Finishing up...

Hi all,

I spent a very full five days in my site in Jalapa last week, getting to know my village! I feel pretty lucky that I'm replacing a volunteer, first of all because she's already done so much work there, and secondly, because she's been able to answer a ton of my questions! I spent the week going to meetings with her, getting to know the area, and meeting a lot of people that live there. The first meeting was with the women's group that is our counterpart agency. It's a microcredit lending group that gives agricultural loans to its members. They seem like a great group of women- many of them already have their own gardens and compost piles and are interested in expanding the project and getting more people involved. The one difficulty I can already see is timeliness though...the 9am meeting didn't start until 10 and some people didn't get there until 11! Guess they're just on Guatemalan time...

The second was a community meeting in a nearby aldea (village), called Pino Dulce (Sweet Pine). The previous PCV worked with only two families there, but she invited the whole community to the meeting to see if we could rustle up so more interest for me to work there. So she explained what she's been doing, I introduced myself and explained that I'm coming to help people with veggie gardens, compost, nutrition, chickens, maybe even cows, and then the women who've worked with the PCV said how much they've gotten out of the experience. At the end I asked for a show of hands to see if anybody was interested, and out of about 60 people...maybe 5 raised their hands. Sooooo that was a little depressing, but I'm hoping that they were just being shy.

In general the people in my site seem pretty quiet and reserved, but very nice. We visited a lot of neighbors, and I don't think we walked away from one house without being fed or given food, whether it be a cup of coffee, a piece of bread, a head of broccoli or a bag of potatoes! So I'm not going to starve. Most families are supported by agriculture, growing mostly broccoli, potatoes and corn, and maybe some carrots and cabbage. Since the elevation is so high and it tends to be pretty cold, that's about all you can grow as far as "large-scale" agriculture goes. Most of the broccoli goes for export to El Salvador, I think. There is also a lot of dairy in the area, meaning that a lot of families have a couple of cows in the back yard. It's pretty cool that they make cheese locally though!

I also figured out my living situation- for at least the first three months I'll be living with a young couple ( I think the wife is 25), and their 2.5 year old daughter. They seem very sweet, and my room is really big! I'm planning on setting up part of it as a kitchen so that I can cook for myself. The house is close to a pretty main road, which will be handy for transportation, but there is a pasture with cows in the back yard, so I should feel right at home!

The day before heading back to San Bartolo, I met up with two fellow PCTs who have sites pretty close to me. We went to the eco park just down the road from my site (where we stayed for Field Based Training), to do some hiking and spend the night. The pics above are from our visit- the waterfalls aren't quite like Taughannock, but still pretty!

Now we're finishing up training, and will have our swear-in ceremony (where we take an oath and officially become volunteers) at the end of next week. I can't believe how fast time is flying by! I'm pretty excited to get settled into my site and start working, but am definitely going to miss my fellow trainees a lot. We're basially spread out all over the country! If I want to visit my friends in Huehuetenengo, its' going to take me a good 16 hours or so by bus...

Miss everybody at home, and the fall weather!

Site Assignments!

Hey everybody!

These last couple of weeks have been kind of crazy! After getting back from field based training, we had a Spanish test/interview to gauge our progress since the beginning of training. Apparently we’ve improved, because they decided to have us do independent study instead of continuing to have classes with a teacher! It’s been nice to be able to decide what to study ourselves- we’ve been working on the subjunctive tense, reading the paper, watching some movies our ex-Spanish teacher recommended, we wrote our resumes in Spanish, and have spent more time on tech-related stuff. This was a pretty big week because we had to prepare a presentation on nutrition for Thursday night as well as organize for a chicken vaccination “campaign” in our town Friday morning. On top of all of that, we were going crazy waiting for Thursday morning to find out what our sites for the next two years are!

So Thursday morning our technical trainer and the two people in charge of the Sustainable Ag program rolled into San Bartolomé a whole hour ahead of schedule with our site announcements! I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go, and had tried really hard not to set my heart on any particular site, since trainees really have very little input on where we end up. But…(drum roll please!) …it ends up that I’m going to JALAPA, to the site that we visited for field based training! I honestly wasn’t expecting it, because it’s one of only three sites for food security volunteers that is strictly Spanish speaking. In the other six sites, the volunteers will need to learn an indigenous language. Although that’s an awesome opportunity…I can’t help but be happy that I get to stick with Spanish! The craziest thing about all of this is that the volunteer who I’ll be replacing is from Rochester, NY, and then the new marketing volunteer who will be living less than an hour away from me is from Vestal, and went to Cornell! I guess kids from CNY get sent to Jalapa- what a small world.

Tomorrow is counterpart day at the Peace Corps Office. We’ll be meeting the Guatemalan who will be working closely with us for the next two years. My counterpart is the president of a women’s group that does micro financing for food security. That’s about all I know so far…so hopefully I’ll have more to say next time! Tuesday morning we have a couple of sessions at the office, and then we’re all heading to our sites until Sunday to meet people, find somewhere to live, learn about what we’re going to be doing, what the needs of the community are, etc. I’ll be staying with the volunteer that I’m replacing, and I’m really excited that I’m going to have the chance to learn a lot from here before she moves back to the states. Since when I actually move to my site for good in three weeks I’ll be traveling alone, I’m going to try and move as much of my stuff as possible on Tuesday since I’ll have my counterpart to help me with my luggage. It’s not that I brought all that much stuff with me…a backpack and two suitcases. But I’m not sure how easily everything is going to fit back in my luggage. Plus, I can’t imagine keeping track of three bags on a chicken bus. There’s no way I could bring it on the bus with me, meaning the ayudante (the guy who collects money and helps out the driver) would throw it up on top of the bus, and who knows if it would make it to my final destination!

Anyways, however I get there, I'll be really excited to arrive. I'm so excited to get a better idea of what my personal job is, and actually get to work! The aldea (village, as in smaller than a town), is on top of a mountain at 8,000 ft., with beautiful views, but pretty cold temps. I'll be working in the communitiy that I'm living in, but also traveling to a couple of surrounding aldeas to work. I think I'm going to inherit a bike from the girl I'm replacing, so that'll be nice for getting around. She has done a lot of work with nutrition and family gardens, so I'm probably going to be expanding on that, trying to reach and include more people. Also, there's a lot of dairy in the area, so I'm hoping to be able to do some kind of secondary project with cows. We'll see!

Last Sunday was a ton of fun- most of our training class climbed Volcán Pacaya! We probably took about two hours to get to the almost top, where we relaxed and ate lunch. Then we hiked pretty darn close to the lava flows- our guide assured us it was safe! We even roasted marshmallows on the lava! There are a lot of volcanoes in Guate, and I’m hoping to have the chance to climb lots more these next two years!

Here are a couple of interesting, but probably fairly obvious things I’ve learned in Guate so far:
- You can “gravity flush” a toilet by just dumping enough water into the bowl until it drains. I learned this by necessity as the water in our town tends to stop running by noon or so every day…
- You can make perfectly good coffee by just boiling ground coffee beans in water. Who needs a coffee maker?
- Vehicles can last MUCH longer than Americans think they can. I don’t think there are many cars in our town that are under 15 years old, but they get people where they need to go just fine!

That's it for now, hope everybody is doing well at home!