Packing Frozen Brocolli

- Number of Earthquakes this week: 1 (4.2 was really brief but it was fun watching the others who had never felt one before)
- Number of bee swarms I accidentally walked threw this week: 1 (managed to escape undamaged)
- Thing I am missing most- Borders, Starbucks…any environment you can drink some chai latte and relax
- Spanish Progress- I can talk about things that happened yesterday now, wehew!
- Dinner I made for my host family- Pesto pasta with tomatoes and onions with sautéed macadamia nuts and green beans on the side. I think I overdid the garlic, I wasn’t being culturally sensitive to a culture that hardly uses garlic.
- I took my belly button ring out
- I have determined that you have to try very hard to make your wool socks smell
- Update on Yahtzee Scores: Highest 434 (tracy, 3 Yahtzees) Lowest 150 (Tracy again)
- Theme Song(s) for Peace Corps for me right now: “Shine” and “I’m Not Ashamed to Let you Know” by Newsboys
- So my host mom met this indigenous girl on the bus last month. She came over with her parents (she was about 20) last night and her parents walked in carrying more onions and corn than one could need on their heads as a gift to my host family, so in turn my host parents gave them a ton of macadamia nuts. Yea..ok, that would not happen in Los Angeles!
- So this week we had dance class for 2hrs put on by the Spanish teachers. We learned Meringue, Marimba, Ranchero and Salsa. At the end there was a contest and I was just planning on taking pictures and watching. Ended up getting a partner who is as white as I am and out of 18 or so pairs, we got 2nd. I am just as surprised as you are, serious cardio workout!
- I find out my site in 11 days!

- Brocolli Plant- I now have a new found respect for frozen broccoli. We went and visited this factory in our town that basically all the women work out on the assembly line and got a 2hr tour. VERY interesting! We put on these white outfits that made everyone look like little ompa-loompas when working. They package 80,000lbs of broccoli a DAY! So yea, lot of work goes into sending frozen broccoli to the US and Japon. So then we got to join them this past Saturday, my job was to put the frozen broccoli in the bag and then hand it off to the next conveyer belt. I was not as skilled as most of the people there. I tried to take the camera in but since it isn’t possible to “disinfect the camera” (and have it still work) I wasn’t able to. (This is un our outfits with our trainer in the center)

-Weaving Women- So we went and visited this village way out in somewhere and we visited a women weaving co-op and listened to how life works for them for 2hrs. Then they showed us this fabric that married women put on their heads. So this one piece that was for sale, one woman spent 1hr working on it and it is woven identical front and back and its about the size of a small baby blanket and it cost Q2500 ( I think the monthly min income for a Guat. is about Q1500 to give you an idea of price, also $300 or so in US $)

Rooster Conversation: So this is my interpretation of rooster conversations. So I was laying in bed the other night , about 10pm, couldn’t sleep. And in the distance I hear the one thing all people that want to sleep fear, a rooster sings. This is far away, but then they get closer, and one by one, the roosters start singing closer and closer to my house. And then all of a sudden, bam! My rooster starts to sing. Yea, so this goes on for about 10min and they talk back and forth. So this is what I had determined a rooster conversation might sound like.
My Rooster - “Hey Guys! Someone talk to me, I can’t sleep because my owner gave me some bad ground up fruit!”
Neighbor Rooster- “Aw man Will, sorry to hear that, let’s see if Bob is awake. Hey Bob!”
Bob (rooster 2miles away) – “Hey! Good to hear from ya, it’s been at least 30min since we have spoke!”
So yea, that is my idea of what roosters talk about….

- Freaking Huge Warehouse- So we also got a tour of the central distribution warehouse for the largest grocery stores in Guatemala (Hiper Piaz) and this place is huge!!!!! Boring lecture though, sometimes hard to listen to a lecture about how much toilet paper passes threw one building for 2hrs in spanish. I tried though :)

Some Random Guatemalan Facts
-3% are 65yrs or older
- 45% are 15yrs or younger
- 63% live in rural areas
- 56% earn less than $2 a day
-16% earn less than $1 a day (both considered below poverty)
- 100 student enroll, only 16 finish 6th grade, 1% go on to finish college
- 50% of kids under 3yrs are have malnutrition
- 40% are illiterate