Eleven months?!

Everybody has their broccoli planted again.

I visited what I think may be the only true "dairy farm" on the mountain- they milk 60 cows with 2 portable milkers, rotational grazing, artificial insemination, corn silage...not like everybody else who milks two cows and feeds them chopped up potatoes...

Emelin and our new kitty, whom she has affectionately named Luna de Estrella, or "Moon of the Star"...the things that three-year-olds come up with!

I took this picture from the hill behind my house- you can see all the way to la Laguna de Ayarza! Beautiful.

Dahlias

Here another month has gone by, and I've hardly written. I guess not too much has happened, other than my regular day to day, week to week stuff. Honestly it's nice to feel like I've finally gotten a schedule going. On July 12th I will have been in Guatemala for ELEVEN months! Isn't that crazy? I still get frustrated with the pace of…well everything here at times. I mean, it seems to take forever to get anything accomplished. But little by little I feel like I’m making a bit of a difference. Yesterday the kids harvested their radishes at the Pino Dulce middle school. Each group weighed their harvest to see who had the most, and we made a salad out of the radishes, radish leaves, tomato, onion, cilantro and lemon juice. Yum! We made a small bonfire to warm up tortillas, and I also brought supplies to make s’mores in honor of the 4^th of July. It was a fun way to culminate their work so far, and they were excited to plant again.

Another small success- I’ve started a new group in my aldea with some women who’ve asked me how to bake a cake, make a compost pile, etc. They’ve all been super enthusiastic thus far. About a month ago we made mango cake, but at my house using my oven. I explained to them how to bake using the wood burning stoves that they all use at home- you have to get a good fire going to really warm up the stone base and walls of the oven. Then once it’s all burned down to coals, you sweep the coals out, put them on top of the metal stove top, put the cake in the stove, and put a block or something in front of the opening so the heat doesn’t escape. They all looked a bit dubious as I explained this, so last week when we met we made mango bread (can you tell it’s mango season?) at the house of one of the ladies, using her stove. Well unfortunately, we didn’t get the fire hot enough, and the bread didn’t finish baking. But a couple of days later, Margarita stopped by my house with a big smile on her face. She said she’d come to give me la prueba (the test) of the cake that’d she’d made at home that morning. And it was great! Now, I guess cake isn’t the most nutritious thing to teach people to make. But the ladies love it, and it’s great to see them exciting about learning a new skill. Margarita excitedly told me how her son’s birthday is next month, and she wanted to practice so that she can make me a birthday cake. How fun!

A funny story to end on- my host sister just gets more entertaining every day. Sometimes she drives me nuts, but she's mostly pretty cute. A few nights ago at dinner she was really grumpy, and got mad when her mom told her there wasn't any more of something that she wanted. So she's said "Entonces, me voy para la mierda", "Fine, I'll just go to hell then". When her Mom asked where that was, she said in town, and when asked if she was really going to go there all alone, she said that no, she was going to take her dad with her. He told her he wouldn't go with her, and she said, "But there's dogs there!". :)

Hurricanes, Volcano Eruptions...What's Next?

I'm sure you've all been hearing about Guatemala in the news lately, and yes, things have been kind of crazy this past week! What with Volcano Pacaya erupting on Thursday, then again on Friday, and then Hurricane Agatha blowing in for the weekend, Guatemala was turned on its head.

My dear friend Claudia had no idea what she was signing up for when she decided to come spend two weeks with me in Guatemala...The first week and a half that she was here we spent in my site. She may have thought she was coming to relax, but instead I put her straight to work. Haha, well I let her relax some, but she followed me around all week, helping out with my women's meetings and activities in the schools. Also, I finally got my garden planted! The second week, I took some vacation days so we could explore Guatemala a little more. We had planned to climb Pacaya...but then it erupted. So we opted out on that one. We visited Lake Atitlan, but it rained the whole time. And then that weekend I got a text from Peace Corps saying that we were in "standfast" mode, meaning that we weren't supposed to travel at all until further notice. Luckily Claudia and I were in Guatemala City, since she had her flight out booked for Sunday. However, with the massive amounts of ash that fell on the city, topped by the massive amounts of water, things at the airport were pretty much shut down, until today or tomorrow I think. Standfast wasn't lifted until Monday afternoon for me, and Claudia ended up taking a bus to El Salvador so that she could get home. Phew! So not exactly the way either of us had planned her visit, but it was still great to be able to spend time together!

Upon returning home, I was relieved to find my house still standing, and very little damage in general in my village. When the main road was built, a lot of it seems to have been kind of carved out of the mountain, leaving a lot of rather unstable looking banks along the way. With all the rain, a lot of those banks gave way, at least partially, making quite a mess of the road. But they've got a lot of it cleaned up now, and I was told that it was only impassable for one day. Not too bad. A neighboring village didn't fair so well, however. San Miguel, which is down off the mountain and has a small river running through it, was nearly washed away. They say that with all the rain the river overflowed, and took a lot of houses and cars with it. Luckily most of the damage occurred during the day, so everybody was able to get out safely. It's so sad though, a lot of families have been left with absolutely nothing. All the neighboring communities are really working together to help them out, collecting food, clothes, medical supplies, etc. And I heard that the first lady of Guatemala even came to pay them a visit today!