It's official. My new COS (Close of Service) date is June 1st, rather than March 27th. I need the extra 2 months to get my projects done, and because I love it here and I'm not ready to leave yet! I don't know how to do life in the States.
It's amazing how much life has changed and how much I have gone through in the past year to get to the point that I am at today. I was realizing this at Agua Caliente today after giving some talks about trash. I was sitting in the pool staring at the forest (my favorite reflective time) and realized that a year ago today was when my Guatemalan life was turned upside down. I was miserable for so long, but now I am so completely happy with life. It's amazing.
Thanks to all of you who have donated to the bottle classroom project! We currently have Q4000 which is enough to get started building the supports. I expect more donations to roll in but probably not enough to cover the total cost (about Q21,000) so we are soliciting the rest from a national governmental institution called ProRural. So the project is moving along! When we start building I will start uploading photos. And more donations are always welcome as we will also need to buy desks, chalkboard, etc.
Last weekend I climbed Volcan Tacana with a group of Peace Corps friends. It's the second highest volcano in Guatemala (4095 meters or something like that). It was breath-takingly beautiful as well as quite an adventurous trip! I don't know if I can do it justice in describing it, so I will just leve you with a photo of me on top (at the Guatemalan-Mexican border) and a photo of the truck that we rode out in (in the back).
On the way back, I had a very hilarious encounter. On the bus up from Xela to my town and old man sat next to me an introduced himself. He asked me if I work in the Municipal Forestry Office. When I replied yes, he asked if I remembered him and writing him a letter of recommendation for getting a visa into the States. Obviously not, since I have never written one before. I asked him when someone wrote him that. While looking up searching for the answer, he slowly replied (in Spanish, obviously), "In the year 1985." Inside I was cracking up, but I managed to calmly explain to him that if a señorita wrote him that 25 years ago then she would be a señora now, which I clearly am not. Or maybe I do look like I'm 50 and not 23? Oh yeah, then I got a whiff of alcohol on his breath (it was 1pm).
Okay, well I'm sure there's tons more to write about like my dog, my basketball team, my running, etc, but this is enough for now! Cuidense mucho!
When I was teaching environmental education in Chahal, I asked my kids to write a story where they are a drop of water and must tell the tale of how they pass through the water cycle. So awhile back, right after soaking in the hot springs in Agua Caliente, I decided to do a little creative writing on that general theme. You should give it a shot too!
Yo soy el agua. I was born in the mountain. I have lived quite a life. I have traveled more than God himself. Oh how happy and free I feel when I am running fast between rocks and fish or free falling from the sky. Unlike you humans, I need no parachute.
My life is exhilarating. But strange. I am one being but in many parts. The number of bodies I have are countless, yet they are all me. The same initials siempre: H2O.
Today my mind, my thoughts, my feelings are in Agua Caliente. They have trapped me. I had heard reports of this but until now, have not had the time to investigate. I know these people love me. I give them life, but more so, I give them wealth. They use me and tell everyone I'm theirs. No one owns me! If they would only ask I would kindly fill their pools with my body and embrace their people and their guests, but they do not ask.
That is the problem with humans: they think they are the dueños of everything natural in this world. Why do you think there are floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides and forest fires? We, the original inhabitants of this planet, are trying to send a message to Mr. Homo Sapien: you can't continue this game. It's not Monopoly where you buy up everything you can. Let's play Red Rover.
I have been slacking on writing lately, but for a good reason: I've been having too much fun! I finally really really love Sija and have friends there and simply no time to blog. The site change was devastating initially, and I still wish it would've never happened, but I have acclimated to Sija and am really happy there.
Right now I am back in Springfield. I've been here for almost two weeks and go back to Guatemala tomorrow. I've really enjoyed seeing my family and a handful of friends and taking advantage of a few things the States has to offer (like being to run in shorts, roller skating, and driving in a car), but I am not ready to live in this country yet. It is overwhelming and too fast-paced. I love the slow, tranquila life that I lead in Guatemala.
Just before I came home was Sija's feria which was so so so fun! I rode the crazy-fast and probably dangerous ferris wheel, ate tons of feria food (churros, cotton candy, pupusas, caliente, churrascos, etc.), played in the basketball tournament, watched the parades and convites (children and grown men dancing in the streets while dressed in costumes of cartoon characters), and went to the dances and danced my butt off!
The picture below is from the Noche Vaquera (Cowboy Night) dance. I won that t-shirt because I was tricked into a beer-chugging contest on stage in front of everyone! They needed two women to participate in a contest, so Sarah and I went up because I'm never one to turn down a competition, but they brought out two beers and said "vamos a ver quien tiene la garganta mas suave de todas." (We're going to see who has the smoothest throat of all.) So much for not drinking in town! At least I won, though.
