The last post

Today is my last day in Guatemala. Of course, this is both good and bad. I will miss lots of things here. I like the project, I like the other volunteers, I like my host family and all the food here. It is strange leaving when there is so much more to be done. At the same time, I am excited to see my family and friends at home. I am excited to eat American cereal and milk. I am excited to sing karaoke. I am excited to start school again.
Bah. Good and bad. Bad and good.
Other little notes:
My third trip up the volcano Pacaya was a successful one. I saw lava and it was cool.
I finished up my English-songs-in-Spanish experience nicely with Bob Dylan´s ¨Butterfly Kisses¨ today.
See you Friday.

Volcanoes, all around

The rumors are true. Lake Atitlán is beautiful. I got there early in the morning, so it was nearly cloudless. Big lake surrounded by hills and three volcanoes. Very neat. If you´d like to see what it looks like, I recommend a Google image search.
As it turns out, there isn´t a whole lot to do in Panajachel other than shop. So I went to San Pedro, a smaller town across the lake. Mostly I just wanted to go for the boat ride, but the town was interesting, too. I didn´t get past the tourist-y section because I didn´t want to wander far by myself, but what I saw was more shopping.
Overall a good trip. This morning I walked around Antigua, San Felipe, and Jocotenango and took pictures of some of the amazing things I see every day. Probably half of these pictures are of Volcán de Agua. A big giant volcano is endlessly interesting to me. I live in the Red River Valley. This afternoon I am going to climb another volcano, and this time there will be lava.
Again, I will let you know.

Nothing much

I have already spent enough time today on a computer, and I am thoroughly tired of it. Thus, this is just a quick post to let everyone know I am a responsible and reliable blogger.
I am going to Lake Atitlán tomorrow. I went last year, but it was overcast and rainy, so I didn´t get to really see it. Rumor is, it is exceedingly beautiful. I´ll let you know.
That is all. Take care.

Teaching is hard

On Monday I gave all my students quizzes to see what they know. They have exams in all their classes next week, and I only have one more class to review before their English exam. As it turns out, they don´t know a lot. It took me a long time to figure out that I had to actually teach them, not just present material and expect them to study at home (like a theoretical college student). One of my classes is typically out of control, talking and walking around and stuff. And most of the students in all three of my classes are fervent cheaters. It is for these reasons, I think, that my students have learned little more than what they knew when I started, and apparently don´t even know things they supposedly learned before I started. And, well, I guess English is hard.
Now I am stuck with this question: Should I make the test too hard for almost all of them, but representative of what they could know, or should I make it easy enough for most of them? I think I am going to give a tough test. Well, a bit easier than the quiz I gave them. Some of the students actually do know the material, and the others can struggle. The school can apply a curve later. This might sound harsh, but whoever the next teacher is can then have an accurate picture of what I have been teaching them and what they know.
So if my service at the school looks a little bleak right now, Casa is good. One of the babies who went home about a month ago (José Angel) came back for a visit, and he is still as fat as ever (even fatter, really), and has grown quite a bit more hair. I didn´t even recognize him at first. Let´s hear it for healthy babies.

Two interesting discoveries

On Saturday I did some mad shopping. It was my biggest spending day of my trip so far. I spent a total of $45. Guatemala is cheap.
The day offered me two bloggable events:
Talking to a woman who had a handicrafts/souvenirs stand near an Antigua church, I found out that both she and the two other women there had been helped by the God's Child Project. They seemed to have a positve view of it, and the woman (Isabel) even asked me if the kids who attend school at the Dreamer Center have to buy a lot of paper, presumably thinking of the education of her own son (who was standing right there). Unfortunately, I told her that that was a question for the project, not for me, because I wasn't sure. Kind of stupid of me. I hardly needed to give her another hurdle to getting her kid in elementary school, especially since after a bit of thought I feel certain that the kids attend school totally free of charge. Aside from that conversation, I also taught her some words in English. She asked me to. I just taught her ''purse'' and ''pen'' and a couple other things she sells. I am thinking she wanted those words for when foreign tourists come by. Before I left, I bought some stuff from her stand. Hopefully our encounter was profitable for her, because it was interesting for me.
Later, I was beebopping around a used book store and audibly gasped when I found Roxanne Henke's After Anne. For those who don't know, Roxy Henke is an author from my town. In terms of popularity, she's not quite Stephen King, so it was a cool surprise to find a Wishek book in Antigua. I was pretty excited about it, so of course I told the shopkeeper about Wishek, showed him the book, and told him I know where Roxy Henke lives. I told him we are related (through two marriages). It is tiresome to say ''It's a small world'' but not tiresome at all to experience those small world moments. First Stacy Schaffer in Guatemala. Now After Anne. What next? Fingers crossed for a Wishek Locals jersey.

