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...

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...

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

The bell is ringing

But I just wanted to say I'm still alive and at the PC Center for my last day of training, exciting! Our swear-in is at the ambassadors house on Friday and our host families get to come too. This week I want to carve a pumkin-like gord for nostalgia and cook chicken pot pie, recipes appreciated. There are more pictures up on websots, some are from a womens day we had in an aldea of Jocotan, others are of volunteers, check them out.
Peace. Love.
Robin

Back from Jocot@n

So the trip was amazing, pretty imtimidating at first but I have a lot to look forward to. First is my housing: I´ll be taking over the house from the last volunteer which is great because I get his frig and furniture, but there is still a lot to be done as is whenever any girl moves into a guys apartment, (sorry drew :P). The place is really beautiful, but the water is brownish and contaminated and only runs at night, which since there is a leak in the shower means it always runs at night, haha. So I have water from 7pm to 7amish, there is electricity most of the time but when it goes out who knows for how long it will be, and there are some pretty mad mosquitos too but overall everythings not too bad. Right now I have one electric burner and a firepit Drew made in the driveway, which is awesome and I´m going to girl-scout it up everyday. Seriously I want to buy a gas stove though, and start building furniture. I think that will be a good activity to work on in my down time especially the first few months while I´m still adjusting.
The climate is hot, like I said before which is great, and the people seem really nice. The Muni is pretty large and there are several people in the OMP office. My counterpart, Gabriel, seems amazing, motivated, smart, and easy to work with. They also want me to work with the Women´s office too (or OMM), which might prove to be a challenge since not everyone gets along between the two offices, but I think it will be good to work with as many people as possible.
There is a market everyday, and I can´t wait to draw there during my lunch break and bring back memories of Italy. There is a hot springs about 10 minutes away too, which we went to the last night I was there. It was really nice to go to at night, and it´s pretty low-key, no tourists, only guatemalans for the most part. I´m sure it´s not too clean and people pee in and all but it´s warm and I try not to think about those things too much here. Mail aparently will be easier to get there and I´ll post my new address soon.
The time really has flown by even though the days seem to last forever. 2 years and 2 weeks to go...
Peace and Love,
Robin

Ladrones

Now the news of the week... so yesterday I was robbed on the bus to Antigua. There are 100 people on these buses and I was crammed up against everyone and had an over the shoulder small bag on. The crappiest part was that this day of all days I was taking the rest of my american dollars to go exchange them so whoever took my stuff now owns the most amazing camera I´ve ever had and $100 american dollars. I hate my life. Not really, but I just keep replaying it, I feel so stupid for not noticing. I think I can ever remember feeling something and thinking it was nothing just because there were so many people. I was pretty sad about it yesterday but I´m trying to brush it off because it was bound to happen sometime. I really did like that camera... well now I have to report it to the Peace Corps but I don´t think they can really do much. The money was for my site visit this coming week, aparently the volunteer there wants to sell me all his stuff (a frig, table, chairs, pots, bed, everything) for Q1,000 which is a pretty great deal, so now I just have to work out something with Peace Corp maybe loaning me the money in advance of my next payment. Not too much of a problem its just crappy that it was the last of my cash.
Tomorrow I meet my counterpart which I´m excited about, and I can´t wait to visit my site. Drew (the volunteer I´m replacing) has a lot planned and only had good things to say about the site.
I played basketball today, which was awesome becuase it was finally semi-temperate and no rain. We play pick-up games in the park, normally not too many girls play, but Marisha went with my this time. I´m not the greatest but better than even some of the guys, its easier since their all short. It was nice to get some excercise and meet some more people. I´m going to be pretty sad to leave here, I am finally feeling somewhat comfortable although my spanish still has a long way to go.
ok, nada mas for now.
Peace and Love, especially to all those purse stealers....
Robin

Free time out the window

Ok so I thought I was going to have all this free time, but obviously not. So I want to give some links to the history of Guatemala to better understand whats going on, since it seems I´ll never have time to write it all out myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala is generally an overall good place to start. Read the 1944 to present section, but it leaves out some important details about the overthrow of the Guatemalan government with a planed assassination performed by the United States Government in connection with a major fruit company and executive conflicts. It also doesn´t really get at the heart of what the Civil war here was really like.
The war was not very long ago and the nations final Peace Accords were in 1996, and the laws that are now in effect weren´t written and approved until 2002. There is still a lot of corruption in the local and national government and a general consenus of distrust among all the people.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/guatemala.htm
This one is a lot better, and more detailed. Please send me your comments on what you think and any other websites that could be helpful.

The peace corps has articles as well which I´ll try to get a hold of and post.

Peace and Love,
Robin