Canche = blonde or light haired person

Pictures of the Parade!
(more to come when I get my Picassa up and running)
Traditional "Traje" de Guatemala
Traditional Men's Colthing

"Don't forget our Sumpangan Traditions"

Check out these kids beards. Too cute.

All the important men in the town

So I’ve officially been in my training site for a week. I’ve lasted 2 trips to the market, 2 Saturday-night tamale dinners, 2 visits to church, and 4 weekend nights in bed by 9. I think at this point I should write a little more about my daily life here in Guatemala during training, and what I’ve been up to the past week. The newness of everything is finally starting to wear off here, and I’ve made it around town the last 4 days now without getting lost. I’m sure my family is a little disappointed I’m getting more comfortable with the city, since they love hearing stories of the dumb stuff I do, but I’ve found other ways to embarrass myself or be awkward.
My family, by the way, is amazing. It’s been overwhelming how accepting and supportive I’ve been the past week, and how much they try to help me succeed here in Guatemala. Communication hasn’t been a problem for us at all, since my Spanish is improving “poco a poco” and they take the time to explain words to me or even act out what they mean. Whenever I have a grammar, pronunciation, or even cultural question, any one of them will work to make me understand. We’ve gotten to the point in our communication abilities where we can joke with each other, and laughing for hours after dinner around the table is a common occurrence. Like when I told them about how a little boy threw rocks at me in the street when I was lost. Or how I mistakenly told a store owner I needed to buy “ham “to wash my clothes with instead of “soap” (cut me some slack, “jamon” sounds a lot like “jabon”). Or that I tried to eat something raw that is only meant to be eaten raw by animals. I’m so cool.
My padre is hilarious and calls me Rambo, because I seem to be breaking or tripping over something, or am just big in general every day. My hermano, Gerson, is very quite, but since he’s studying to be an engineer, I’ve spent the last four years preparing to interact with someone like him. He currently hasn’t been going to classes during the day because his school is closed down because some students are trying to take over it. The article about it is here in Spanish(I can’t figure out how the get the English version), and it’s pretty amazing to read about. The students are fighting for what they call “human rights”, since the government is trying to make the public school become private. This would make it basically impossible for nearly all the current attendees to attend, since private schools here are ridiculously expensive. I’ve also heard from several people that the public schools turn out better prepared students because they actually have to work to not get kicked out, and can’t just pay to stay in. I told them it was basically the exact same in the U.S. (just kidding, you private school babies!) Anyway, Gerson is planning on getting his Masters and probably Doctorate, and I’m making a big push to turn him into a Yellow Jacket. My hermana, Leslie is a medical student and studies a lot too. She’s adorable and hilarious, and doesn’t mind going out with me in public even though I awkwardly get attention called to me almost every time we go somewhere. She also has this funny affectation she does when she’s making a joke or being sarcastic that I have to learn to adopt. Joking here is entirely different, and if you can’t do the Guatemalan snort after you make a funny, no one knows you’re joking. I learned this the hard way. My madre is probably the person I spend the most time with, and the person that works with me on my transition here the most. She’s tireless and constantly calm and collected, and will listen to me prattle on in broken Spanish for hours. She makes all the meals at the house, does almost all the household chores, and travels 2 hours both ways, three days a week to work in her family store in Comalapa. She’s the first one up in the morning making breakfast and packing lunches, and the last one to bed, after all the dishes and laundry are cleaned by hand. And despite all this work, after a long day, she still wants to hear every detail of my day and make sure I’m caught up with my homework. She truly is the backbone of the family, and an amazing supporter, and is always content. Since I’m an old lady here (I would put the average age to marry at 19) she seems to consider me her peer, and we’ve talked about everything from family problems to how to be attractive and conservative (although since she always wears the traditional “traje” it’s not too hard for her to be conservative).
A lot of people have asked about what I’ve been eating here, and I have to report back that I’ve been eating massive amounts of “delicious”. Seriously. I was made to eat this type of food every day! My new favorite veggie is güisquil, and is amazing. I’m sending some home asap. A local dish here that is probably one of my new top favorite foods is pepian (this isn’t the best recipe, since it doesn’t have güisquil), and is basically like a Mexican “mole” without the chocolate. It’s amazing, and my madre says she’ll teach me how to cook it the next time I have a free day. There’s also a lot of beans and tortillas, of course, but more surprisingly for me is that there’s a lot of veggies or other things dipped in egg and fried. I like the whole green beans done that way the best.
