I am so Betty Crocker without an oven!

(this is a full, but not yet crowded chicken bus.. there is always more room according to the driver)

# of days till I come to visit the states- 20
# of new volunteers coming to San Marcos- 5
# of total volunteers in my department/state San Marcos now- 11
# of World Cup soccer games I have now watched thanks to obsessive coworkers- 4
Number of emails in my old email address that I don´t use anymore but found out I can still access it- 1568 (AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!)
Number that were actually emails I wanted- 50

Item of the week for you people in the States to appreciate- The lack of noise pollution. Here, the noise can just make ya want to go nuts. The buses honking, the trucks honking, the kids yelling, people whistling (ear piercingly high sometimes), stray dogs barking and fighting and of course, the fireworks.

Item of the week I can appreciate that you guys don’t have- I can walk about 30ft to the nearest tienda (mini store) which is about the size of a bedroom and buy the basic necessities. Half being junk food and half being things ranging from tomato sauce, oil, beans (of course) powdered milk, flour, random veggies and fruit and a variety of other things.

Best Discovery of the Week- My neighbor has a GIANT Basil plant/bush. He said whenever I need basil to just ask for it. Which is great because I can’t seem to find it anywhere in the markets.

“We say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” –Hebrews 13:6

You know your integrating in Guatemala when: You made homemade tortillas because you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, since you don’t have bread you had to make tortillas. It’s actually pretty good.

Cat likes spaghetti

“Oh no, we will do the dishes” says the boys- Had two of my coworkers over for dinner the other night. First time inviting work people to my house to make dinner. It was suppose to be 3 but one of them didn’t get back from the communities in time. So I did all the prep work of cutting and left it up to them to cook as I read the instructions in the recipe. It went pretty well and it was pretty good food actually! So after dinner the boys insisted on washing the dishes which was fine with me because otherwise they would of sat in my pila till Saturday till I had time/want to do them. HOWEVER! Of course, they used the scrubber that I use for cleaning the bathroom and the soap that is used for the clothes to wash the dishes. I just smiled and said thank you.
(Alberto and Otto who did the cooking while I read the recipe)
“You look really happy”- Many people including family, friends and Peace Corps staff have told me that either from in person, talking on the phone or from seeing pictures that I look really happy. Funny thing is, I am pretty happy here. I think I have mentioned it before, but a lot of the time it just doesn’t make sense why I am happy here considering some things I have to live with, deal with, try to deal with or just plain be without. Some days when I am out walking on my little path that has amazing views, I could literally skip because I am happy. I miss friends, family, church, sushi, English and a whole bunch of other things that I just can’t get here but God has changed my heart to where a majority of the time I don’t even know I am without that stuff anymore and he has made me content here.

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” –Hebrews 11:1-2

Thank You Hippies! I would like to take a few lines out of my blog to thank all the hippies that have come to Guatemala over the last few decades. You have helped inspire some very NOT Guatemalan food and given me something to look forward to when traveling to Xela or Panahachel. Thanks to you, I can get tofu, tempe, fruit smoothies, awesome salads (with lettuce too!) an endless variety of vegetarian food as well as a variety of other international foods that just aren’t available here in little Tejutla. Also, I am never in short supply of incense thanks to it being only Q10/$1.25 a box.

(this is the little girl that was trying to eat a chocolate covered banana and ice cream at the same time)

Someone please invent this! A camera that you can take a picture with your eye and it will be stored into a memory card for those times that you can’t openly take out the camera and snap away. I was on the bus coming back from a market and there was a mom next to me with her 2yr on her back and they had given her a chocolate covered banana in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other. She was thoroughly enjoying both but they also were both melting at a pace faster than she could keep up with. So in the end, she was wearing the ice cream on her face, and the choco covered banana which had now melted into pieces was all over her hand as well as in her mom’s hair and all over the back of her shirt. I couldn’t help but laugh and I SOOO wish I could of taken a picture but just wasn’t appropriate. I did manage however to FINALLY get a picture on a somewhat crowded chicken bus. I have been wanting to take one forever and finally was in the position (back of the bus where I am usually not) to take the picture with the camera under my jacket. This bus is what you would call full, but still plenty of room according to the driver J

“Bakers! Start Your Pots!” So, in an attempt to make use of my 2200 jars of peaches quickly, I made my first ever batch of mermelade/jelly (whats the difference?) So yea, it doesn’t taste so bad. Then again, all I did was cook the peaches and add more sugar and cinnamon. Then I tried to make empanadas (Guatemalan turn-overs basically) using peaches for the filling, yes, I learned the hard and messy way that peaches do not like to be fried! They have a serious splattering radius.

