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!". :)