A morning with the guias

On Wednesday I got to follow two of the project´s social workers to home visits. I went to see a man who had contacted the organization (it is that well known, I guess) asking for a wheelchair. He had one foot that was swollen and awful-looking due to diabetes. His other foot was in a cast because he broke it (or his ankle?) walking with his crutches. The rest of his body was skinny and he moved, it looked like, with difficulty. He doesn´t have any family and can´t leave his bed to work. He seemed to be living in a rented room. He had electricity and a television, but that was about it. It kind of smelled in there. I was uncertain how much a wheelchair would help him (Guatemala is the absolute opposite of handicap accessible.), especially considering the bumpy incline/steps one needs to walk up just to get to his residence. However, whatever little extra mobility a wheelchair might give him is way better than his current situation. Laying on an old bed in a smelly room all day and all night. One of the project´s social workers talked to the man and took a couple pictures while the other social worker took notes. After that visit, they decided they would give him a wheelchair.
The other visit we went on was just to pick up the mom of one of the kids who goes to school at the Dreamer Center. This kid doesn´t live with his mom (I think the social worker said that he lives with his aunt and uncle because his own family treats him badly.), but we brought him with to get his mom. I think we had to tell her that her other kid is sick and in the hospital, then we dropped her off at the hospital. I´m not completely sure about this situation because my Spanish is so bad. Maybe she already knew her kid was in the hospital and we only had to pick her up. She didn´t look that surprised. Anyway, there are two notable things about this second visit. First, this lady lives up a steep hill. The social workers and I were totally out of breath by the time we got to her door (which was not a door but a piece of painted corrugated tin). Again, people here go the extra mile just to live. It is wild. Second, I had a failure of a conversation with the kid who was with us. He told me he was in third grade, and I asked him if that meant he was 9 or 10 years old. I thought that that was old for a third grader, but I also thought he looked bigger than 8. Turns out he´s 13. A lot of poor kids here are smaller than they should be (due to being undernourished for parts or most of their lives) and obviously some of them are behind in school. I am hoping I didn´t embarrass him too much.
Aside from the always upsetting view of poverty, I got something else from these visits. Confidentiality is a luxury. I walked into the social workers office and it was so easy for me: ¨Yeah, we´re going to see this guy. Here is his file. Look at pictures of his foot. Read this information about his condition. You´re free to know the names and whatever else we know about the people we´ll visit today. And yeah, go ahead and blog about it later.¨ I take a lot of things for granted, and now I can recognize confidentiality, also, as something to appreciate.
Since this post was kind of a downer, and since my language became a bit yucky and cliché at the end, I will leave you with the knowledge that I have heard Roxette´s ¨It Must Have Been Love¨ in Spanish. It was mindblowing.

Food

I am having trouble thinking of a little anecdote for today´s blog. So I´ll follow the advise of my hungry stomach, who is telling me to just talk about food.
I eat six days a week with my host family. The meals are ¨typical¨ Guatemalan food maybe three fifths of the time. Esperanza also makes pancakes and spaghetti and stuff like that. More Guatemalan are the tortillas we have every day at noon (Not tortillas like you might be thinking. They are smaller and thicker than what you buy in a Grand Forks grocery store, and always warmed.) and black beans every day at supper. Guatemalan food, you might be surprised to know, is not the same as Mexican food, especially Americanized Mexican food. There are differences, and I have yet to be served a burrito or anything like a Taco John´s taco. My favorite things to eat here are guacamole (Didn´t love this before I came here. Now, the mere thought of it brings a happy tear to my eye and a hungry drool to my mouth.), plantains (Esperanza makes these two ways--fried or cooked in sugar/water/cinnamon/vanilla. I am planning on attempting to cook them the tastier way--sugar water way--when I get home.) and of course the fresh pineapple.
Around Antigua you can get all kinds of ethnic food because it´s a pretty tourist-y place, and most restaurants are pretty cheap. I have enjoyed the billion bakeries they have in town, practically one on every block. Guatemalans know how to make $0.12 sugar cookies like no one else.
Wow. How did blogging about food seem like the thing to do when I was already hungry? I´ll be done now. Sugar cookies of Antigua, look out.

Born as the seventh month dies...

Happy Birthday, Harry Potter.

Choose your own adventure

When I have in mind both a somewhat amusing tale and one that is quite disgusting and sad, I am uncertain which should go first. Thus, I will label both clearly, and the reader, well-warned as he/she is, may choose his/her preferred order.
Amusing:
On occasion, I see some terrific shirts here. One of the maintanence guys at the Scheel Center sometimes wears a shirt that says "I only drink on days that end in Y." In Spanish, no days end in Y. I once saw a grown man wearing a well-worn, yet classy circa-1999 N*Sync t-shirt. Just today I saw some guy on the street wearing a Justin Morneau shirt. These things, sometimes more than the English-to-Spanish songs, really make my day.
Gross:
A kid at Casa Jackson pooped out a 10-inch worm. I did not see it, but was told about it by another volunteer. I was pretty certain that that kid had more wrong with him than just his malnutrition. He is almost four years old, but would easily pass for two. He has a huge swollen belly and diarrhea every day. They did blood tests on him last week, and found that he had parasites. Of course, they could have skipped the blood tests had they known what would come out of him on Tuesday. I asked the nurse what type of worm it was, and she told me in Spanish. I had intented to look it up, but forgot it. I will ask again, so we can all be more well informed. Do not worry, though. Guatemalan doctors (like the one who oversees the healthcare at Casa) know all about parasites and that pobrecito is being treated.

