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

Christmas Vacation

Amaaaazing. First: Thanks to those of you who have sent me Christmas packages. I really feel the love :) And I´m going to feel the extra 5 lbs. I'm going to gain from the delicious food. . . My parents came. . . We had one of the most amazing trips. . . We went to my site, Antigua, and Belice. We hiked an active volcano, ate delicious food, cruised the Carribean, etc. They really got the opportunity to see where I live and what I do as well as see how the country is. . . Also Ron and Jeanne English came, who are really good friends of the family. They vacationed with us a little as well. . . It was great to see so many familiar faces here! I think everybody had a great time, although I was a little overwhelmed at times being the tour guide. . .

We had the opportunity to lunch with my family in Pastores which was really fun. . . It was fun translating and having my family and Ron and Jeanne see where I lived during training. What else did we do? Well we had an adventurous bus-boat-bus-boat trip to Belize. . . We went fishing and snorkeling and generally enjoying ourselves on various Cayes in the Carribean. We chatted with some nice people, got some seafood, and walked the small peninsula of Placencia practically to death haha. My brother and I had some interesting creatures in our hotel room including a huge flying roach and a frog.

All in all the trip was great. I´m sure I'm missing something but I'm paying for internet time so. ..

I'm back in site now with a new school year to look forward to. True to form in thei country school will be starting at least a week late due to the fact that there aren't enough teachers signed up for the year. .. our huge training got postponed so we'll see what happens.

I really missed my other friends and family this holiday season. . . I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year and hope to hear from you all via email!

Love,

Jess

More Pictures and an Update

Hey hey. I'm a blogging machine these days. So. . .went to Chuisac, the village outside of San Martin. We finished a stove, the one in the school. It was a lot of work but really fun. It felt good to see some final results. We also had a fire outside of Katie's house that night which was AMAZING. I love campfires. . . We ate some good food thanks to Dana's cooking, played a lot of Boggle, and just hung out. I'm attaching pictures at the bottom of this update. There will be some pictures of the first phase and the second.

Also, some random stuff. 1: Music that I heard on the chicken bus on ONE trip: Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion, and Bryan Adams. I laughed out loud. 2. I went to the market and got a bag of jalapenos, a pound of potatoes, a pound of tomatoes, a pound of blackberries, 6 zucchini-like things, a head of broccoli, and a cucumber for under 3$. Amazing. 3. It's freezing here. I go to bed with sweats, shirt, sweatshirt, socks, a scarf, and my hood up. Also my sleeping bag is on top of my bed for extra warmth. It's cold out, lots of wind, no insulation or heating in the houses. Brrr. ..

Here are the pictures I promised. . . there are some of my house and the others are of the various parts of the stove project.


my kitchen



My front room


pila, dish keeper, outside that's inside. . . generally where i do most work like dishes, laundry, etc. The stairs lead to my roof. .



Entryway, bookshelf. Looks almost like the states :)



Shower. Pepto Pink Bathroom. .



Bathroom again. . .



Girls from my Girls Group making earrings. . .



Mixing lye or lyme. . . burns the eyes and nose!



Mixing cement . .



You have to level EVERYTHING.



Making rebar cage to reinforce cement in base. . . With Debbie and some Guatemalan kids. . .



Leveling everything. .



Campfire. . . Love it. .



Girls hard ar work!



Finished product!!

Mas Fotos

More Pics from the Ruins. . .



I realize it's not the best pic of me but look at those ruins :)

Some Pictures

Seno Cony's Wedding, and SueEllen and I in Indigenous Dress

A view from my roof. . .

Another view from my roof. . .

So as you can see, I live above a park. The other view I have is above the Municipal Building, which they just tore down and are rebuilding. On clear days I have views of 3 volcanoes. I just took pictures of the interior of my house, so I should post them soon.

Noviembre

That picture above is of the ruins in Copan, Honduras. We went for Halloween. . .and to see some new sites. . . It was gorgeous. We met some cool people, ate some good food, and I spent way too much money (haha). Those ruins were great, but can't compare to the ruins of Tikal, which i went to in June with all the teachers from my school district. I hope to post pictures of that later.

Sooo. .. November begins. I've actually been fairly busy considering there's no school right now. Last weekend I went to a friend's site to help with a stove project. The stoves in the homes and schools here are generally open fires that use a LOT of wood, create a lot of smoke, and really have effects on the lungs of the women and children that are around the cooking fires. There is not much ventilation, so the rooms fill with smoke to the extent that your eyes water and you cough when entering a room. Peace Corps has a design for a stove built with cement, cement blocks, bricks, a metal plate, and chimney that conserves the heat using less wood and allows smoke to escape the home, reducing respiratory sicknesses and diseases. For a school to be certified, they must have one of these stoves, so I went to Katie's site to learn how to build them. Also, it was about time to get my hands dirty and see some immediate results. It was a great experience. It was fun to work with the Guatemalans who were recieving the stoves. The kids were running around gophering, spreading out cement, wiring the cages we use to reinforce the cement, etc. Also, we got to work with a great group from the states who donated the money and came down to help with the actual construction. We had a great time with them, eating together, joking, talking about out lives in the Peace Corps. I'm going back this weekend to help finish with the tops of the stoves, you can only do one part at a time so the cement has time to dry.

