Visit to a Volunteer

Liz and I were finally able to get out together and go and visit another volunteer who lives pretty far away from us. After 6 hours in two buses and sitting in a mountain pass for a good hour while needing restrooms very badly, we finally arrived and met Sidney. We walked through the busy streets of his town and finally made it to his house. We relaxed there for a while and enjoyed his rooftop garden. It wasn't long though until he had us running around doing all sorts of fun things. Our first night he took us to a friend's house where we had some of the best pizza I have ever had and watched a movie.


The next morning we got up and after peanut butter and banana sandwiches, started hiking over the mountains into the neighboring community that he works in to see the cheese factory that was started generations ago by italian immigrants. The hike was gorgeous and as we came down the other side we were greeted by children who wanted us to take their picture. It turned out that they were children of one of the teachers that Sidney works with and they have had a lot of Peace Corps volunteers come through their home.



As we made our way through town we saw that a lot of people were lined up in the town center and they were gathered around a cement truck. As we watched we realized that they were each taking an 80lb. bag up the road to a site where someone was building their home. It was very nice to see everyone helping out and seeing that strong sense of community. We also saw very run down houses as well as some very shy cows.


The cheese factory was the most amazing house/homestead we have yet seen in Guatemala. It was huge with healthy livestock and rolling green fields. The cows all wore bells around their necks and everything reminded us of being in Switzerland. The cafe was open there but they only were offering cheese sandwiches in tortillas that were awesome. We paired that with some fresh squeezed limeade and we were in heaven as we tried to rest up for our hike back over the mountain...but we ended up taking a bus back instead.




As you can see the farm was gorgeous and they even have cottages you can rent if you want to spend the weekend there.


After our long hike we made chicken curry for dinner and jammed out on the guitar. We also hung out on the roof of his house. He is still lacking in furniture so we lounged in the tires that he was in the process of turning into planter boxes.

Our last night together we ate at a restaurant that was founded by a Peace Corps volunteer a few years back. It has since been a very profitable venture for the community and the profits go to help mayan children from the area. All in all it was a pretty amazing week and it made us very ready to be done with training and off to our new site. Just a few more weeks!!!

Visit to a Rose Plantation

For class the other day we were very fortunate to be able to visit a rose plantation. It was really cool to see how it all worked and how much organization goes into mass production of flowers for specific holidays. The top picture is of my language group walking with Miguel, the brother of my host mom. He is the manager here and the green houses in the picture represent only a few of the many on the property. Below is a picture of a rose with a cover on it. We learned on our tour that the covers help the rose buds to grow longer and more vibrant. The other pic is of liz and my teacher isabel enjoying some of the many roses.

Below is Maggie with one of the employees. He is actually one of the top marathoners in all of Guatemala and just won the biggest marathon in the country. He runs to and from work everyday, some 20 km each way. A lot of the workers here run to work and the company has been working to get him some sponsors because he is still having to support his 6 kids at home.


The other pics are of the special garden where they are testing new plants to see if they will flourish in country, the room where they sort and pack the flowers and then Miguel with all the ladies. He was kind enough to give all the ladies their own dozen...I got a handshake.

Another tremor, eruption and clean up from Agatha

After having spent a week together in field based training and feeling like things were getting back to normal, we spent this week back with our host families. It was a rough transition, but we got through it. In other news, thursday night I was awoken by my room shaking. I didn't think too much of it during the night and the next morning I had forgotten it had even happened until other people mentioned feeling it too. I still don't know if the shaking was tectonic or volcanic because the local volcano was spewing ash with lava flowing down it in the morning. That was about it for the natural activities...oh wait.

This saturday we spent the day helping out in a community close by that was hit hard when the last volcano erupted. There were mudslides in this town that buried numerous houses including one of the language teachers for Peace Corps. His house had over 8 feet of mud in the ground floor and he lost everything. We worked for a few hours shoveling out mud and water and furniture and moving it to the street where 2 huge tractors were moving the dirt to dump trucks that then hauled the mud to the other side of town. The entire block was buried and Liz and I went to a different house around the corner that had about 4 feet of mud throughout it. The feeling there was very eerie as we shoveled and picked through this family's possessions that were now all completely ruined. For the most part the work felt just like that, work. That is until we were finally able to move the mud out of the hallway of this house enough to open one of the bedrooms.

When we were able to pry to door open, mud poured out and as I was standing in the room with one of the guys I had been working with all day, I noticed that he was taking a lot of interest in the contents. When I asked him whose house it was he said it was his family's and that this was his room that he shared with his little brother. It was the first time he had been into it since the mud claimed it over 2 weeks ago. He picked through his now ruined chest of drawers and was able to salvage his old backpack but almost everything else was caked or soaked and was unsalvageable. As we stood in the doorway watching him pick through all his earthly possessions, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy and the effects of this natural disaster took on a very real and human toll. I thought of the things that I had been complaining about earlier in the day...my hard bed, my new mud boots that were a little uncomfortable...none of those things seemed important at all and I felt pretty silly about my own pettiness.

The boys' bed was in the middle of the room and had raised with the mud and when we were finally able to get it out of there the little boy saw some of his things. He hopped on the pile of mud and grabbed his stuffed rabbit which he looked at for a second and then decided to throw away since it was destroyed with the rest of his things.

Field Based Training

We just got back from a week in the town of Salcaja and other cities nearby. The week was very busy and we spent most of our time preparing lessons and teaching groups of kids about how to make good decisions as well as lessons about HIV and Aids. Along the way we got to see a lot of amazing countryside, a lot of which had been ravaged by the tropical storm. In the first picture you can see an old man wearing the traditional skirt of the western highlands here. The next is of the church and market in Nahuala, where we recorded our public service announcements for the radio. The next is of Tim, Carlos and Laura. Tim works at the radio station and Carlos is our technical trainer. Laura is the volunteer leader.

Here is the radio station where it all went down and another photo of the church.

This was one of many disturbing photos in our hotel. A sample of the road damage caused by the storm and a picture of us in front of the oldest church in Central America with our new friend Carlos. He actually worked at a restaurant in Chicago that our friend Kevin would frequent, small world. He now owns a pizzeria in Salcaja and makes some of the most incredible nachos I have ever had.



This is a day shot of the same church, stolen from my friend Tony's camera. This is the hotel we stayed at...which I would not recommend to anyone. And the church is in Xela, or Quetzaltenango.


More shots of the church and a shot of Liz feeling very inspired.


This is the park in Xela as well as a shot of us in the bus and a shot of the school where we taught the kids about HIV and Aids.


Our Classroom during the presentation.



Kevin smelling the flowers. One of the many beautiful mountain towns and our friend Tony with a drunk guy laying in the middle of the street behind him. He started out on the sidewalk and somehow made his way into the middle of the street.


More shots of the country side. A picture of our first world cup game together and liz in our room with a framed towel on the wall.



We did have the chance to play a mean game of dodgeball at this park. It was a little weird that a tent was set up in the middle of the court, but it was for the upcoming carnival. You can see Liz smoking some kids off the line in a race for the dodgeballs. The other picture is of a giant section of a canyon that collapsed during the storms. This is on the Panamerican Highway.

Liz's group did a teacher training one day...I like to think of her more as a motivational speaker though. The other picture is of us at a different school with Liz teaching the kids about basketball...well, they actually taught her.



I loved the indigenous girls playing in their dresses and sandals with heels. And the last picture is of our group up on a hill overlooking one of the sites here.

All in all it was a great week. One more month and we will be out of training and out in our own sites!!!