The usual, mostly

Yesterday I gave a tour of the Scheel Center to a group of volunteers from Bismarck. Last week I also gave a tour of Casa Jackson. It is interesting to be involved enough in this organization to be able to inform others of its programs. Or it is interesting that the organization allows noobs like me to show people around. Probably the former. I think.
Casa Jackson, by the way, is still conspicuously empty. Only seven kids. The social worker is out sick, and has been for a week. The director had to go to the U.S. for a couple weeks. They are the ones orchestrating admissions, so without them, we are at a baby plateau. Because there are so few babies, there are often too many volunteers. What is an organization to do with a mass of unskilled workers? Of course, this isn´t the worst problem to have. If the director reaches her goal of having 20 babies at Casa, I´m thinking there won´t be enough volunteers, and that will be more difficult. In happier Casa news, the newer babies who were sullen only two weeks ago are starting to become more comfortable. The kids who come in are often sick, and most likely physically uncomfortable, not to mention confused, sad, angry, whatever because they´ve been seperated from their families. Within a few weeks, though, they tend to feel a bit better. I saw one little boy walk and talk for the first time yesterday. (I don´t mean I witnessed his very first words and steps. I mean that it was the first time he walked or talked in my presence, maybe his first time walking or talking at Casa Jackson.) Whatever the case, pretty neat.
This morning (because there were many volunteers at Casa) I helped to make the sandwiches for volunteers who are out at house-building sites. One of these volunteers was named Ryan Huber. Neat. I know.

Festivities

Yesterday was the festival of Santiago, Antigua´s patron saint. All week there has been stuff going on: music, a big book sale, lots of vendors in the central park.
On Thursday I went to a free outdoor concert. It took place in the soccer field that is literally across the street from my house. We saw the Malacates, a Guatemalan ska/pop band. It was pretty fun. I was excited to get to see a Guatemalan concert, and it turns out that it was pretty much just like most American shows. I think the Malacates are a pretty popular group, and I actually recognized one of the songs as something I´ve heard on the radio here. I felt pretty cool.
Yesterday there was a big parade for the Santiago festival. It was composed of entries from each of 30 local schools, including the Dreamer Center school. The parade was neat. Costumes. Dancing. Some good drum lines. The Dreamer Center entry was my favorite, because I got to wave at all the people I know. After the parade, I ate some green cotton candy that tasted precisely like Froot Loops.
That was yesterday. Today I spent the morning at Casa Jackson, then ate a crepe so delicious, it made me feel bad for every person in the world who was not also eating that crepe. After that fantastic meal, I had the pleasure of hearing the Backstreet Boys´s ¨I´ll Never Break Your Heart¨ in Spanish. Perfect.

Heavy things and light things

I met an interesting person. Erin is an American, volunteering here and also researching for her second masters thesis. She is studying the effectiveness of nongovernmental organizations in local poor populations. This is pretty exciting, considering I´m going to write my senior thesis on something similar. Her argument, she says, is that aid is most effective when delivered through NGOs. This is pretty much the opposite of the argument of Giles Bolton, the author of Africa Doesn´t Matter, a book I finished reading a few weeks ago. Giles says aid is best when delivered through a struggling nation´s government. Yes, sometimes governments are corrupt, but corruption occurs because the state can´t afford to pay its bureaucracy. A police officer (or other public official) who can´t afford to feed his/her family will be quite likely to accept a bribe. And there we have corruption. Giles argues that when sending aid, we should expect to take an initial loss, but that it will be made up in years to come, in trade and other international relations-ish stuff. It´s a good book, very readable, but still thought-provoking. Anyway, Erin is interesting because she is studying what I plan to study, and we talk about it. We are exchanging books, so I can read one that promotes her argument for NGOs. It is great.
In other news, I would like everyone to know how hard some people in Guatemala work. There seems to be very little heavy machinery anywhere near Antigua. Every time I walk to or from Casa Jackson, I walk by a lot that seems to sell cinderblocks. There are probably a few thousand of them stacked up in that lot, and they aren´t always in the same places. This means that they are being moved. I never see machinery there, but I do see people moving them by hand. It is outrageous, the physical labor people do here. I imagine a Bobcat (or whatever other machinery) is pretty much outside the bounds of most companies´ budgets, so manual labor is the way things are done. There are currently a few dudes scraping all the paint off a school building near my house. They´ve been at it for a week or so now. I have seen people walking along, carrying loads that must weigh 100 pounds. It sounds outrageous, but I don´t feel like that´s much of an exaggeration. They carry big loads on their backs, with a strap going under the load and across their foreheads to balance out the weight. Again, it is unbelievable. With a third world economy, people work so hard. Just to live. Unbelievable.
And now for an abrupt transition to something much less weighty (inappropriate pun?), I heard both Beyoncé´s ¨If I Were A Boy¨ and Van Morrison´s ¨Brown Eyed Girl¨ in Spanish yesterday. I was amused. Beyoncé´s was officially Beyonce singing, but singing in Spanish. Thought you should know.

