Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Tuesday

I am soooo excited to be getting out of here for Thanksgiving. I can´t wait to see my friends and each a bunch of turkey and sit by a beautiful lake for a couple days reading a book and chatting it up about all our different experiences. Last night my neighbor and I bonded by painting our nails, watching some aweful scary movie with zombies, and then doing the dance excercise DVD my grandmae sent me. Overall a pretty good night, and this morning I picked up my laundry and hung it up with Amarillo. Work today has been pretty boring, but the good thing is that I went and got the wood order for my shelves and tables and took it to the carpenter so at least now that is underway. The days go by slowly but overall the time has flown, I can´t believe it´s already Thanksgiving since I graduated and all. The summer flew by, probably because it was so great. I´m now reading a new book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (I think that´s the title), recommended by a CB book club and Oprah. The mute in it interests me the most. Hope everyones thanksgiving is good!
Peace, Love,
Robin

Monday, November 24, 2008



Today is the International Day of No Violence Against Women, so this morning we had an activity at a church salon to talk about womens violence and there were performances from the Casa de Cultura in San Juan Hermita. Each time you do any kind of group meeting or activity it is required that you bring food and refreshment for the entire group, and if it lasts until lunch you have to bring that too. It really makes for an expensive meeting, but on the other hand it´s the only way so many people would ever show up. This has been instilled in them from the NGOs and govt. programs that if you just sit through this meeting or sign up for this program and go through the motions that you´ll get free stuff. It is hard to say how many the information really gets through to. I think it´s great to teach women about independence and citizen participation and AIDS awareness but at the same time I wonder, do they listen, I don´t know that I would. I do think that progress is being made, and that every time a woman steps up to be a leader in the community it affects more than we can quantify, and that I can be an example and resource for this change as well. First though we need to work on being able to sign your own name which many of these women can´t do...


Also today I met an orphan girl, that was probably the sweetest little girl you´ve ever seen and her and her sister are now being raised by one of the very leaders that these programs have aided. Her name is Amelia.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Grateful for my coffee maker.

I now have the great pleasure of being robbed in Honduras as well, maybe this is some sort of initiation, or maybe that purse was just super bad luck, or most likely I am just not as aware and careful as I need to be. At least this time they didn´t really get much, my credit cards which I cancelled, about $40, and the camera I bought in Antigua which was cheap, plastic, and the screen was completely broken because I dropped it last week. So from now on maybe I´ll just go with disposable cameras, and only carry with me what I can stuff down my underwear, haha, no seriously.
Work is going slow as always, but I´m hosting a birthday fiesta at my house on Friday for one of the Spanish volunteers so that should be good. I think I´m going to cook good ol’ fashion hamburgers and some kind of pasta salad or something. As always new recipes are appreciated.
Today is a little cold and deary, which made it especially hard to get out of bed this morning, Hopefully I´ll finally be able to buy my gas tank for my stove and maybe a hammock too. Tonight I´m meeting with a carpenter to build the furniture I designed for the house. I can not wait to get them built, Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah to me if it ever works out.
As for “Into the Wild”, the more I read the more I am glad I am not on an adventure into the wild of Alaska and happy to have my $6 a day, warm weather, and coffee maker. What do you think about the shunning of American culture, unnecessary things, which for Alex included a car, a house, burning all his money and even not showering a lot of the time?

Peace and Love,
Robin

Friday, November 14, 2008

Into the Wild

<-- These are women from the Aldea Tunuco Abajo where myself and two other collegues gave a presentation on strategy planning and citizen participation. (More pics on webshots.)


We won our basketball game last night 39 to 24 against the barrio Cemeterio. I am not really that great but really you should see them. Tonight we have a game of papi futbol, which I think I am also playing in but have no experience in whatsoever. It´s something like soccer but played on the basketball court.

This morning I went for a run to the next town over, Camotán. I think I should try to do that more often. I´m still working out my schedule but I need to fit in excercise somewhere and it´s so hot here that the morning is really the best time. Now I´m supposed to be at work but my boss nor the secretary is there. I don´t really know whats going on, maybe they are punishing me for going to the conference, haha. Instead I´m at the internet cafe to do more research on making badges for the Muni. I think if I can at least do that by December I should be fairly proud of myself. Oh man... how far I have come from a firm that designs national museums to making name tags.
Honestly though the skills I am learning here are really those that can be applied in any job situation. Patience, communication, modivation, patience, comprehension, patience, initiative, more patience... haha. The nice thing is the independence, in my job and in my life. As much as the Peace Corps is our mother here, I really do feel like I get to make a lot of my own decisions in my life. Maybe it doesn´t make sense but in order to feel like I have control, I have to completely give up control. I didn´t choose where I was going, or what my job was, or who I would work with or meet, and really everything that happens here complete blindsides me, but although there is no real order I am more self-reliant and proactive in my own decisions. Well thats the thought for today at least.

I am also reading "Into the Wild" right now and think am finding inspiration through, none of this is as tough as what Alex did, except he did get to speak english the whole time...

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Hora Chapin

(<---- My House)
Here there is a custom, for everything that starts at a particular time, in reality means come an hour late, "hora chapin". Right now I am in the hora chapin for my next basketball game, it was supposed to start at 7:30, but the lights in the building aren´t even on yet.