Anwayyyyyyyy, more about what I’ve actually been doing, I guess. I get up every morning about 6-6:30 and get ready for class, which starts at 8, but changes locations almost every day and I have to walk/take a bus to get there. I eat a full breakfast of about 3 tortillas and whatever eggs/beans/veggie thing there is. Then most days I have 4-6 hours of Spanish/culture class, where we go over grammar or go around the city visiting sites and learning new vocabulary. I also have started my 2 hours of technical training every day, and will soon be outside getting into some small-scale farming. Although I get extreeeeeeemely tired of Spanish classes (I swear I’ve gone to more class in the past week than I did all of my senior year at Tech) it’s not too bad, and I’m really enjoying my technical classes. It’s a good group of people, and there’s a lot to learn. So after class I hang out with my family, have some down time, eat dinner, and am in bed by 9 usually. It’s a simple, albeit boring, life but I am enjoying my time here immensely. Every day has some really enjoyable aspects and knowing that I’ll be prepared for my future site is a great motivator.
The goals for the Food Security Volunteers is to have at least 5 family gardens and 1 school garden in each of the communities we work in, and we’ll probably be working in 3 communities. We also will start nutrition classes and proper chicken care of at least 1 backyard chicken coop. I know this sounds small-scale, but in a community of 200, where most the people are related, if we can affect 5 families and a school we’ll have started a big change in a town. I have to admit, I’ve gotten a little overwhelmed at some of the stuff we’ve been learning recently. It’s not my specific agricultural project that has me worried, but how to implement them in the communities where there are so many other problems. Because I’m a a Food Security Volunteer, I’ll most likely be sent out to a very rural area where hygiene or sanitation isn’t a top priority, and where the “trash problem” (basically they throw it down the hill when it rains) is taking over the land. How can one start building a garden if it’s in a community where the pigs are free-roaming and literally pooping the garbage they eat right next to a garden? I don’t want to worry about it too much, since I don’t know my site or conditions yet, but if sanitation is a problem where I go, there will be a lot of work to do before I can implement my gardens. I guess for Peace Corps Volunteers across the world this is a potential problem in every community. I mean, hey, it is a developing country.
So this weekend was a special and exciting one here in Sumpango. Not only was it the beginning of feria, complete with huge parade and carnival food, but it was also the birthday of one of the other Trainees here, Kristen. On Saturday, after our 8am clothes-washing class (holy crap, it’s going to take me forever to ruin/wash my clothes on laundry day) we threw a surprise birthday party for Kristen. We took up a collection, bought a cake, and snuck over to her house. I had asked her madre the day before if we could come over, and they were extremely accommodating, and even let us listen to gringo music. After that, we went to visit another friend and ended up laughing that day for hours. It’s nice to socialize with other people going through the same thing, and joke about knowing we’ll hit a breaking point and how we’ll react. Sunday was amazing as well, since I woke up at 6am to the neighbor playing Backstreet Boys, ate some amazing pancakes, and went to watch the parade. Parades in Guatemala are COMPLETELY different from ones in the U.S., mainly because about half the town and 100% of the kids are in it, and it takes roughly 2 hours to watch it pass. It was great though, because you can see what things are universal, like cute kids, angsty teens, and overbearing parents. I commented to my madre that there was the parade going by with an equally long parade of parents walking along the sidewalk watching their kids, and she said “just wait until it gets down to the center of the city and at least half of these kids lose their parents for a few hours”. We went to the downtown area after and hung around the mercado, and broke a big Peace Corps rule by eating street food. I haven’t gotten diarrhea from it, but if I do it was totally worth it. When I walk through the streets here, I feel like a giant. A giant blonde person, stomping through the streets. I usually get some looks or stares, and can almost always here whispers (and sometimes shouts) of “gringa” when I walk by. When a group of us is walking back from class, we make almost every 13 year old boy giggle. But the day of the feria I was walking along when 3 old ladies, who looked vaguely like the tree in Pocahontas, stopped me to pat me down and call me “canchita”. I have realized since being here how little we touch people in the states and how quickly I need to get used to it. After feria, we ate lunch and relaxed. Then was church. Ohhhhhhh, church. I’ve realized that I’m not just awkward at church, but actually intensely uncomfortable. I’ve explained this to my madre some, and I don’t think I’ll be going next week to the all night vigil. I came, I experienced culture, and out of respect for both them and me, I’m going to back off on going to church.
So today was the first day of classes at Tech. I got a little sad, and a lot happy that I wasn’t there. It’s amazing where you find yourself in a year’s time. Good luck to everybody still in school, and hurray for a new pledge class of AXOs.