Swearing In

Ok, I suck at blogging…SORRY!! But anyway from here on out I should be a better blogger I promise. So I’m finally sitting here in Sta. Clara la Laguna in my new pink home with my new family (for the next 3 months) all my shit is “unpacked” and sitting around my pink room in a neat manner. Training is over and I am an official Peace Corps Volunteer. The stress from PST and being under the all seeing eye of PC is finally some what over…to a point.

The past few weeks have been building up to our “anti-climactic swearing in ceremony”-unknown PC volunteer, but nevertheless we made it. Our ceremony coincided with the 50^th anniversary of the PC so we celebrated in the Capital at the Ambassadors sweet house.  It only lasted a few hours and didn’t seem to be centered on the new volunteers but rather just giving shout outs to the volunteers who are about to leave the country…whatever. I think it’s safe to say all of us noobs were just ready to let loose and celebrate in Antigua. That evening began to unravel as usual with casual drinking and some good food, but as expected there were those who over did it before the night ended. The blow out weekend for me was a dud and just left me tired and ready to leave to my new home.

We did however end up on the front page of the Prensa Libre (newspaper in Guate) with super awkward photos of us all…and I mean super awkward…my face looks like I should be laying in a coffin…it’s painful to look at…but don’t worry Mom I saved you a copy.

Sunday morning came and people from eco started to trickle outward to their own sites throughout the country. This day sucked, the frustrations from the 2 days prior were stuck in my head, my friends from the past 3 months were leaving, and I had received an email from home that made me miss being around my favorite people in CO. The email told how all the crew went out for Stews 24^th birfday, and I just wished I could have been there to celebrate…I definitely teared up and did that thing I do when I try and hold emotions back. After reading this, I had to board the microbus and head out.

And now it’s Monday at 5:45 and I’m sitting here relaxing in my room, studying Spanish, playing guitar, writing this damn blog, getting bomb food from Doña Alida who hooked it up this morning with CHOCOLATE PANCAKES!! Things finally seems calm and control of my life is slowly returning…but I still feel emotional, like a wall of tears is filling up a well but just as it’s about to over flow the well gets just a little bigger. I’m missing everyone back home.

That basically brings me up to date, these next few days will probably include traveling around the lake exploring my new surroundings…

FBT and Sites

Field Based Training in a Nutshell

Our FBT pretty much consisted of us traveling through the country side and getting our hands dirty. We sat through many presentations daily, but did some cool things in the process such as: make trails/signs, go zip-lining, go on cultural tours, make camp fires, play hacky sack, visiting the lake and getting stranded in the tropical part of the country due to strikes. In reality we did much more but these are just the highlights for me. 

Mi Hogar

So we finally received our site assignments!! This is one of the most important days for a volunteer since it is the day you find out where you will be living the remainder of your 2 years and what type of work/projects you could potentially be doing. The day could not have come any sooner and the feeling of finding out our homes was incredible. We were all placed in the western highlands in the departments of: Huehuetenango (way the fuck out there), San Marcos, Quiché, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán and my beautiful Sololá. Each department offers something unique so there is always something to look forward to wherever you end up. After getting to know each person in the ecogroup it kind of sucks to get so close to everyone only to be split up after our swearing in. But I am sure we will all being doing great things in our sites. Which brings me back to my site, the beautiful Santa Clara La Laguna in Sololá which we had visited during our FBT, the aldea (small town) itself is located 20 minutes from one of the “most beautiful” lakes in the world. Lago Atitlán is a world renowned place to visit and is either the first or second most visited site in Guatemala I can’t remember. The actual town I have not visited but Tuesday the 15^th I will be going to my site for a few days to check it out and get to know the place. Sta. Clara has a population of about 9,500 people with the majority speaking Quiché but Spanish is also common. My main project will be working in the Parque Chuirraxamoló (it sounds something like this Chewy-raw-shaw-malow, hopefully that helps) training employees, providing environmental education to local schools, municipal trash management, and helping out with the municipal tree nursery. The Chui Park itself consists of 2 zip-lines, rappel, interpretive trails, great hiking trails, hell maybe even some horses and the potential for mountain biking. Sounds too good to be true right? Well it is. This place needs a lot of work with infrastructure, maintenance, employees and well the list could go on and on but I’ll save the obstacles to write about as I take them on. Currently, the site has another volunteer by the name of Jarrett who has had a rough time working in the park during his past 2 years there and has pretty much moved on to other secondary projects such as municipal trash management. Other things that could potentially be shitty:Lago Atitlán is undeniably stunning from a far, but when you are at the shores you a lot of trash. The lake is treated like a dump basically, trash coming in from above from those who just toss it wherever they want, and raw sewage being pumped into it from beneath from the 10 or so communities that surround it (including mine). Also the Lake attracts many dirty hippies which hang around places like Panajachel. Nevertheless there is no other place I would rather be and I can’t wait to start this journey.

Pesadillas

Since arriving in country, as Peace Corps Volunteers we have to take Malaria pills once a week to...well....prevent malaria...damn. VIVID dreams are a side affect and basically my dreams have started to get pretty damn vivid, I mean they were vivid in the beginning and kind of cool but now they are starting to freak me out a bit. The other morning somewhere in between being awake and sleeping I woke up holding my breath and went back and forth between these states of being breathing erratically and couldn’t really snap out of it (I don’t even really know if I am explaining it well). I must be losing my mind.

Duma

Duma the cat recently gave birth to 3 sweet kittens, I don’t know what I bothered mentioning it her but I guess since I had never really seen a kitten 1 day after being born I thought it was pretty cool.

The next time I write I should be getting back from a few days spent in my future home of Sta. Clara and getting ready to swear in as a volunteer. The 25^th of March is when we will officially become Peace Corps Volunteers. Luckily for our group the swearing in ceremony will coincide with the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps and well that just makes it a more epic and bittersweet moment, if you want to get in touch I recommend the day before or the day after. Missing everyone back in the States.