Feria is a happy time. It made me so happy that I decided to extend my service two months! I need the extra time to make sure I can complete the sanitary landfill project and the bottle classroom, but moreover I just want to have be able to appreciate Sija now that I am really truly happy there. I don't want to rush out just as I'm getting my rhythm, like I had to do in Chahal.
The projects I mentioned are going well, but there is not much to update because during December we really didn't get much work done due to the feria and the holidays. I didn't mind though. I really enjoyed just being part of the town (and playing with my dog).
I think I'm also much happier now because I am finally running again. It took far too long to recover from my ankle sprain and I'm still not 100% but I am out there tearing it up (and feeling safe).
On top of festivities in Sija, since I last wrote I went to a delicious Thanksgiving potluck with a handful of other PCVs and I climbed Volcan Tajumulco, which was AMAZING! It is the highest point in Central America at 4220 meters (around 14,000 feet). A small group of us PCVs went and tagged along with a large-scale clean-up of the volcano -- hundreds of local people and a few dozen from other parts of Guatemala climbed up with trash bags.
We camped out in one of the craters and hiked to the peak for sunset and sunrise the next day. It was absolutely breath-taking! We were able to see the sunrise next to the chain of volcanoes! My only complaint is that it was extremely cold! We huddled around the campfire at night with our beans and avocados, but the fire just stole what little oxygen we had to breathe at such a high altitude thus resulting in painful headaches. Therefore, we had to choose between freezing and splitting headaches.
Here are a handful of photos from my week in México. If you read my post about the trip, you'll get a better context for them. I'll put more on facebook too.
Mezcal factory in Oaxaca
View of the Monte Alban ruins in Oaxaca
Julio and I at the Palenque ruins in Chiapas
Cañon del Sumidero, Chiapas
Agua Azul, Chiapas -- reminded me a bit of Las Conchas, but on a much larger scale
"Vive y deja vivir" -- "Live and let live" Lupita sure is a smart lady!
Loved the colors in San Cristobal!
Julio hanging out with the Zapatistas in San Cristobal de Las Casas
My first attempt at crossing a border by land was an adventure. In an airport, it’s so simple and straightforward. You can’t escape without your stamps. Not true at the Guatemala-Mexico border at La Mesilla.
After a couple hours on a chicken bus, a tuk-tuk (motorized rick-shaw) took me the remaining kilometer to the border. There, I walked beneath the large “Bienvenidos a México” sign, climbed onto a bus and off I went. The Mexican town was 4 kilometers down the road, so I figured that was where we would all pass through Immigration. Nope. We kept on driving down the road.
I asked the driver to stop. “Perdón, Señor, I think I need a stamp in my passport.”
“Really? Okay, if you want one of those, you have to walk back over there.”
He got my backpack out and drove off.
The passport-stamper looked through my passport and coldly told me that I needed the stamp for leaving Guatemala. “But nobody stopped me and told me to get one.” He didn’t care. “Go back to the Guatemalan side and get one.” So I hopped on a bus, re-crossed the border, again without anyone stopping me, got my stamp, and then came back to get the Mexican stamp.
It was good that I made the extra effort to get the stamps, because once I was on the road in México, Immigration stopped our bus at least 5 times. Though they didn’t really care about me, they were looking for Guatemalans that were trying to cross illegally. At one point, they took two off and the bus left them behind.
My destination was San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, where Julio and I planned to meet up on Wednesday and explore the state for a week. He, however, didn’t show up until Thursday morning, leaving me worrying. Typical Julio.
This was my first time in México. I was expecting it to be similar to Guatemala, but it was much cleaner and more organized. I felt safer there too.
Anyway, we explored San Cristobal a bit, learned about the Zapatista rebellion, then headed to the Mayan ruins in Palenque. Strangely, it was cheaper to use a tour agency than public transportation. They took us first to Agua Azul, which is a huge series of waterfalls much like my beloved Las Conchas, but bigger. The driver gave us an hour there. When we were all ten minutes late, he yelled at and told us that next time he would leave us behind. At Misol-Ha, another cool waterfall, we had 40 minutes. This is why I don’t like organized tours: you can’t take time to appreciate the place. I would’ve loved to have a picnic and go for a swim. Next we had 2 hours in Palenque. It’s very similar to Tikal: Mayan ruins tucked away in the jungle. All very cool, just rushed.
