Teaching English, little Valentines Day with some smelly duck egg on the side please.....

# of people now working at my Intervida office- 65

# of girls working at my Intervida office- 5

# of dogs that tried to bite my leg on motorcycle the other day- 6

# of chickens that tried to play [chicken] by flying in front of the motorcycle- 1

# of jars of peaches sold this week- 4

# of small mangos bought for $.15- 6

Cost for pair of used but look new Levis that fit!- $4

# of weeks till I get a cat- 6

# of lunges I did on Wed with Claudia that hurt for the following 4days- 80

# of people that have asked me to teach English to them this week- 5

# of people that have asked me to take them back with me to the US- a million

# of times I have been sick now from eating bad food- 4

% of service completed- 22

This week was full of many life lessons.

- Don’t use a breakable rock for a hammer.

- Pancakes will stick to tortilla makers (flat steel piece of metal that goes on the fire) and you must use sufficient oil in cooking.

- Don’t burn your trash when your drying laundry or dishes

- Breaking a duck egg you find in the river will most likely smell really bad

- It is not culturally sensitive to pick sticks out of the walls of peoples mud home, no matter how bored you are.

- When sifting dirt to make soil to plant stuff, if you come across a ball of what you think is dirt, don’t try to break it with your hands, most likely is NOT dirt but something else that is organic.

- When signing up for something (i.e. volunteering to be a soccer team mom), make sure you know what you are signing and avoiding finding out later that this involves giving each player a kiss on the cheek (not happening!)

(I took this pictue in my bedroom while people watching, trying to be artsy)

Guatemalan Question of the Week- Can you see better since your eyes are beautiful? (He was very serious about this..)

Care Package Update- Thank you to those who have offered to send care packages. Here are a few tips-suggestions-insights-wants…

- If you need to use packing material for anything, use plastic bags from the grocery store as padding. They make wonderful trash bags for me!

- Movies! I inherited a VCR and my TV doesn’t get a single channel in English or Spanish so I usually watch a movie Friday nights to wind down the week. So if you want to send me VHS tape movies that would be awesome!

- If at all possible, please avoid sending something 6-8weeks because that is where we are having problems with the packages taking more than 3months to get here, if they get here. Some are still in route 3+months later

- Care Package Items- Hot apple cider mix, hot coco mix, Crystal light (or similar), dried fruit, good quality socks (any type or color), Reese’s Pieces (the ones that ET liked to eat), blank writable CDS (to store pictures, put in paper sleeves or put in a piece of folded paper please, no plastic, weighs more and can’t be burned), any interesting magazine or newspaper articles you find, cross stitch kits (includes string and pattern)

- However.. I am not in need of a care package at the moment because I am still working on eating all the food everyone sent the last few months. As soon as I am craving or missing something I will be sure to put it on my blog.

Update on my Neighbor- So I found out from my host family grand parents that my neighbor has a wife and 3 kids! You know… you really should not be inviting people to go on vacation with ya when ya got some kids at home. That’s a no no. Despite his oddness, he did come in handy one day. I was walking to the store next to my house with an empty 5gallon bottle to buy more water. He asked me.. [Are you going to get water?] and I said [No…] (which was obviously not true) He offered to carry it for me and I said no thanks. So I went back to my house to get money, came back out and he wasn’t in his doorway. Where did he go now?! So I saw him walking up the street with the tumble of water on his shoulder and he put it at my door step and walked back across the street.

Learning to write letters in English…So I had my letter writing class with the 5^th graders I have been working with who are writing a letter in English to one of my friends classes in California as an exchange thing. So… who would guess getting some students to write letters would be this hard! I wrote on the board [Hello __. My name is __] And to get them to understand that they had to fill in the first blank with the other persons name and then 2^nd with their name took no kidding, probably 10min. In the end they had a lot of fun writing it and hope the kids in CA don{t get scared when they read the letters which many end with something along the lines of [I love you a lot] and one even drew a picture of a heart saying showing they each share a piece of the heart. They want me to come back but teaching English is TOUGH so we will see. (This is a class photo with my English students)

Valentines Day- So here [Dia de Carino] is celebrated here a lot like the U.S. Kids take valentines gifts for an exchange and the adults are more action oriented in showing their [Carino] than gift oriented from what I saw. Well…I got a Valentines gift. It was a wonderful gift too! I enjoyed it thoroughly… Guess what it was… A Snickers! Yep… I haven’t eaten one in 6months because I never buy them but when you are given one, doesn’t matter if its 9am, it gets consumed quick speaking its something familiar to my taste buds.

Intervida Vday Party- So Intervida has a Dia de Carino party every year. We started off the night with a friendly game of soccer. First the boys played, then it was the girls turn. So they were one girl short and I put up a HUGE protest of not wanting to play. They guilt tripped me into and I was made goalie. So yea… there is a reason Olivia doesn’t play soccer. I was horrible! I mean horrible!!!! I even helped the other team score a goal on us by accidentally kicking the ball the wrong way (it went forward but then made a sharp turn back into the goal…grrr…) Yea…embarrassing. Then… when I was blocking a goal from a ball that had been kicked. It hit me in a spot that at that point I thanked God I was not a guy because I would be crying. And it still hurt!!!! So yea… I am in the WRONG country to not like soccer speaking I think the founding fathers of this country played soccer.

