Update

Normally my blogs have some kind of theme, but today you will have to bear with my random update…

I’m so excited! This afternoon was my first time working with my new girls group and it was AMAZING! My site-mate is a youth development volunteer, so her Guatemalan counterpart suggested that she work with girls from a local orphanage, and she asked me to help. There are about 12 girls between the ages of 14-19 and we meet once a week to do activities and life skills talks. This week we baked a cake together, and next we are doing team-work. Its wonderful how this opportunity just fell into my lap, as I have been looking for something like this for a while. In my primary project I don’t get to work with kids, so I think it will be a nice variation from my normal work.

Otherwise work is going well. We are wrapping up the school year, and actually haven’t worked much lately because all of the schools have been preparing for Independence Day celebrations. The schools basically spend the first half of September not teaching, but preparing “alters,” poems, speeches, and songs to perform on the 15th . I am not looking forward to the three parades we will probably be expected to walk in. Everyone loves a gringa on parade. School ends in October, but that whole month is taken up with exams… so we are really nearing the end of the year.

Laura is celebrating the Jewish new years, so I decided to make a new year’s resolution as well. My resolution is to play Laura in Bananagrams once a day. I want to become a wordsmith and hope to one day defeat Laura, that grand champion of Patzún and probably the world.



Eli and mom’s visit was great! We were able to make it to Antigua and the lake and relaxed and ate yummy food. It was nice to have someone else help cook and my host fam absolutely loved Eli the human amusement park ride. We had a big lunch where they made me wear the traje that they gave me and the whole fam came. Mom held her own with Spanish and they were a huge hit overall. Despite the heavy rains that hit the country that week, we were able to get both mom and Eli out of the country safely. The day after we traveled back from the lake, landslides blocked off the roads and crushed a camioneta on the same highway, so we were happy to have gotten out of there in time.