This last weekend I was super lonely, it just hits you doesn´t it. I found some other volunteers here from Spain but their spanish is even harder to understand than guatemalans! so although they are awesome, it´s still been pretty difficult. But since then I have found my neighbors to be very inviting and am really going to work on improving my relationship with them. I also found a very exotic looking black spider with spikes and bright yellow dots on its back, something out of national geographic for sure. I couldn´t kill the thing for its beauty, although I would bet it´s poisoness or something. I named it Amarillo.

I spent the last two days at a womens conference at a very beautiful hotel in Zacapa representing my women´s office because for some reason they didn´t want to go and know that I say yes to everything. Since I split my time between the womens office(OMM) and the planning office(OMP) aparently my boss in the OMP was upset that I didn´t pass this by him before hand, but honestly I wasn´t doing anything anyway, but it´s all about power and politics. Anyway, the conference was very nice and I got to meet some pretty amazing women in offices from all over this region of Guatemala, and yes even the conference was hora chapin and the tortillas were amazing.

I now have a gas stove top, but need to buy the gas tank for it. Possibly that will happen tomorrow, along with picking up my clothes which thank god get washed by this lady down the street who has three washers and does laundry during the night for about a $1 a load. Tomorrow it will hang in my garden with Amarillo to dry.

I´m really looking forward to the art supplies my family sent, I´ve been doing art recently from dried plants, which I think has been beautiful but maybe its really just dead plants...


Thursday, November 6, 2008

The First Week of the rest of my life...for 2 years


I don´t even know where to begin... I want to talk about politics, and the environment, and culture, and my job, and my house, and the chuchos (dogs of the street), and so much more. I´ll start with swear-in where I was fortunate enough to see the beautiful home of the ambassador but unforunate enough to loose one of my shoes durring my turn to accept my certificate, and therefor just took them both off and carried them to the stage which made for wonderful entertainment which our guatemalan families will probably continue to talk about for the next couple years. Thanks to Marisha for letting me borrow those dangerous heels, :P (That´s me shoes in hand)

The weekend was spent in Antigua with the whole gang, and was a great way to relax and spend our last moments together before segregation insued. My first day in my site was pretty chill because I didn´t get here till about 2pm and when I went to the Muni (the city govt. office where I work) it was mysteriously closed for some Saints Day. But that was fine cause I needed to settle in and all. So the next day I wake up, walk to my first day of work with my neighbor Tia Neldy, only to find my counterpart, Gabriel, is on vacation for the next month and a half. So basically I sat there all morning reading over my materials from Peace Corp and greeting people as they walked in and out of the Muni. But through my greetings I met a council member named Alberto who speaks english and saved me from complete boredom. Through him I now have a tv (but no cable) and a new project to work on. Apparently they want to design a new central park and market and want me to design it. We´ll see what really comes of this because I have a feeling that this is one of those things you talk about for like 5 years before anything actually happens. But I´m gonna try to work with what I can. Yesterday was better, I designed identification cards for the employees so that I can learn their names and faces. I´ll be working on this for probably the next week or so. I´ve found I have more work in the Women´s office so far, as they took me today to the aldea (small rural community) El Naranjo and have many community projects in the works. We went to the aldea to talk about violence in the home and I ate lunch with the mayor, a council member (Drew, the same one from taklitu sp?) and the director of Save the Children program. The mayor is a little friendly with me... a little more than I like, but the real story is the what happened this morning. So this morning I get to the Muni and there is this guy that is always there in the lobby greeting everyone, I think he´s in charge of maintenance and cleaning... anyway he seems to think he needs to hug me everytime he sees me and this morning also hands me a piece of paper with phrases he would like me to translate for him, some of which include: Te quiero, vamos a dormir, me quieres de verdad, and more. These respectively mean something along the lines of: I want you, Lets go to bed, You really want me, ect. So ya, I ignored that for most of the day and this afternoon had to tell the guy that was unprofessional for me to translate those words and asked him who it was for because in my culture its only appropriate to says those things to your girlfriend or wife and not women in the street like I assume its probably for...

I think for now that was clear enough, but who knows what will happen. I have many communication stories, one of which is that last night I thought I was supposed to go to a basketball game to play for my barrio, San Sebastian, and I thought the lady (who I found through someone in the womens office) said she was going from 6:30 to 8. So at 6:30 nothing happened, so I figured who knows what happened and about 8pm when I was about to go to sleep she calls me and asks me where I am. I´m like, In my house... where are you? She says, I´m at the meeting, are you coming? I go, oh ya ok sure, she asks if I know where it is and I was like no, so she sent a friend to come and get me. He shows up, and I go to this meeting which ended up only being 2 blocks from my house yet I had a motor escort for it cause I can´t understand what the hells going on, and I get there half in my pajamas cause I still think were gonna play basketball, and instead ther is this whole meeting of the barrios to plan the mini-olympics of Jocotan. So now by default of going to this meeting, I´m on the council, have events to help with everynight of the week and am playing basketball and ping-pong for my barrio. The meeting lasted till 11pm and I was then asked to show my ping-pong skills at the local pool hall, which not surprisingly there is not a single female in the place. I have to say they have some hardcore ping-pong going on though, and I will be the first woman to ever compete here but sure it won´t last long.

oh... Andrew, I´m still cooking in the dirt of the driveway, but I promise you this is going to change soon, haha.

Peace and Love,

More to come later because no one wants to read a book length post online.

Robin