The next day we took a boat tour of the Cañon del Sumidero, which is a beautiful Canyon with walls 200 meters high at some points. It used to be a raging river, but now, as in many places, it is a reservoir that was created by a large hydroelectric dam. At some places it is now more than 200 meters deep. The guide casually told us that the town of Usumacinta was relocated. No big deal, right? Gotta love dams.
We decided to move on from Chiapas to Oaxaca since we saw most everything we wanted to in just a couple days. We had 2 ½ days in Oaxaca, which definitely was not enough. It is a very diverse state with respect to both nature and culture, thus I will have to return one day. During the time we had there, we went to the “Mezcal capital of the world” and saw how they make the famous artisan alcohol from maguey plants. We visited Monte Alban, the first urban settlement in Mesoamerica. And of course, we ate lots of food, as Oaxaca’s cuisine is delicious (including grasshoppers, a delicacy there).
Tuesday night I made the long trip back to Guatemala: a12 hour overnight bus ride from Oaxaca to Tapachula, another border crossing, plus about 4 hours of travel back to my site from the border. The border crossing was again interesting but not because of passport stamps. Before crossing the border, there was a handful of men with wads of Guatemalan money so that travellers could change their pesos to quetzales. I already had quetzales, but some Canadians that I had started travelling with needed to change their money. We were about to when some guy got pissed because they gave him a poor rate, threatened to call the cops, then the money-changers punched him in the face. So we left and I lent them Q100 until we found an ATM.
This trip was a much needed respite from my projects. I have been driving myself crazy worrying about how I am going to manage to finish everything in just four months. So I told myself that on this trip I would not think about Peace Corps. Plus, Julio wasn’t going to want to hear me talk about that. Thus it was a very peaceful, tranquil week. And it made me really excited for my travels next year when I really won’t have any commitments to worry about nor my whereabouts to report to Peace Corps … I’ll only have to report my whereabouts to my mom!
p.s. I'll put pictures up within the next couple of days.
It's only been two weeks since I last wrote, yet a lot has happened that I want to share! I just got back from México today, but I will save that for another post.
Before I left last week, I went to Agua Caliente to present the Reglamento de Manejo de Desechos Sólidos (Solid Waste Management Regulations) for the sanitary landfill and trash collection to the community and to train the leaders about the program. It went really well! The project is moving along.
(The center of the village. No wonder I love this community! There's even a bit of a night life -- jovenes playing in the pools, people eating street food, etc.)
My friend Sarah (a Healthy Schools PCV) went with me to help give the training. I've never really planned and executed my own one before, so it was nice to have the assistance. And she fell in love with the community, which made me fall even more in love with it. It's a very rural village of 1000 people, but only about 500 in the center. The people are very involved, and very warm and friendly, but that could be due to the hot-spring-fed pools that they have in the center of town! I should just go live there... they're free for community-use.
(Sarah helping me teach the 4Rs)
Anyway, the community meeting was successful. We paired my presentation with the election of the community mayor for 2010, thus many people showed up. However, they were all men. Apparently, women are not allowed to vote, or at least that's what we were told. I think that it's actually due to the machismo in the community: the women are just expected to stay in the home. It's really sad, but through my project, I'm trying to increase the female participation.
(Discussion of the Reglamento. Don Meme was very animated in favor of it.)
We read and discussed the 6 page Reglamento, then it was approved. Simple. On Monday, eight leaders (1 woman, 7 men -- better than the election) joined us to learn about the project and how to teach "Reduce-Reuse-Recycle," composting, and the ins-and-outs of the Reglamento to the community members. I was hoping for more, but those that were there all participated, so maybe it was better. Quality over quantity. These leaders will start working with their neighbors on the themes and I'll be going back on December 2nd to train others and hopefully to dig out the trench for the landfill.
The mayoral election was intriguing. The candidates were nominated by the community that afternoon based on who hadn't served yet. It's a requirement that everyone serves as mayor twice in his lifetime. Those that were nominated, protested against it, while everyone else gave speeches in favor of them, thus diverting the attention from themselves. Eventually they settled on two men (they take turns -- one month on, one off). Everyone was content, except for those men! I commented that Obama won the presidency in the exact same way, which made them all laugh. Humor is so easy here.
At the moment, this is my favorite project because everyone is so involved and excited about it. The trail, for example, is lacking involvement from the group. I felt guilty going on vacation this past week because we were supposed to have contracted laborers to finish the trail. Found out upon my return today that nothing happened! I'm glad I didn't skip México for the trail!
I'm a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Guatemala. This is an account of my service as an ecotourism volunteer. Now I am traveling by land through Central and South America and will continue updating it.
...My blog is mine, not the Peace Corps', so everything said here are my thoughts, not theirs...FYI.