What it is to burn

I went to the beach last weekend. The waves were big. The sun was hot. The burn was terrible. I put on sunblock (SPF 50) once every hour or so I was in the sun. Honestly. And I still have blisters. Guatemala = close to the sun. Something should also be said re: the temperature. Alicia´s alarm clock also features a thermometer, which informed us that our room was 94 degrees when we went to bed. I am generally not too bothered by heat (better than -30 degrees!) but this was extreme enough to mention. Another extreme-ish thing: Alicia and I paid US$7.50 each for a hotel room. I am continually surprised with how cheap Guatemalan goods and services are. Why do people go to Cancun? Absurd. Overall, Monterrico was good. Swimming, reading, sleeping. Terrific.
I am still teaching English at the Scheel Center. So far, I think it is going well. My sixth grade is pretty good. My seventh graders were kind of noisy turds, but I think they´re getting better. My eighth grade is amazing and one of them, Abraham, is an English whiz. Somehow (He said something about learning from a Canadian volunteer at the Dreamer Center.) Abraham is way ahead of his classmates in English. He and I can have a conversation (a slow one) in English. Every lesson I do with his class, he already knows, so I write up a seperate lesson/worksheet for him to do on his own. I eats it up and so do I. It is just so fun having an especially bright student. I don´t think I could ever be a real teacher, because I am the Michael Phelps of playing favorites.
That, I think, is all for today. I am glad I had the opportunity to complain about my sunburn and to spread the word worldwide about Abraham and his terrific-ness.

Sprinkles, construction arguments, sea creatures.

Yesterday I bought a candied apple. It was super sugary. Like eating an apple and half a cup of corn syrup. But delicious. The greatest part was that it cost one quetzal. US$0.125. Did I already mention the one quetzal frozen bananas? Those are good, but this melted-sugar-and-sprinkles-covered-apple is even better. And yes, that purchase is exciting enough to deserve the first topic of my blog.
This week Alexis´s favorite window cutter, Juan, returned to the God´s Child Project. I think he´s here as a service team with his family, and every time I look at him I can only think of Alexis and her great love for and appreciation of helper Juan.
Tomorrow I am going to Monterrico, a little town on the Pacific coast. Alicia (another volunteer who lives in my house) and I are spending the weekend. The forecast is sunny with black sand beaches and a chance of sea turtles (Leaders in a half shell!). I have never seen the Pacific Ocean. I am excited.

Nine to five

Yesterday two more Casa babies went home. Very sad. But very good. Right now we are back to only seven kids at Casa Jackson because they haven´t gone out on a malnutrition field visit to get some more. (This was planned for Monday, then today, but they still haven´t gone and I don´t know when they will. It´s hard for me to come by good information when my Spanish is so weak and when schedules, etc. aren´t taken as seriously here as in the U.S.) The director of Casa has a goal of filling the place to its capacity (20) within the next few months. If she succeeds, I hope that increase in numbers is accompanied by an increase in volunteers and funding. She also wants to get the word out locally about Casa Jackson. Right now the majority of volunteers are American or European, and it just makes sense to have more local volunteers so they babies can be around people from their own culture, hearing more of their own language. It´ll also be better for the families of the kids. I imagine it could be upsetting to leave one´s kid with a bunch of white people and later bring home that same kid, healthy and smiling more than it ever did at home. Last weekend I talked to a family from Guatemala City who come down every weekend to volunteer at Casa, and they were great. Hopefully once word spreads (Casa only opened last October or so), more Guatemalans will be helping at Casa.
This morning I assembled a portion of a 13,246 piece mailing. This afternoon I am going back for more. This isn´t as miserable as it may sound. I enjoy a bit of tedium from time to time. Especially when that tedium is accompanied by the dulcet tones of Sheena Easton´s ¨Morning Train¨ in Spanish. Fantastic.

Happy Streamer

There is a kid in my sixth grade class who looks an awful lot like my little brother Liam. Same hair, same eyes, same devilish grin (notable lack of gap tooth, though). I told him today that he looks like my brother, and I´m not sure how weird that was for him, coming from a blond girl. In any case, Liam and this kid look more like siblings than Liam and I do.
Something I haven´t yet blogged about is my Fourth of July. Some of the other American volunteers and I enjoyed some hot dogs and watermelon. (Never attempt to eat half a watermelon--even if it is quite a small watermelon. Discomfort is inevitable.) We had planned to shoot off some fireworks, too. I hear fireworks here every day. When it is a birthday or a holiday, people shoot off fireworks. Not pretty fireworks. They shoot them off during the day. There are no colorful bursts of light. Only loud loud booms. When they went to buy fireworks, though, my fellow volunteers reported that what they found for sale were sketchier than sketchy, and they bought a ¨Happy Streamer¨ instead. This little cardboard tube was not a firework at all, and was found to contain a large metal spring and some tinsel, which shot out three feet or so when twisted. That was my Fourth. It was pretty enjoyable, though I did somewhat miss lighting Snakes on the sidewalk.
One final comment: This weekend I heard Alicia Keys´s ¨No One¨ en español. It was terrific.

