Jungle Hike :)

Hey guys! Sorry for the delay. . busy busy. . A few things to talk about. .

1. New job! Last year my partner SueEllen and I were responsible for implementing and coordinating health and hygiene programs in 25 rural schools, every school in our district. That was going great, we had 8 schools that we wanted to certify this year, give or take. . .We were really impressed by many schools and disappointed by a few. . Now we're responsible for all of the superintendents (CTAs) in our department (Guatemala's version of a state), 23 in all! This is another pilot project in which each CTA will pick 2 schools to work in and implement the program, so we'll be in 46 schools. We're trying to make the program more and more sustainable so we're teaching the people higher up in the system how to make Healthy Schools work. . . It's a great opportunity! We're going to be responsible for training, workshops, helping pick schools, monitoring and evaluation, development of materials, technical assistance, and much more. We'll be traveling 3 days a week and have office hours in the Minstry of Education office in our department. . . It's so exciting! So, I had to move from my small town to a much bigger one because 2 girls replaced Sue and I. We are now living in Tecpan which is really close to Santa Apolonia, so we'll still keep in contact with the families and friends from Santa.

2. Semana Santa! Over Holy Week 5 friends and I took some vacation days to hike to a really cool ruins site in the jungle (Peten). It was a great hike on which we say lots of monkeys, scorpions, tucan like birds, iguanas, wild turkeys, a peacock, and some other birds etc. The first and last day were somewhere around 23 km and the 2nd and 4th were about 28km.. Lots of walking but it was so beautiful, so secluded, and so fun. The ruins site is great because It's not totally excavated but you can see where the ancient Mayans really lived and went about their daily lives. It's a preclassic and classic site, a lot of the preclassic stuff was built over when a new generation came later. Why they left El Mirador is still a mystery.

Also. . . On the last night we got to the last camp and the vigilante or like guard had gone fishing on a horse 2 hours from camp and came back with some unidentified fish and some catfish (called pesgato and pez means fist and gato cat which I thought was funny). They never get mean or fresh things like that. . . They started cooking. . . making tortillas which I had never seen men do. . . anyways they made fish soup and gave us all bowls! Which is crazy because they have so little yet they shared what little they had with us. .. So we were eating bowls of broth w/ onions and WHOLE cooked fish. . . It was a beautiful thing although now easy to do. . . Grant, a vegetarian in our group, ate it our of gratitude and politeness which I thuoght was cool. It was actually really good, although a little different from usual. We were just struck by the kindness of those people. .

The 2nd night Ashleigh, Kelsey, and I slept on top of the 2nd largest pyramid. .. It was windy! But had a great view. . . Then at 3am it began to rain and we had no tent so we had to climb down in the dark using one flashlight between the 3 of us. . . We had to use a rope to get down. . . needless to say it was an adventure. . . We saw some great sunsets on that trip as well. . . The rest of the trip went smoothly and I arrived not much worse for the wear . .. I arrived with a few tick friends, blister, and minus one toenail :)

I'm more than halfway through my service, although I'm really considering extending to finish out the school next year. . . I need to start studying for the GRE! Grad school apps aren't due any time soon but it's study time now. . .I've finally decided I think I want to get my Masters in Public Policy or something closely related. Down here we're working directly with a public policy and the process is so fascinating and appliccable to so many things . . . But we'll see. . . I have at least a year and maybe more to change my mind :)

3. My new house. It's amazing. It's bigger than my old one and we painted it amazing and bright colors. . . So buch light gets in and I have a tiny backyard with GRASS which is unheard of out here. . . I feel so refreshed living there and I love to go home, be at home, entertain, do my laundry in the pila, sweep, mop. . . anything in my house!

Anybody have good book reccommendations? I just read Papillon and a while ago read The Fountainhead which were both great. . .

Miss you guys! I'll be home in August for 2 weeks fro Britt's wedding!

Love,

Jess