Birthday month!

In my family, February is birthday month, what with Mom and I both celebrating birthdays. As well as an uncle, a cousin, and plenty of extended family. But one of the families I work with in Pino Ducle definitely beats us- they have 7 kids, and 4 or 5 of them have their birthdays this month! (Erika's birthday is the same as yours Mom!)I'm really looking forward to a visit from my mom and uncle at the end of this month, we'll get to celebrate our birthdays together!

So this is getting bad, I know. I only wrote once in January! But I guess that means I’m keeping busy, huh? I’m working on getting a usb modem for internet, or wireless…I’m feeling a little conflicted about it though. I mean, I’m supposed to be roughing it, right? I mean, this is Peace Corps! But on the other hand, I can afford it with my Peace Corps salary…and it would be SO convenient! So we’ll see…

So the meeting in Miramundo, the neighboring aldea, that I had planned a couple of weeks ago…kind of fell through. Meaning that I showed up, but nobody else. Bummer. However the next week I ran into some lady on the road who said she wanted to go but forgot. She belongs to a microcredit lending group though, and invited me to come to that meeting this week. Hopefully I’ll find some interest there!

Looks like I’m well on my way to working in two schools as well! Last week I sat down and planned with teachers in Pino Dulce- we’re going to start doing a school abonera, then eventually do tire gardens. I also met with the teachers in my aldea, and they sound like they’ll be supportive too. I’m looking forward to working with kids; I’ve never had the opportunity to actually teach, so that part is a little scary, but I like to be around them. In accordance with the suggestions from training, I’m working with the básico kids. Here in Guate, there’s primaria (K-6th grade), and básico (7th-12th). In my aldea as well as Pino Dulce, last year was the first year that they offered 7th grade. They got government funding to open these schools, and now this year they’re both offering 7th and 8th grades. So those are the kids that I’ll be working with. (Before this, any kid who wanted to study past 6th grade had to travel half an hour to an hour and live with relatives in town during the week to study).

Nothing too exciting happening culturally here- everybody is finishing up the corn harvest, broccoli is about done too. No holidays until Holy Week, which sounds like a huge deal here. Things are pretty smooth right now. Last Sunday I attended the festivities of the graduation of the daughter of a family I work with. She’s just turning 19, and just finished nursing school- the first in her family to graduate any kind of professional program, as far as I know. Pretty cool, huh? There was a mass in honor of the graduates, then a graduation ceremony, and then a dinner and dance at the family’s house. Here they mostly just dance to Durangense music, and it’s all partner dancing. And it’s kind of old fashioned- the guys ask the girls to dance, never the other way around. It was actually kind of funny this time though, because there were a lot more guys than girls (teenage boys always seem to come out of the woodwork wherever there’s a dance). So it was pretty hard for any of us to leave the dance floor without getting cornered by two or three guys. Maybe that sounds sketchy, but it was a lot more fun than the other dances I’ve been to here- there weren’t any drunk guys, there weren’t any old creepy guys, and I think I danced with at least four guys my height or taller! That in and of itself is a miracle-there’s only one woman my height in our town, the rest are considerably shorter, and there aren’t that many men my height.