from my mom to counter my semi-rustic living here.

Today is Monday and I'm in the Training Center as we are most mondays. This next week is going to be pretty low key for me since I only have Spanish classes, but most other people are going to live and visit with other volunteers aroudn the country this week but my language level is too low. But its good because I do need the extra help and hopefully now I'll have time to write about all the other things you want to know about like my job, and the government here, and maybe some history of Guatemala, and lots more.

Pics at: http://community.webshots.com/album/567512119xwaNDB

Peace and Love,

Robin