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