No puedo creer ya es la mitad de octubre!!

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Oh yet another blog.. I love these times, it gives me a chance to self-reft about both work and life here, as well as to realize the personal growth experiences I have been having over the past few weeks. We all are always growing each day whether we realize it or not, sometimes the weeks pass by so quickly we are finding ourselves saying where did the days go, yet when we think about what actually happened and all the things we did, it helps shape who we are today and now. It is amazing the steps through life we take and what forms and takes us where we are and who we are with in various moments in life. It is beautiful the journey through life, I love it.. You sometimes never know where you are going or how you will get there, but just enjoying the flow we are living for what it is, not expecting anything more or less for it is what it is.. or in spanish you could say lo que sea.

Well getting into what I have been doing lately... We are still continuing with our earth activities with the schools and our overall goal to help with the trash problem in my town. Charlas about trash and health, cartoons about recycling, and meetings with community leaders, food vendors and soccer players who use the field every sunday. This tuesday we have a trash pick up day with the kids, hoping to have some sweet music, most likely shakira waca waca (they all LOVE it) and other fun latin music playing as we clean up the soccer field and central plaza area. Then this is their last week of school before vacation (comparable to summer vacation) before starting the new school year again in January. They do not have any opportunities really to have camps or anything, so we are going to prolong our earth month activities and have invited the students to come to earth day activities every tuesday with small projects with recycled objects, arts and crafts along with various games and songs. We were also talking about crafting together a big painting of the world map on their basketball court, to help teach about geography and a fun activity for all. I am pretty excited to be able to have this vacation earth day group and that the kids are excited, too, especially to have new educational yet fun things to do during their vacation! We are planning to start building the latrines and benches with the bottles come November, we finally received all the funding needed to build since the bottles are the going to act as brick or cement block but we still need to purchase the wiring and filling that goes between to hold them in place, so it was a big relief to have local organizations help donate the amount necessary to do so!

The cooking classes are still coming along, we are going to add 2 more groups in 2 other parajes (2 of the 21 small neighborhood communities within my main village). Right now I have 3 every week so we are going to do every other week alternating with the 2 new groups coming in. I really enjoy these afternoons cooking and knitting or crocheting with the women and their kids. It is fun to see their eyes light up when they see a new food, smell a new scent, or try a new flavor. Plus it also means I get to cook and eat fun delcious foods quite often... such as lime and thyme chicken, potato salad, choco-rice krispy treats with cinnamon vanilla frosting, hawaiin pizza, chicken fajitas with fresh guacamole, fresh vegetable tomato pasta sauce. I am thrilled Maria, the health educator I work with almost daily and my good friend here in my town, has learned so quickly and wonderfully how to crochet and knit since I have been here and has been helping me to teach the women and girls in my cooking classes or when just hanging out at the health post in our town. It is fun to learn from and bounce off of eachothers ideas, too!

Yesterday I helped out volunteering at another volunteer´s site near mine for his Mayan Cultural Festival he helped organize and put on. It was beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire day.. it started off with several traditional Mayan dances and music complete with traditional clothing and face painting or masks, then live marimba bands playing great music (marima is similar to a xylaphone but uses different size gords for making the sound), the traditional mayan pelota (ball) game where part one is hitting this huge rubber ball with your joints such as elbow, knee, foot, hands against a wall trying to get it through a vertical hoop and the ball represents the 365 days making up a circle or a world globe, then part two of the game entails lighting the ball and these hockey like sticks on fire and hit the ball around. It could almost be explained as harry potters quittage meets soccer in a way...

I am helping the teenage jovenes put on a Halloween costume dance party with a costume contest for we are hoping for November 2nd. Here that is during the week of what here is called the day of the dead where there are a lot of festivals and costumes almost mocking the dead, yet appreciating their loved ancestors who have passed on, just a different more relaxed, yet what I think of as a healthy view of the natural circle of life which includes death. I am hoping to go to a town called Sumpongo for the kites, since Oct-Nov are the windy months after the 6 month rainy season, and there is a big feria where there are hundreds of colorful different kites all flying. I met a volunteer yesterday at the cutural fair who lives nearby that town so we may plan to go check it out together come November.

Also with schools ending this week I have more time for Ki´che´ class as well as studying it, too. I have a pile of books next to my bed I swtich off reading different ones bits at a time, maybe now I can actually sit down and read one in the mornings before going to cooking class. Usually I just spend both my free and my work time knitting or crocheting quite often, especially with all the waiting around for pick ups to get back to my village on sundays or on the camionetas (buses), and my favorite times are knitting, playing music or just hanging out at the health post with the people I work with during the slow points of the day since many of them have a big interest in knitting, too!

Walking to and from the different parajes where the various houses are we have the cooking classes is always enjoyable since it is quite comparable to hiking through the trees, up hills and across rivers. I did not know what to really expect coming in other than what I read and heard from the past volunteers in my same program, although every volunteer´s experience is different, I am happy to say and I really do enjoy my life here and have made some great relationships with people of all ages on the spectrum (from young kids to the elders) with the people in my village, other volunteers and Guatemalns in neighboring towns and the big city nearby. I probably spoke of this earlier about 5 months ago in my blogs about this culture´s importance of building confianza (trust), and I feel I was gaining this slowly by slowly, or poco a poco, in the beginning and more so now which has been such a beautiful experience to have people gain trust in you and interchange greetings along with a nice conversation as you walk by, or give you tortillas or elote (entire cob of corn), or lend you a hand with carrying your bags or produce. It really has been beautiful to experience the opening up and cultural exchanges we have been sharing with eachother, I am excited to see what each day brings, whether good or not as good, simply living day by day and my favorite part is without worrying about time and just enjoying each moment, as most living in this culture does.

I guess that is all for now, there is always so much I could say but that would continue far too long haha. We have our reconnect coming up in a few weeks where we go back to our training towns and have spanish classes and medical sessions at the peace corps office for a week, so that will be nice to see my other volunteer friends who live far from me that I have not seen since training, as well as spending time with my host familiy from training, i really miss them! I hope you are all enjoying Fall, I really miss seeing the leaves change and this time of year, but here the rains are stopping and I have been enjoying the sun lately.. finally! After almost 6 months of rain it really is nice to have warm sun during the day to break up the coldness throughout the nights. I would love to hear how things are with you, feel free to send me an email! Much love and missage... Peace and Blessings, Alyssa

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