A short list

Along with the work I do, the awesome setting, and the fact that my Spanish is improving, here are two things I really like about being in Guatemala:
1. I meet people from all over the world. Or America and Europe, at least. A lot of people come to Antigua to learn Spanish (Antigua is known for having a lot of Spanish schools, and for being a generally cool hang out), then end up looking around for volunteer work after they finish school. This brings them to the God´s Child Project. I spend time with people from Germany, Norway, Holland, France, Belgium, England, and of course the U.S. It is really neat.
2. I have had time to read. I just finished ¨White Teeth¨ by Zadie Smith. It is a novel that she published when she was only 25. It is really well done, colorful and amusing. I would recommend it. I also just finished ¨Nickel and Dimed¨ by Barbara Ehrenriech. This was also good, though it didn´t contain much I didn´t already know from watching the working poor episode of ¨30 Days.¨ It is a quick read, though, and a good chuck of it is about the author´s experience in the Twin Cities, which is extra interesting because of its proximity to my home. In any case, if you care to know about how difficult it is to earn a living in the United States, I would recommend that book, too.
That is all for today.
Take care.
Smile or something.

Casa and Carlos

I have two thoughts to share today.
My first is about Casa Jackson. When I began working there, it seemed like most of the kids were pretty healthy. This is because they were. A lot of the babies were nearly finished with their time at Casa. For this reason, a lot of the kids have since gone home (or in the case of Antonio and his brother [and my favorite kid at Casa] José Luís, to a ¨children´s center¨ because of custody issues and problems in their home). Currently, Casa is emptying out. I have been told three more kids are going home tomorrow or Friday. At that point, there will only be five kids at Casa. This is good for the kids, but bad for me. It´s fantastic that the kids are healthy enough to go home (along with some nutrition and health education for the families) but I miss them. Also, Casa with just a few very young, very weak babies is less fun that Casa with six or seven active toddlers. My complaining about this situation is pretty much useless, but I thought I´d write it anyway, as it is what I spend my time thinking about. I should also add that Casa will be, of course, admitting more children. They are going on a field visit on Monday to scope out some more sick kids.
And speaking of rescues... (Please excuse my arrogant Western volunteer attitude.)
Last Friday I was hanging out at the Dreamer Center (the project´s Guatemalan headquarters) with some other volunteers and this 10-yearl-old kid, Carlos, comes up and talks to us. In general, the kids at the Dreamer Center are super-affectionate and friendly, and this one especially so. He taught me and the other volunteers a couple of hand-clapping games (like ¨Miss Mary Mack¨ but faster and furiously Guatemalan) and had a good time laughing at our inadequacies. Also, every time he cracked up, I would too, and vice versa. We laughed much mroe than it really made sense to. I´m pretty sure he was amused by my goofy smile/teeth and I was just amused by his extreme giggly-ness. Anyway, Carlos was a good time.
Yesterday, I was talking to some other volunteers, and they told me about Carlos´s awful past. He was a victim of both sexual abuse and child trafficking until the project more or less ¨rescued¨ him. He´s now the adopted son of Bernardo, one of the GCP´s employees.
I really have no words for this. I am so amazed at how Carlos can go on being as fun and carefree as he is after what he´s gone through. I can´t imagine how that has affected him. I might extend this idea to all of Guatemala. It´s wild to think that people just go about their ordinary lives less than 15 years after a civil war and under what is currently more or less a failed state.
Something to ponder, I guess.
Oh, and one last thing: I might mention, though I shouldn´t be counting, that today marks my first complete month here. And so far, I am very glad I am here. Hope all is well wherever you are.