Then after the fabulous game of [Laugh at Liv] we ate some dinner and went to a salon (open hall) to dance. Well… with there being 60 guys at Intervida, 10 girls, that is a 1:6ratio. Yea…did a lot of dancing… I like the dancing here (most of it) so I didn’t mind so much. Before the dancing each sector in Intervida (there are 6) had to do something that involved Valentines day. My sector choose 8 people to say what love is and then they voted what was the best. Then another sector called up 5 girls to do a modeling contest with 4 other guys judging. Then they said [Our last participant traveled from far away to be with us…] Oh great…. So they called me up and I was NOT happy. I stood in the back behind the girls and when it came to my turn I protested and didn’t take to the catwalk. Two other girls after me did the same thing and didn’t walk which made me feel better. This was followed by wet-cake (type of cake) and a party gift (wehew!). So the next day at work, I walked into my other host agency and one of the guys who is my counterpart and we get along really well said .. Oh!! I saw Olivia dancing!! Yea… embarrassing.. For the rest of the day I would do something or forget how to say something and he would say… Hmm.. maybe all the dancing wore ya out…

My Walk- Things are going well with my Walk. Now that I finished reading the Bible I have started reading the Case for Christ which is sometimes a bit tough to grasp but some of the information has been very interesting and I recommend the book. If you can’t read the whole thing, give Chapter 5 a shot if you have the chance. I need to start reading the Bible again but have been procrastinating (not good). I see God working in so many ways in my life that I thank Him every chance I get. I ordered The Case for a Creator and The Case for Easter as well as the first Narnia book online at Amazon. I wasn’t able to read all the books I wanted to while in school and now that I live in my homework free environment (kinda) I am catching up on all my missed reading. Great feeling! As far as prayer requests, please keep me in your prayers that I can stay strong in my walk here and that I stay safe and healthy.

Psalm 37:7- ⁷ Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when men succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Im goin walkin! So Claudia, my favorite female here in Tejutla (28yrs old, has one of the 4yr olds) and I have started to exercise in the morning. We leave the house at 630am because it’s the only time I have time as well as her. We either do a 45min walk down to the river and back up which is a strenuous 15min hike back up with the loose gravel keeping ya on your toes (unless ya slip and fall). Or we take a longer walk with exercises in increments which prove to be painful later that day. Never would of thought I could get out of bed at 6am to go walking in the cold (wearing earmuff band, hat and gloves sometimes). This is Claudia, the girl I walk with.

Thank You Lord! So the other night I had Angel one of my site mates over for dinner and Jake was at home sick. So we made some dinner and when we sat down to eat he asked if we were going to say grace and he started. Woah! Then up the street a church was playing music so we walked up to see what was going on and he said [Isn’t that cool that all these people are here to do something God focused] Double woah! Now we just gotta figure out what is up with his walk the rest of the times we aren’t at dinner.

name and everyone applauses. Can you imagine if our church did that?!?!?

Very Tranquillo Here- So it doesn’t even feel like I have been here for 6months. It feels more like 2months or so. I have noticed though that I am getting use to living a relaxed lifestyle. Its nice to wake up in the morning and be able to eat my breakfast calmly without rushing around to get ready. At night I have time to read, write or listen to whatever I want knowing that I don’t have homework to be doing (could be studying Spanish). Overall here I feel very relaxed and the little bit of stress I do have is only momentary.

What am I up to these days at work- So my work days are getting busier and I now only go out to communities I need to visit whereas before I was leaving to just go visit other places. With ADICTA I am working on marketing for honey, apple jelly, carrot and pineapple marmalade (pretty good), dried fruit drink mix (like apple cider), two different kinds of chili sauce, jarred peaches and a mix of jalapenos and other veggies that are bottled. I am working on finishing up the cost of productions for each individual package for those products as well as promoting the products more. I got the two people in charge of the products at ADICTA to start an Inventory and accounting system for deposits. We will see how long that lasts for. In Intervida it’s a bit tougher because with them I will be working with a community that makes 6 different natural medicines from growing the plants but with them we aren’t in growing season so its going slow. I am also going to be working with getting 3 communities to work together to sell their tomatoes in a larger city. This one is also tough because I am having a hard time meeting with these groups as well as the other projects are taking up my time. Right now I have a lot to do and its somewhat overwhelming on where I should start with what.

Vista Hermosa (Beautiful View)- I am working in a community that grows plants to make natural medicines. I really like this community paritcularly because the people are really friendly and the kids are very funny. These two pics were taken there last week. One is me and a baby chicken that the kids helped me catch despite the mama chicken not being happy about this situation. The other is some of the kids that are always there to greet me followed with a ¨take my picture gringa!¨ comment.

Coming Weeks… The next two months will go by super fast. I am going to Panahachel this weekend for a girls weekend with other volunteers (about 12 of us are going). The following week I have my annual security meeting in Xela. Then two weeks after that I have ReConnect which is 2days of meetings in Antigua as well as 4days of Spanish class. Then in April my dad and step mom come for a week and then spending a weekend in Antigua for Easter. In May I have In Service technical training for a few days. Lot of traveling coming up!

This picture is of Wilver, Selvyn and I in Campachan (community I am working in). Here we were waiting for a meeting to end so killed some time by the river. The other picture is of me at the river we played at where we found the smelly duck egg. Hey! Some days I am just not as productive as other days!