First charlas!

Happy Friday!
I’ve officially been in Guatemala one month!!



So here are our radishes as of a week ago- looking pretty good, huh? Also, this is garden number two, which is at Erin's host mom's house.

Yesterday was kind of a big day for us here in San Bartolomé- we gave our first charlas! Even though I’ve given plenty of presentations in the past couple of years (thank you comm 201 and dairy challenge) I was still kind of nervous about this one, because, let’s face it, middle school aged kids aren’t necessarily psyched about gardening. Plus, I was worried that we were going to run out of time and not be able to finish. But the kids actually got pretty into it! Most of the girls were in skirts, not very practical for gardening, but they were good sports and helped out anyways. I think my favorite part of the whole thing was being able to hand knives to a bunch of pre-teens and tell them to cut apart a couple of tires. Can you imagine that happening at T-burg? I don’t think so. I love that Guatemalans are so low key. As our tech trainer pointed out to us, most of these kids have been handling machetes since they were little!

Here's me overseeing things, my kids cutting apart a tire, and playing an icebreaker at the beginning.

Speaking of low key, you should see the transport system here. As I think I mentioned before, Guatemalans are amazing carpoolers. But while Americans worry about not filling buses past the posted capacity, Guatemalans worry about leaving ANY wasted space. While my fellow trainees and I were kind of taken aback at first by all the pushing and shoving and invading of personal space that is necessary to ride on the so called chicken buses (read recycled US school buses), we’ve really gotten used to it. However, we had a slight mishap on the way back from the PC training center this Tuesday. It was getting late, so we hopped on the first bus we could, which was absolutely packed. Erin and I managed to stay near the front of the bus (yes, yes, we WERE standing in front of that white line, while the bus was in motion, much to the chagrin of whoever was in charge of putting that sticker in the front of all US school buses). But anyway, Erin and I got off the front of the bus at our stop, assuming that Kamille and Stephen would hop off the back (yup, those emergency exits get everyday use here in Guate). But as soon as we got off, the bus took off, leaving nothing but a cloud of black smoke. No Kamille, no Stephen. Oops. They ended up getting off at the next stop, and then catching the next bus back to our town. The worst part is that they had to maneuver their way off the buses carrying their backpacks plus two costales (grain sacks), one full of supplies for our charlas, and the other full of dirt and worms to start a worm compost here in San Bartolo. Haha, as if people don’t think us Americans are crazy enough....


Our training session on Tuesday was really good though. We had a volunteer from Jalapa (a departmento/state in eastern Guate) come in to talk to us about nutrition and cooking, which is a part of the program that I’m starting to get more excited about. At first I think the idea of teaching nutrition kind of scared me, I mean, what do I know about nutrition? But the idea is to teach very basic nutrition, mostly focusing on encouraging people to eat a more balanced diet. And I love to cook, so I think teaching nutrition and cooking classes could be really fun. Anyways, the most exciting part for me and another trainee who’s from Wisconsin was finding out that there is a lot of dairy in Jalapa! I had kind of put the idea out of my head that I might be able to work with cows at all, but this volunteer said she thinks there are a lot of opportunities to get people to do more with their milk other than just sell it (yogurt, cheese, pasteurization, etc). But we’re not going to find out our sites until October 8th, so I guess there’s no point in getting anxious yet!


A couple of people have asked me what a regular day is like for me here. Well, it generally starts pretty early. I’ve always thought of myself as an early riser, but I almost always wake up by 5:30 or 6 here without my alarm! I generally shower right when I get up, b/c it’s hit or miss if the water is running in the evening, and PC policy states that we are expected to bathe every day, haha. I am lucky though, because the water is usually hot! Then I eat breakfast with doña Rosa, which might be fried plantains with black beans (delicious!) tortillas with melted cheese, or chocolate cornflakes, to name a few. Generally we have Spanish class from 8-12, which is held in one of our houses (we rotate week to week). Then in the afternoon we either have Spanish or technical training (like the charlas yesterday, working in our gardens, today we had a cooking class with a volunteer, etc). We have 12-1 to eat lunch with our families, which is generally the biggest meal of the day here. Tuesdays we head to the PC headquarters, about 20 minutes away by bus, where we have sessions from 8-4:30ish. Saturdays we have Spanish class or an activity until noon, and then generally Saturday afternoons and all day Sundays are free. This Saturday we’re going to a Mayan ceremony, which should be interesting. A week from Sunday us Food Security trainees are heading to Jalapa for a week for field based training, where we’ll be working with three or four food security trainees to learn more about chickens, gardens, and nutrition. Exciting!


Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention- church. Guatemala is a very Christian country, basically divided about evenly between Catholics and Evangelicals. People don’t really understand when I say I’m Methodist, because here you’re either Catholic or Evangelical, there’s nothing in between. So anyways, I’ve gone to church a few times now, twice to mass and once to “un culto”, which is what they call Evangelical services. Catholic services seem comparable to the masses I’ve attended in the States, except with much louder music! The church in my town has a full blown band in the back of the church, and a huge speaker system. Then this Sunday I went to un culto with Erin and her family, which was a lot different. It was in somebody’s house I think, and there were only about 20 people there. Everybody brought their own bibles and hymnals, and there was a lot of singing! Even though the singing was very loud and rather off-key, I enjoyed it because everybody was really into it, and I recognized most of the hymns! A few women took turns leading the singing, another lead the reading of some New Testament, and then a guy did a sermon/meditation. As far as I can tell there’s no pastor, everybody takes turns leading the service, which is kind of cool. There were a lot of kids there, and it was fun because they all just sort of ran around the whole time. Basically, it’s a little more intense than TUMC, but less formal at the same time, if that makes any sense at all!