Field Based Training

It feels good to be back home in Parramos after a long but amazing week in Quetzaltenago, Guatemala! I feel like I have so much to talk about because our week away from our training sites was packed full of activities and great experiences. My group went to Cabrican last week for our Field Based Training, and we also visited a few other towns. It only ended up taking less than 4 hours to get to our site… in a camioneta it would definitely take twice as long because we were winding around and around mountains. I really enjoyed the car trip because I got to do some awesome site seeing! Along the way we saw Lake Atitlan which is a lake at the base of volcanoes and is a huge tourist spot. We also passed the highest point in Central America! Driving through the mountains was so beautiful! Cabrican is at 15,000 ft. so it was freezing up there!  Good thing I brought lots of layers J Cabrican is a really small town way up in the mountains…. It was really cold but it had awesome views and lots of fresh air. We stayed in a cute little hotel in the middle of town, and I felt like I was in heaven. My bed was the most comfortable thing I’ve slept in in a while and we even had a nice shower with hot water. Oh the simple things in life.

On Monday we visited a little rural school called Chamel. This school was lacking a lot of infrastructure and did not have running water. It was a tiny school with only 3 or 4 classrooms and the kids used a nearby pila as their water source. Guatemalans love soccer so we played volunteers vs. 5^th and 6^th graders and we got our butts kicked but the kids really enjoyed cheering us on. The kids were so excited that we were there! And it was Valentine’s Day or Dia del Carino so of course we played lots of games. Valentine’s Day here is a little different than it is in the U.S. Guatemalans use Valentine’s Day no so much as a romantic holiday but more so as a day to tell all your friends and family how much you love and appreciate them. Kids buy hollowed out eggs with confetti in them and crack them on each other’s heads so that there’s confetti all over the place and it’s a sign of affection. We’d be at the school or walking around town and people would say “Feliz Dia del Carino” or come up and give you a big hug. It really made me think about everyone I love and appreciate back home! Guatemalans value friendship and family more than anything which is definitely a value I’d admire. Later that day we visited the library in Cabrican and got to do a Valentine’s Day gift exchange with the girls that worked there and then afterwards we got to play more games with the local kids. Guatemalan kids sure do love to play, especially with gringos J They ask a million questions because they are so amazed to have gringos in their town. It was a lot of fun, and I know that we made their day by acting like 5 year olds and playing silly little games with them.

Every day we ate at the same little comedor (restaurant) right across from the hotel. By the end of the week we were best friends with the family that owned it and at the end of the week we took a picture of all of us and put it on a poster for them to hang up in the restaurant. They cried when we gave it to them! It was precious… we just wanted them to know how much we appreciated their awesome cooking and to thank them for putting up with loud gringos all week. On Wednesday I gave my first charla (presentation) in Spanish on nutrition to a group of parents from one of the schools. It turned out really well! I did a fun little activity with them at the beginning where the group was divided into 2 “families” and the mom of each family had to run to me with a spoon and scoop our beans from a cup and run back to feed each of her “children” until all the beans were gone. One family had a lot of kids and the other family only had 3 or 4 and the point was to show that the family with fewer kids was able to eat more and so they were healthier than the family with a lot of kids. They seemed to really enjoy it! Some of the parents spoke Mam which is an indigenous Mayan language so that was a challenge trying to explain what to do when their second language is Spanish as well. But we did it and got a few laughs out of it J Afterwards we talked about what a balanced meal looks like using an “olla” or a pot to represent the food pyramid since most of the women cook using big pots. The parents were really receptive to what we had to say and they loved participating which was encouraging because they were actually able to understand my Spanish and they were motivated to make a change their community. It felt really good to get my feet wet and experience a little bit of what I’m going to be doing when I get to my site.

On Thursday we left Cabrican and went to another town called San Cristobal where we got to visit a health center and learn about how to work with the local health centers to help with the healthy schools program. A lot of volunteers use the health center as a resource for information or have health professionals give charlas in the schools. When I was in San Cristobal I saw a pickup truck with a huge Ohio State sticker on it so of course I had to take a picture! Even Guatemalans love Ohio State J Go Bucks! It was so strange to be in a little rural town in the middle of Guatemala and to see an Ohio State sticker on a car… small world!

On Friday we went to another town called Salcaja which is gorgeous! You could look out the window and just see farms and mountains everywhere… it was so pretty and relaxing! I could definitely see myself living in a town like Salcaja for the next 2 years! I gave a charla to little 5 year olds on how to stay healthy. I think they were scared to death that some random gringa was in their classroom but we sang a couple songs and I read them a story called Mariquita Cochinita. Mariquita Cochinita was a very bad girl in the beginning of the story and never washed her hands and drank dirty river water but then one day she got a parasite and got really sick and so after that she started practicing healthy habits and became healthy and happy! The kids loved it even though I don’t think they had a clue what was going on but at least they enjoyed it! Friday night we went to a local Pizzeria and we all did karaoke…. We were definitely the talk of the town… 9 gringos singing Journey and Spice Girls and dancing around like idiots. It was so much fun!!!  What’s a vacation without a little karaoke J

We packed up and headed home on Saturday. It was a long and busy week so I was glad to get back to Susie and the fam and of course Suki! I feel like I have a kid because I was worrying about Suki all week but he survived without me. Everyone was excited to have me back… especially my little host sister. When I was leaving for Cabrican she thought I was leaving for good and that she wasn’t going to see me again and she was so sad! So she was happy to know that I was only leaving for a week and when I got back she was super excited. She helped me cook black bean burgers for the family… which ended up being a disaster but it was the thought that counts! I taught them how to make black bean burgers and they were so confused because they could not understand how you can make burgers without meat… I tried to explain that they were vegetarian burgers because they were made with beans and vegetables but they still couldn’t understand why anyone would eat a burger without meat haha. It was interesting! They ended up eating them and they told me they really liked them but I think they were just trying to make me feel good because afterwards they cooked something else to eat. Oh well! I thought they were pretty tasty, and I ended up eating 2 of them! It’s hard cooking in someone else’s kitchen with limited access to ingredients, but it was fun and my host sister enjoyed learning how to cook with me. I guess next time I’ll just have to cook something with meat in it since the vegetarian thing didn’t go over so well J

Next week we find out who our site partners will be so everyone is anxious and excited about that! Today we did a speed dating activity to get to know each other a little better and to see who we can and cannot work with. Also, we were supposed to find out our site assignments March 10 but now we’re not going to find out until March 24 which is the day before we swear in as Peace Corps volunteers! I feel like time is flying by though so that should be here before I know it. For now I’m taking advantage of the time I have left with Susie and the family. I’m really going to miss them when I go to my site so hopefully I’m not too far away and I can visit them from time to time. I decided that I’m not going to buy an internet plan this month so that I can really spend a lot of time with Susie and the family and also to spend more time studying my Spanish because soon enough I’ll be on my own speaking Spanish all day every day so I still have some learning to do! For the next month or so I’ll only have internet access once or twice a week so sorry if I don’t respond to emails or messages right away! Being connected all the time takes away from the experiences I could be having with my family or in the community so I’m going to see what it’s like not having internet access 24/7.

Thanks for all your support and love from back home! I’ll update you guys next week! Adios!