Easter Break & Back to School

On Monday I celebrated a wonderful American tradition with some of my women's groups...

...an Easter egg hunt!

The week leading up to Easter is a very big deal here in Guatemala. Last year I spent a big part of the week traveling, so this year I decided to stay in site and see what happens in Soledad Grande for Easter. The week can basically be summed up like this: make semitas (sweet bread made from whole wheat flour), eat semitas, go to church, repeat. And that's about what I did too! I spent Tuesday and Wednesday baking with some of my women's groups, and learned how to make two different variations of this tasty Semana Santa treat. One was made of wheat flour, sugar, eggs, and yeast, while the other also included a sourdough base and ricotta cheese to make it much more moist. Both were delicious!

Working on dough for semitas in Las Ilusiones

Thursday I spent most of the day preparing for Emelin's birthday lunch on Friday. I made two cakes (carrot pineapple and lemon) and helped Sole chop vegetables, pluck chickens and clean the house. On Friday morning we got everything ready for lunch (chicken soup, rice, melon smoothies, and coleslaw), then headed to church for a service commemorating the suffering of Jesus on the path to the cross. It was really quite beautiful. They had set up 14 altars made of colored sawdust, flowers, palm leaves, and candles. Starting at the church we followed a procession around to each altar, stopping to read scripture and pray at each one. The first altar on the procession.

As soon as the service was over, we rushed home to Emelin's birthday lunch. Sole originally wanted to celebrate Emelin's birthday with a small lunch, just the four of us. But then she decided to invite Emelin's grandparents, which meant she had to invite her aunts and uncles and cousins as well...so we ended up having a nice "small" group of 26 people!

Happy Birthday Emelin!

By the time the soup was eaten, the candles blown out, wishes made, cake eaten, and dishes washed, it was time to head back to church. Sole joked that the only thing that Guatemalans are on time for all year is this service on Good Friday: it's at 3pm, the hour of Christ's death. Saturday gave us some time to relax after all of our scurrying about the night before, but at 4pm there was a candlelight vigil and mass, which I went to as well. The best part was actually after the service: they had a bingo tent set up behind the church! I came pretty close to winning a huge plastic bucket. Darn my bad luck...

Easter morning dawned surprisingly clear and bright, after a week of off and on rain showers. I went to town to visit my neighboring volunteers, and decided to go to mass. I mean, after all, I can't miss church on Easter Sunday! But strangely, there wasn't anything very special about the service. It seems like Guatemalans put most of their Semana Santa efforts into the days leading up to Easter. They celebrate the resurrection on Saturday night, not Sunday morning. But nevertheless, it was interesting to see what customs people have here, and wonderfully relaxing to hang out with my friends!

After all the excitement of Semana Santa, I was glad to get back to work on Monday (and kind of happy that the semitas were all gone, and that I wasn't going to be expected to go to church every day anymore!) It was especially nice to start working in the schools again- apparently the teacher strike is over, and things are back to normal. I'm excited to start working on my school gardens since the rainy season is imminent. Especially in Soledad Grande. Last year we got permission to plant our garden on part of the school's land, but the elementary kids did a wonderful job of stomping on, pulling up, or otherwise ruining everything that we planted. This year I have permission to use a nice little fenced in store yard practically next door to the school. Hopefully things will go better there!

An Impromptu Summer Vacation

Snack time in El Desvio.

Things are a little off kilter here in Soledad Grande lately. I was really getting into the swing of things working in my schools again since classes started in February: getting to know the new students, teaching about nutrition and dental hygiene, preparing to plant our gardens in May when it starts to rain again. Then two weeks ago one of the teachers in Pino Dulce pulled me aside to inform me that "all the teachers in Guatemala are going on strike tomorrow". My first question was, of course, why? "We haven't been payed yet this year". Ok, I guess that sounds like a decent reason. My second question was, how long? "We have no idea, at least two weeks". I realized that the kids were going to be out of school for at least three weeks, since Holy Week was in three weeks (there is always vacation the week leading up to Easter). Sigh. So here we are in the second week of the strike...and who knows when the kids will be back in school! The two teachers in El Desvio, however, were still giving classes last week. So on Tuesday we harvested some Swiss Chard from the school garden, and I taught the mothers who were assigned to make the kids' snack that day how to make a healthy snack. A couple kids refused to eat it because they "don't eat vegetables", but in general it went over pretty well!

I'm working on it...

Another thing disrupting my normal schedule (and the schedule of everybody else in Soledad Grande) is the lack of water. Normally the potable water comes on once every four days for a few hours. The village owns a few springs that feed into a big tank, and then they use an electric pump to pump water to all the houses. That doesn't sound like very much, but everybody has barrels to save water in, and my family even has a little tank. So even now, when it hasn't rained since November, we don't suffer too much from lack of water. Until the water pump broke. Two weeks ago. Now everybody (and by everybody I mean all the women and girls) have to walk to springs or creeks to bath, wash clothes, and carry drinking water back to their houses. And now a lot of people are complaining of stomach problems, a result, I'm assuming, of drinking spring water without boiling it. This is all a little more rustic than my Peace Corps experience has been so far! But it could be worse. There's a clean spring about 15 minutes from our house. The only problem is that I can't carry a jug of water on my head with no hands. But hey, at the rate things are moving, I'll probably be a pro by the time they fix the pump and we have water at our house again!

Early morning sunshine on a weekend walk from Soledad Grande to San Antonio Las Flores.

Blackberry picking with two of my favorite girls: Lacey and Leslie.