So little qualification, so much broccoli

The most notable new development in my life here in Guatemala is my teaching English at the Scheel Center, so that is where I´ll start my post. From now on, every Monday and Thursday morning I will be teaching English to three of the classes at the Scheel Center. The Scheel Center, if I haven´t mentioned this already, is a school run by the God´s Child Project specifically for poor kids who are something like 3 to 7 years behind in school (because they have to work, because they have crappy homes, because whatever).
So, being plopped down in a school with no qualifications whatsoever is a little difficult. I am working with a woman named Susan, who actually is a qualified teacher in the U.S., though she taught science classes there. She has never taught English, and obviously neither have I. I´m pretty much caught between thinking that my teaching is better than nothing and thinking that the students deserve a whole lot more than ¨better than nothing.¨ In any case, it is maybe going as well as it could, considering all the guesswork we do. Today I had the pleasant surprise of teaching by myself because Susan is sick. I was pretty freaked out, but it turned out to be fine-ish. I didn´t really have to teach, because the students had a test. Poor kids. Two strangers who have never taught English and who had only spent 40 minutes with them flipped through their former teacher´s lesson plans and made up tests that turned out to be wildly difficult for two of the classes, and just challenging for the other. It´s difficult to find a good pace. Because we only teach twice a week, we can´t spend a lot of time going easy and finding where they are comfortable. In reality, I only have 12 lessons with them left. Hm. My thoughts on my teaching job are all kinds of conflicting. I´m not sure exactly how I feel, but I know I am going to keep doing it.
Other than the difficulty of not knowing what I am doing at all, being at the Scheel Center is pretty cool. The students are very friendly, and they like to talk to me. The teachers are super nice, too, and very considerate re: my pathetic Spanish-speaking ability. I get to watch a recess when I am there, too, and that is cool. The kids either just hang out at the school or go outside to the dirt lot with two soccer goals. The kids are pretty good, and it´s quite the picture. Kids playing soccer in the foreground. A hillside covered in mad poverty and the Jocotenango slums in the background. Brandon, the director of the Scheel Center, told me that some of the houses on that hill are little more than sticks, mud, garbage, whatever, and absolutely wash away when it rains hard enough. It is wild.
So, that´s a difficult place for a transition. Um. Just imagine that that paragraph flows nicely into the next.
Last Friday at the vegetable distribution, we gave out a ridiculous amount of frozen broccoli. Ridiculous. I wish I had counted all the half-full garbage bags. 60? 70? It was a small hill of frozen broccoli, a giant donation from I don´t know where. Some of the women ended up walking home with one of those garbage bags-o´-broccoli on their heads, a full bag of other veggies over their shoulders. It was absurd watching it all come out of the freezer. I laughed. But I also thought it was fairly representative of the wild donations received by the nonprofit sector. My friend Jess told me all her first grade students went home last week with two free bottles of lotion, one of which was a sunless tanner for ¨fair skin.¨ Yeah. I know.
Dang. Okay, I actually did make an organized-ish list of things to write about, but I have been on the internet for a long time, am itching to get outside, am not thinking terribly lucidly anymore, and do not care to write more. So, know that more is coming. Just...later.
Kudos for reading this, or for taking the more efficient route of skipping to the bottom.
Adios.

La Pared

Even I am surprised at the difficulty I seem to have with blogging at least every other day. It seems I haven´t blogged since Wednesday. Hm.
Sadly, this is going to be another short post. I feel like I have a number of things I could write about, but my brain is not organized enough to write something respectable. This post, then, will serve 1. as a simple reminder that I am still alive and well, and 2. as an addition to the list of English songs I´ve heard in Spanish:
Where, Oh Where Could My Baby Be - Pearl Jam
Another Brick In the Wall - Pink Floyd
Longer post tomorrow? Could be.

Updatez

It has been a while since the last post. My apologies.
Sunday was the day I climbed a volcano for the second time. Again, no lava. A third trip up Pacaya is on the agenda for a few weeks from now. Silly volcano.
Monday I worked another overnight shift at Casa Jackson. That was, again, not as bad as you might expect.
Yesterday was more Casa Jackson.
Today I went to the Scheel Center and met with Susan, who is teaching English with me. Tomorrow we´ll be diving into that head first-ish. It should be fun.
At lunch today I ate some unidentifiable animal part. Esperanza was eating it, but made chicken for everyone else. She asked if I wanted to try some, and not knowing what it was, I agreed to a little. It tasted like liver smells, but I am pretty sure they said it was a part of the head. Brain? Tongue? Of what animal? I really don´t know. Language barrier FTL.
I´m surprised I don´t have more to say about the past four days. I thought they were pretty good days, but apparently they were mostly uneventful.
I´ll let you know if anything exciting happens in the next four days.

Art, Weather, Songs, Drool

I have met an interesting person. Sophie is a woman who volunteers at Casa Jackson. She is taking a six month sabbatical from her regular job as a graphic designer for the Royal Shakespeare Company. When she told me where she works, my eyes popped out of my head. (One eye was successfully returned, but the other was replaced with a fake magical one. Now I look like Mad-Eye Moody.) She is also an artist and currently has an exhibition up in town, so today I went to see it. It was pretty cool. It´s neat to see some art then get to talk to the artist. I meet lots of neat people through the GCP. Hurray.
It has been brought to my attention that I have not provided any comment on the weather here. I guess this could be interesting? May through October is Guatemala´s rainy season, so a typical day is clear to partly cloudy and not too warm in the morning, pretty hot from about noon to 2:00, and cloudy (and very likely raining) in the afternoon and evening. It gets pretty cool at night. I like the weather. I don´t mind the heat, and I really like that the humidity makes my hair wavy. Here, I have mermaid hair.
Update to the list of fun English-to-Spanish songs: ¨Going to the Chapel.¨
Also, I feel compelled to add a note that I am not at my regular internet place, and I just might never come back to this new one. There are two huge black dogs, and one of them just finished slobbering all over the inside of my backpack. Gross.