In site I've been pretty busy as well. I have a graduation to go to today for the son of my host family here in Santa Apolonia. I have my girl's group that meets every week to bake, make crafts, and talk about career stuff, life stuff, etc. I'm mostly working right now to gain their trust, then will talk about real issues later. Also I have an English student Odely. She studied to be a bilingual secretary in school but they don't really practice English so I'm helping her out. Also, I'm dying to plant a garden on my roof. I have the pots and the soil, I just need to get the seeds and plants. We're beginning Kachiquel classes soon, which is the Native Mayan language around here. So, although there is no school, I've been keeping pretty busy.

I always think of things I want to remember to post on my blog, then ALWAYS forget! So frustrating. . . hope to think of more soon!

Que Frio

Hello All. So I'm really sorry I haven't updated since August 4th. . So in almost 3 months. . I have a lot to catch you up on! I'm going to go in order of events. . . .

SueEllen came back and we have been having some really interesting cultural experiences to say the least. We went to a funeral in one of our villages. Unfortunately a teacher from one of our schools passed away in a motorcycle accident. We went to his funeral along with all of the teachers in our school district as well as the members of his community. It was really sad, but an interesting experience. We were fed a beef soup with no utensils so we were drinking from the bowls and picking up the chunks of beef with our hands and gnawing at them as well as the veggies. Also, there were tons of fire crackers that were set off during the funeral, a must in every activity here.

That same week we went to an inauguration of a school that they rebuilt. That was also interesting. I don't know if I've told you how much respect and clout we get here but it's crazy. We sit in the front row, walk around with the mayor's entourage (which is interesting, he has like 6 or 7 guys that are always with him to get whatever he wants from wherever we are like more food, etc.), get thanked in the speeches, etc. There was also a congressman or councilman or something from the national government there. There was a marimba band (which is the music from Guatemala) and we ate beef soup again. This time we got spoons but still had to gnaw on the beef with our hands. It was actually a really nice ceremony despite the rain. I don't think it stopped raining the entire day and it was COLD. The school got 4 new classrooms, really great bathrooms (WITH SINKS!). .. this was a huge change from the house that they were holding classes in before. The event started with a little procession from the new school to the old school, anout an hour and a half of speeches (each one thanking the mayor profusely), ribbon cutting on each classroom and bathroom, then a lunch with music by the band. It was a really great day.

We just finished up the school year so we're looking forward to our secondary projects. SueEllen and I are planning of learing Kachiquel, the Mayan language from our area, working on scholarships for a couple of kids from the villages, and working on infrastructure projects in some schools that need them. Individualy I have a girl's group that I'm starting to work on life planning and self esteem as well as tutoring a neighbor Odeley in English. She's a bilingual secretary and wants to work on speaking English. Also I plan to make a herb garden on my roof eventually as well as finish organizing my house. . . like building shelves and stuff. . This school year was great because we had the chance to get a feel for what we're gonna do throughout our service. We're starting next year with a huge training for all of our teachers. . . Should be difficult but helpful to them. .

Let me think. . . I went on a trip last month and this month. Last month I went to El Quiche, where a few volunteers from my training group live. It was really fun. . . we had a great dinner, did a little dancing, and then the next day went and swam in this really cool in the mountains. As most of you know I LOVE to swim so it was really amazing to have that opportunity. About 2 weeks ago I went to Coban, which is like 6.5 hours from my site. That was really great too. We ate cuban food, saw some new places, etc. I do about one trip a month, and the last 2 have been great because I went and got to know 2 very distinct places so different from where I live. Coban is jungly and kind of tropical and Quiche is really mountanous and foresty. . .

I love my house now. I painted my kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. I'm trying out new recipes and stuff, I feel like Sally Homemaker or something. I'm pretty good about keeping my house clean because I never know who's going to drop by.

I miss everybody at home so much! I've been pretty homesick lately so any emails from you guys would be great! Also if you have any questions. . .

PS: It's getting COLD here. You would think it would be sunny and warm in Guatemala but let me tell you. . . it's misting everyday and getting pretty chilly. . . Luckily my family and I are going to Belize in December. . . I'm going to need to defrost. . .

Hope to hear from you soon!