Talking to my mom the other day, she mentioned that someone had commented to her that my blog posts are always very positive. Isn't being a Peace Corps volunteer difficult sometimes? Well, yes. It's not always easy. But when I started this blog, I made a conscious decision to not complain too much. I hate complainers, and I don't want to be one. But upon hearing this comment, I got to thinking...maybe it's not fair to talk SO much about the good and so little about the bad. So let's see. Here's a list of things I don't like about Guatemala:
1. Chauvinism, or what they call "machismo" here. It's SO frustrating. In general, men here treat me with respect, because although I'm a woman, I'm different. I'm the gringa, and they don't quite know what to think of me. And on the surface, men are respectful to women. But the stories I hear about the ways that men treat their wives and daughters on a daily basis...makes me pretty sure I'll never marry a Guatemalan. Or at least not one from a village! Just the little things frustrate me. A man telling his wife to pour him more coffee, although the coffee pot is right next to him, and she has to get up and walk across the room to pour it. Scolding her because the shirt he wants to wear is wet (but how are clothes supposed to dry when it rains EVERY day?).
2. Rain. Ok, honestly, I think I got pretty lucky with the weather in my site. The temperature doesn't vary all that much. As long as it's not raining or foggy, you can usually get along in just a t-shirt. Not too hot, not too cold. The nights can be very cold (I've worn long underwear every night so far), but I think God I'm from NY and know what real cold weather is. And at least I'm not in a really hot site, I think that would be harder for me to deal with than the cold. But the rain. Oh the rain. Right now...it just won't stop. EVERY afternoon it rains, and some days, like today, it just rains all day and all night and into the next day. It wouldn't be so bad, but clothes don't dry here without sun (nope, no clothes dryers). Makes me wish all those Cornell students who complain about the weather in Ithaca would come to Guatemala for a week- then they'd know what real rain was!
3. Tact, or rather, lack there of. Guatemalans just don't have it. Things that you just wouldn't say to someone in the States is perfectly normal to say here. For example, I was talking with a lady who is a good friend of mine the other day about how much I walk. (I actually really enjoy this part of living here and not having a car: I walk all the time, just to get where I need to go). But she said "Well that's good, because you're fat. Maybe you'll lose weight". Recently, I was telling my host mom that I'm going to be in my friend Hannah's wedding next summer, and how I'm planning to run a half marathon again next spring to stay in good shape. "Did your friend tell you you're too fat to be in her wedding?!", she asked me, unabashedly. Nope, no she didn't. Americans just don't say things like that! In the States, if someone is fat, you see that they are fat, and that's that. But here, you have to talk about it. Oh well, it's definitely made me less self-conscious.
4. Rats. Maybe I should have made this number three, because it goes along quite well with the rain. I don't like to get wet, and apparently rats don't either. So when the rain becomes quite necio (this is one of my favorite Guatemalanisms- it means stubborn, but they use it to describe anything annoying that won't stop or go away) they trade their outdoor dwellings for the rafters in out house. My host sister had a cat for about two weeks, which helped, but then it ran away. Now it's just up to the rat poison (which I need to buy more of this weekend...). But while cats eat the rats, the poison just kill the rats, which leads to them showing up dead in unfortunate places (such as in the walls of the house or in my soccer cleat).
Ok, that's enough complaining for today. Here are a couple of highlights from the last couple of weeks:
I spent two half days this past week helping one of my favorites in her garden (Francisca, my host dad's mom). She's got one of the biggest gardens, with a great fence, and over ten types of vegetables: carrots, squash, two varieties of Swiss chard, onions, basil, mint, cilantro, celery, tomatillo, turnips, beets, and radishes. Pretty awesome! Plus, she's just a wonderful person, and fun to be around. Whenever I don't have anything to do, I go visit her. (Lauren, Francisca planted the sunflower that's blooming from seeds she collected from the sunflower that grew from the seed you gave her last year!)
I arrived in Pino Dulce to a couple of great surprises after my vacation in the States. First, the elderberry wine that we made two months ago was ready! (It wasn't really my idea to make wine, but we were making elderberry jam, and this family had a wine recipe, so we figured we'd try it out). And surprisingly, it was pretty good. Secondly, I was very pleased to see the progress that the kids had made in the school garden without me. Everything had grown like crazy, they'd transplanted the Swiss chard that needed transplanting, and they'd even built a new fence!! I have to admit that although I get very frustrated with the teachers sometimes (mostly when they just fail to show up), they've been more supportive than I'd expected.
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