Ordinary and extraordinary

I´ve been experiencing an interesting phenomenon. Everything here is becoming ordinary. Not that I don´t think Antigua is interesting and beautiful, but I´m definitely getting used to living here. It´s not the best thing, I think, because I don´t want to take my experience for granted. I need to spend more time outside, and definitely more time speaking Spanish.
Hm.
Aside from that, something very out of the ordinary happened today. I was hanging out at the Dreamer Center (the GCP´s main office/school/etc.), waiting for today´s volunteer assignment, and who did I run into but Stacy Schaffer. I find it extraordinary that I encounter Stacy (one of only 19 in my high school graduating class) in Antigua Guatemala when I had only seen her a couple times since high school in North Dakota. Okay, maybe it is not that extraordinary considering the popularity of the God´s Child Project in ND, but I was still quite surprised. Anyway, Stacy is here to volunteer for a few weeks, and that is pretty neat.
Otherwise, what I have been up to lately: On Tuesday I helped sort clothing donations which will go out to communities next week. Wednesday I did that again in the morning and was at Casa Jackson in the afternoon (where we again got a new skinny baby). This morning I got to collect donated veggies again (We had trouble with that. At two of the farms, the boss wasn´t around, so they didn´t give us any. One said to come back in the afternoon, another said come back next week. We only got half the donations we usually get. Hopefully they will be able to collect from that one farm this afternoon.), and this afternoon I will be at Casa Jackson.
That is all for now. I have to run to lunch.
Hasta luego.

Some update-y goodness

Jess and I finally got to Cerro de la Cruz today. We got there in two hours when it totally could have taken 30 minutes. We spent some time searching again for the tourist police, then once we actually got on our way we didn´t realize there was a staircase up the hill. We instead walked the long curvy road (for cars, not people) to the cross. Of course, when we got there it was a cool view. I think I´ll go up there again some time, just to look. It was nice.
Other than that I don´t have a lot of news. It rained like whoa yesterday. We got a new person in our house. I found a bakery with really tasty sugar cookies. Generally, things for me are all kinds of good.

I took a walk today

Today is the day I climbed a volcano.
It was cool. We didn´t go all the way to the top because, let´s be honest, Pacaya is an active volcano. We walked through a bunch of foresty stuff then up a bunch of volcanic rock. It was hot near the top. I only saw a tiny bit of lava, so I think I might go up again sometime this summer. We´ll see. Jess took a few pictures, which I might post eventually if I get a hold of them somehow. Not having a camera here was not entirely the best idea, I think.
In other news, Josè Luis at Casa Jackson has started walking. I put him a foot or two from me, and he walks a few wobbly steps, then he falls and I catch him and we giggle and hug. It´s lots of fun.
Speaking of children, I suppose, I learned about the tradition here re: lost baby teeth. In the U.S., we have the tooth fairy, but here they throw the tooth on the roof, and a special mouse comes and takes the tooth away, leaving five quetzales (a little more than 50 cents). I´m not sure whether the money is collected by the kids from the roof or what. That part was a little unclear.
Anyhow. That is an update.

Birthdays and malnutrition

As I have already mentioned, it was Esperanza´s birthday on Wednesday, but I did not note that the following day was Erin´s (dentist from the U.S. who is staying in my host house, too) and Esperanza´s daughter-in-law´s birthday. In a few days it will be Sofia´s (Esperanza´s granddaughter) birthday. So on Wednesday, we lit candles and sang the birthday song four times. I was so amused. Four times. They sing the song in English, then have a second verse in Spanish. The second verse is ¨We want cake¨times three and another line that I don´t remember.

By they way, Happy Birthday to my uncles Dean and Don.

On an entirely unrelated note, I worked an overnight shift last night at Casa Jackson. I was afraid that it would be super stressful, a full twelve hours of bawling kids. However, it turns out that most of the kids sleep for most of the night. I also enjoyed the opportunity to practice my Spanish with the nurse and the other volunteer, both of whom only spoke Spanish. Thoughout the night, however, I became increasingly suspicious that the kids were holding a ¨Pee on Bri¨contest. I was peed on by three kids, but Dani takes home first place. He got extra points for throwing up on me.
Dani is the newest kid at Casa Jackson, so it is understandable that his body isn´t functioning perfectly. He´s 19 months old and only 13 pounds. When he isn´t being fed (he eats or drinks every two hours), he tries to take bites off his clothes. I suspect (and I am not a medical professional) that he is constantly hungry but can´t eat enough to fill him up. His stomach is probably pretty little, and eating too much leads to barfing. Dani also spends quite a bit of time crying weakly and calling for his mom. I´m not entirely sure (because I have not studied statistical Spanish), but I think a sign in the Casa office says that a kid is required to have a weight three standard deviations below normal in order to qualify for care there. It´s a bummer to be telling you about this stuff, but I figure you should know about what Casa Jackson does. Right now, Dani is the only kid at Casa that looks extremely ill. The other kids look okay, even though I´ve been told they all show up looking as bad as Dani. Actually, one little girl, Dulce, just went home, fit as a fiddle, today. (Comma vomit. Sorry.) It´ll be cool to see Dani get well, too.