“For nothing will be impossible with God” –Luke 1:37

Aww…. Starting to have some blue days- I am starting to get to the point where my blissful honeymoon stage of Peace Corps may be ending. Sadly….. It’s mainly the cultural differences that I am having problems with. Things like the teenage boys making the whistles on days when I just don’t feel like hearing it, the lack of honesty sometimes (this isn’t a very direct culture), and more so just missing having the friends I have back home. My Guatemalan friends here I am thankful for, but there are still issues that come with the thought of “my friends back home wouldn’t act like that (or do that)” Well, the turning point of my very blue day came when I was suppose to go to Antigua with a coworker/supposed friend at 3am. He was going to buy pilones (baby plants) and I wanted to go to get out of the office as well as pick up a few last minute souvenirs for the states. So I got up at 245am to make some tea (with caffine so he wouldn’t be tired driving) and heated up the tamale type things to take for breakfast. Well, 330am came, still waiting. So I call him, and call, and call. No answer. So then he calls me back at almost 4am and tells me that he went to San Marcos last night (1hr from where I live). I asked him why he didn’t call to tell me and he said that it was late, he didn’t have minutes and he forgot. FORGOT?!?! How do you forget your picking someone up at 3am!??! So I tried to go back to sleep but I was SO frustrated and sad that right when I seem to find someone that I can trust, talk to as a friend, confide in about work problems and they go and do that! So yea, back at square one and he has been added to my growing list of “trust takes time to obtain but hardly no time to loose” coworkers who have seemed to be trustworthy in the past but now I have to work on getting back “confianza”(trust) terms with them. Outside of that issue, work is in a down point and I am frustrated with someone of the people that are involved in my projects. I am here to help show them how to work, maybe inspire, guide and a bunch of happy other adjectives. However, I am NOT here to do all the work for them. Sometimes that concept is forgotten. So I am just praying God changes my heart back to what it’s been for so long and I get out of this down phase. (I obviously wrote this after the “I am happy” paragraph above)

Blue day turned somewhat brighter- After my LONG morning with my “forgetful” friend I went to the office and started talking to my friends who work in the architecture side of Intervida (they are in charge of building schools, latrines, water tanks….) and I told them I wanted to see what they did for work so I went with them to two of their communities for the morning. A MUCH NEEDED BREAK! They really helped lift me up even though I didn’t share with them how down I was feeling (for fear of crying) and they always make me laugh so I new being around them was what I needed for the morning. We went for a nice long walk in one of the communities to get to the natural spring one community uses for its water source and where we were walking at 3000meters (9000ft) was soooo beautiful (of course I forgot the camera). So after the work part of the visit was done, we laid in the grass on this hill overlooking what seemed like being able to see for 100’s of miles of rolling green hills, mountains and volcanoes. I started listing to my music and watching the clouds fly by us. Being so high up the clouds seem like they are only 100ft away and God put me in such a peaceful state it was amazing. Almost to the point where I can honestly say I had nothing on my mind except my music and the clouds and how beautiful it is in Guatemala. I laid there not once thinking of “when’s lunch” “we need to be going before the rain starts…” “I can’t believe he did that!” which was amazing (for those of you that know I like to think about the future forgetting about the present half the time). So I could have stayed there all afternoon but we were invited to eat lunch at a community member’s house (chicken noodle soup, score!). Sorry if this one seems kinda long and dramatic.

“The Lord is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him sincerely” –Psalm 145:18

Prayer Request- So this week hasn’t been one of the best’s I have had here in Guatemala. I am asking that you keep me in your prayers for a variety of things this week
- Thank God that I am still in one healthy and usually happy piece here
- That after my visit to the States, I am able to come back to my site and get adjusted again and not have a hard time and start wishing I was back in the states (concerned that might happen) (Me, Alberto, Candy and Otto in the picture on the left, my better friends at work)
- The I get motivated to do more work here despite the frustrations I have with the projects, coworkers or community members
- That I adapt better to the cultural differences here that are sometimes a lot harder than I ever expected to get use to hopefully this eliminating many of my frustrations and unhappiness.