Campo toilets, catching chickens and off-roading but still are on a road.

- Number of times been VERY sick from fish soup- 1
- Number of chickens delivered on Tuesday this week- 2000
- Number of chickens that tried to run for their lives that I caught- 6
- Number of scary toilets used in the <campo> this week (when ya gotta go...)- 2
- Number of needlepoint things I made this week - 1 (first one, only 5 major mistakes)
- Food gifts from communities when I visited- 2 turnups, 2 squashes, 3 earns of corn, one Coke
- Cheapest Dinner- $1. Beans, eggs, tortillas, and hot tea.. Really good too!
- Number of flees that jumped off my blanket in the sunlight- 5
- Number of flee (encounters) a night- Avg. 5
- Most unusal question this week- Where is your spouse? My response - Somewhere in the US (from an older woman in a rural village)
- Games I have taught the kids I live with- Uno, go fish, old maid, slap jack. Every Sunday is game day after lunch.



Zaculeu Ruins- Saw some ruins in Huehue this weekend with my work. It was an end of the year trip. Pretty cool place but 4hrs in a micro-bus with 19people and 2 babies makes for a long trip on a bumpy dirt road. Good times though. That, and when we were coming back, it was bathroom time, pitch dark in the middle of nowhere, so we stopped at this house (I think they knew the owner) and I ran to the back to use their latrine. Only in Guat! Try doing something like that in LA right....

Dust Everywhere! So there is a LOT of light brown dust and it covers everything in the dry season. So driving out in the campo, things off the road are covered in it and it{s so odd becuase it feels like you are seeing in BW becuase NOTHING has color.

Off'Roading- So the roads to get anywhere here are horrible. Anywhere I go outside of town feels like I am offroading and you have to use the handles in the truck the whole time. Kinda get use to flying around the truck. Not so great when your stomach isn{t feeling well though.

Care Packages<Letters- Please make sure your sending to the address in the blog entry posted 2weeks ago. Also, if you send a package, even a padded one, please let me know so I can watch for it (and let me know if you sent it to the Tejutla or Guatemala City address). Thanks! Also, updates on needed items. No more seasonings, candy or floss. However, I have discovered the beauty of wet whipes (individually packaged ones or small travel packs) so feel freet o throw a few of those in and really good flavored hot chocolate (like cinnamon or another seasonal spice).

Hot Water! Gotta love it!- So the showers at my house are nice becuase the way we get hot water is my host family has a firewood stove to cook with and they have a metal pipe runnning threw the stove so that heats up the water and it goes into a tank. On the other hand, there is only hot water when the meals are being made so its kinda a trade off.

Who Eats this? So you know in the US how you can eat either the leg, breast, theigh, wing..whatever.. Oh no, in Guatemala. When you eat chicken turkey or whatever else has legs that you can eat, you can get any part of the animal. The other day at lunch I got some part of a turkey that I was not able to identify but still ate it, most of it.

Fireworks should not go in the fire- So for a month there are these teens that dress up like devils each night and then on Dec 7th, they have a bond fire and burn a stuffed devil in the middle of town. Well.... along with this straw stuffed devil, they also throw fireworks into the fire. There is a reason the label says [don{t put this in fire) and that is because when you do, things explode and pieces fly EVERYWHERE. So yea.... I hid behind a pole most of the time, not many pictures were taken.

Jumping cows... Great distraction- I was in a community standing in the middle of a farming field listening to this old man talk on and on in span (of course) and in the backgroun there was this dog chasing baby cows and they were jumping in the field and can you guess which one got my attention most of the time?

- Glimpse of Work- These past two weeks I have visited probably 12 communities out of the 40 or so around me. It looks as though I will be working with a womans group and trying to get there jared peaches, honey, marmelade and other products they grow and bottle into a store. Another group of farmers produces tomatoes and I will work with them on getting the product into hotels and restaurants in the bigger towns. THey were doing that until Hurricane Stan came and wipped everything out so we gotta start all over again. And the last project is finding 1400 eggs a day a home (stores, restaurants) problem is.. Eggs vary in price a lot so its harder to make a consistent profit. Will keep you up to date on work.

You know your bored when.... When you set up your self timer on your camera and start taking pictures of yourself using different camera settings. Hey! It was pretty fun. Look what I did!

Livs gotta ride a motorcycle- So in PC we aren{t allowed to drive cars or ride or drive motorcycles. BUT because my work requires me to be able to use a motorcycle (more like a dirt bike) to get anywhere around here. I have to get special permission from the director to do so. So, starting Jan, I will be a passenger only, and they give us bubble helmits to wear.

Woah..doing laundry is hard! So I have a lady that washes my clothes for $2 a week but I decided to wash my towel, sleeping bag and blanket yesterday. For starters, I got as wet as everything else did that was being washed. That, and it{s some serious arm mussels

End of the Year Dinner for Intervida- So the 44 or so people I work with went to dinner in San Marcos (1hr away) and it was really good. They had mashed potatos! So this is a group photo of most of us, minus about 15 or so people. Notice how many females there are! About 7 in the whole office. Anyways... they gave gift bags with food in them (marshmellows, the real ones too!, nuts, coffee, crackers, candy...) and I learned this Guatemalan dance that is the equivalent of strolling in a circle with a group, basically walking. I am in the back in the grey sweatshirt toasting with the microphone. Also, being that there are a ton of men and a few woman, I was asked to dance (marimba, pretty easy), problem was..I was wearing hiking boots! Yea, didn{t bring my dancing shoes. Most the people I work with at Intervida are middle class Guatemalans so they are easier to relate to. It{s the people in the aldeas and communities that are the ones asking (How big is your house? Why aren{t you married? How many kids do you have? CAn you take me to the US with you?).

Walk with the Lord- So I am almost done reading the Bible. Wehew! two years later. Problem is when done, I don{t know where to start for my daily readings. Things are going good in my walk. Once again, God has gotten me threw moments here that without him, I dont know how people stay sane sometimes.

Prayer Request- Please pray for my family. I cant go into detail but please keep my WHOLE family (both sides) in your prayers because more than ever they need to know the Lord.

WHATS UP GRANDMA!

-Ok...so I am told by many of you that you are reading this.... So........please leave a comment where it says [comments) below, click on that and say SOMETHING. I check to see if anyone write comments, but they don{t :( So yea.. you should all write something below.

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