An assortment of topics

Today it is raining. I am happy to know that my shoes (unlike my late watch) are water-resistant.
We got a new kid at the malnutrition center today. He is skinny and mostly unhappy. I am excited to see/help him get better.
Three occasions today. It is Guatemalan Fathers Day, and in celebration, people shot off fireworks at 7:00 this morning. It is also Esperanza´s birthday. Extended family have been over all day celebrating for these two reasons. Also, today is the last day in Guatemala for Bryan. Bryan is another GCP volunteer. He lives in the same host house with me and has spent the past 40 days working at Casa Jackson. I think he is also having a little àdios party tonight.
I´ll leave you with an interesting fact about Antigua: Traffic lights are illegal here. The city wants to maintain that ¨really really old town¨ feeling, so no traffic lights allowed.
Goodbye, all, and happy belated Bloomsday.

¨Faithfully¨ en Español

I´ve been here a week now, and so far so good. The biggest disappointment is probably that my watch broke last Saturday. Apparently ¨water resistant¨ was just a joke I didn´t get.
I don´t think I´ve mentioned much about my host family yet. They are terrific. I live with a retired couple and their grown up son, who is a cop. The mom, Esperanza, is a good cook and is very understanding re: my loathing of eggs. The whole family also hangs out and chit chats after supper, and they´re really good about speaking slowly and helping me improve my Spanish. Que bueno.
Jess and I made a second attempt at visitng Cerro de la Cruz yesterday but failed again. We weren´t sure which building/door held the tourist police, and so we asked some passing police officers. They sent us in what we found out was the way wrong direction. So, we will try again later.
I also haven´t written about an interesting thing I saw on Saturday. Jess and I came across a parade/specatacle. A bunch of older-ish women, dressed up as old ladies with grey wigs and masks with lots of garish make-up, danced in two lines following the lead of a little boy dressed as an old man. Loud music was playing off the back of a truck and a man made occasional comments on the dancers. At one point he exclaimed, ¨¡Look at their bodies go!¨ I was amused, even though I didn´t know the significance of what was going on and can´t remember what the announcer called it. Some things in life (and especially in Guatemala) are mysteries.
I guess that´s all for now. Hope everyone is well.
P.S. I didn´t actually hear Journey´s ¨Faithfully¨ in Spanish, but it would be funny if I did.

Rollin´ on a river.

Yesterday I walked around Antigua like whoa. Jess and I were going to go to El Cerro de la Cruz (Google it. The one in Antigua, not the one in Mexico), but we couldn´t find the tourist police (yes, tourist police) place. I guess it can be dangerous to walk up the hill unprotected, so the tourist police will walk up with you for free. Anyway, we couldn´t find the place, so we walked all over Antigua and looked at a lot of churches and stuff. Antigua, by the way, is home to a two mile long stations of the cross. Whoa.
Anyway, it seems that I am being kicked out of this internet place because the guy running it has to leave. I´ll post more tomorrow.
Until then, something else that is amusing in Spanish is ¨Proud Mary.¨
Adios.

Stuff, plus things that are amusing when translated to Spanish

Hello. Sorry it has been three days, but here is a quick update.
The past few days I have been at Casa Jackson but I also got to help with a food (mostly vegetable) distribution to local families at the Dreamer Center. That was neat. The GCP just drives around to local farmers and asks them if they have any leftover produce. They collected a whole bunch of carrots, radishes, peppers, leeks, mini zucchini, cilantro, scallions, and more. Again, pretty neat.
I found out recently I´ll be teaching English regularly in the mornings at the Scheel Center. I start that in two weeks.
As for things that are amusing when translated to Spanish, in the past few days I have seen Family Guy and heard both ¨Time After Time¨and ¨A Whole New World¨in Spanish. I enjoyed it.
Yes, this is a short post, but I have to run to lunch. Maybe more tonight. Or maybe not. Vamos a ver.
So long.

Things I have done

Yesterday I walked around Antigua with my friend Jess. It was great. I forgot how awesome it is to walk around a town full of stuff to look at (including volcanoes).
This morning I was at Casa Jackson again, hanging out with babies. This afternoon I helped in the kitchen of the Dreamer Center then walked to the Bodegona (the supermarket) and purchased some water.
The end.

I´m here*

Hey there. This´ll just be a quick post to say I have arrived safely and spent the day volunteering. I spent the morning in the first grade classroom of the Scheel Center and the afternoon at the malnutrition center, helping to clean and hanging out with an unhappy baby.
Also, for anyone who traveled to Guatemala with me last year, I´ll have you know that literally the first person I saw when I stepped off the plane was a dude with "the best kind" of hairstyle.
Solo digo.
Have to go.
More later.
Good night.

*"here"=Guatemala

What I'm doing here*

Hello, everyone.
For the sake of anyone who cares to hear about my daily goings-on while I am in Guatemala, I will be keeping a blog.
I leave tomorrow morning. Because I will be traveling all day, I probably won't post again until Tuesday. After that, I hope to be posting at least every other day. We'll see what my schedule is like.
That is all.
For now.
Hasta luego.
*"here" = in a blog.