Little Bit of Everything to Share With Ya

(this is my pretty fruit salad I made for our super bowl-minus the fun commercials party)

Update of Produce prices
- Cucumber: $.20
- Head of cabbage: $.12
- A GIANT carrot: $.06
- Pound of peas: $1.00
- One eggplant: $.24
- Pound of tomatoes: $.40
- Dozen Bananas: $.60
- Giant Papaya: $1.25
- Pineapple: $.50

Sorry it took FOREVER to get this blog up. Between my computer crashing, the internet being slow, pictures not wanting to upload. It just took forever.

CONGRATS TO LORENA AND ERNESTO ON THEIR ENGAGEMENT!


Favorite Co-Worker Comment: I was eating lunch and saw that the lunch ladies were short kitchen help so I volunteered to help serve tortillas or do whatever they needed help with. Well one of my coworkers came through the line and I was serving part of the lunch at that part, that day was grilled beef and he said “I would like a half pound of blondie please” because one of my many nick names at work is Blondie. I got a good laugh out of it.

Guatemalan Proverb- If you come 30min late to dinner, come baring candy. Host will kindly let you in.

Got Me Some Responsibility At Work! About mid-January I was going through another “what in the world am I doing here! What am I going to do for work for the last 10months phase?!” I was praying and just asking for God to give me SOMETHING to do for work for 10months. So two days later I invited my counter part to my house for dinner for the first time. Figured it would give us a chance to chat about work since the office was not the best place to talk for longer than 2min without being interrupted. So we chatted for about 2hrs about work and it went really well. Then the next day we had a meeting and they were forming the new commercialization committee for the year (had no idea they had one the entire past year..grr..) and I told my counterpart I wanted to be in charge of it and oversee the responsibilities. He said fine. Yea! Got work! So then the following weeks consisted off taking on the project of turning our one little green house that houses the baby plants the community grows to sell to farmers (i.e. tomato, onion, lettuce seedlings) into something that looks like a quality business for a presentation. So I worked on a logo and slogan and designed flyers, handouts and a power point show for the presentations. One of my coworkers said I did a good job on that. Those words were priceless speaking I felt like I hadn’t helped much at work in the past. Then last week I left to give the presentation at 430am in one place on Monday, another place on Wed and another place on Friday. LONG week. I didn’t talk. I was in charge of ruining the power point show and making note of any competitor dis/advantages we could work with. Last I heard, we now have orders totaling up to 19,000 baby plants.

“Nothing is impossible with God” Luke 1:37

God Bless The Little Red Squiggly Line- I was not a very good speller coming into PC. Now I am even worse! If you only knew how many combinations of “commercialization” I spelled in Word before I could get it right. I have all intentions of spelling in English, but my Spanish spelling rules confuse my English skills and I end up getting words that are a combo of both. I know this sounds really odd if you can’t relate, but trust, pretty darn frustrating forgetting how to spell some of the simplest words in English.

“They are traveling homeless people” I met a guy and girl from Europe who were backpacking for two years all over Central and South America. They only use $6 a day and carry a tent with them and wherever they are at night they set up the tent and sleep. That part would personally kinda freak me out. They don’t pay for buses they only hitchhike. They avoid tourist areas and open up the map, find a place, and just head that direction each day. My friend called them “traveling homeless people”
(making our sheet to have a friendly super bowl ¨game¨)

Visiting The Bees- A marketing volunteer in training came to Tejutla to visit Jake and I for a week to shadow us. One day I took him to one of my communities where they make the honey to visit a bee colony and see how the honey is made. This is my second time doing this and yea, regardless if you are protected by the net hat and the smoke they blow
to keep the bees away, its still very intimidating to hear a loud buzzing all around you.

Something To Think About- I was in a community one day and this thought randomly occurred to me. Where do kids learn to fight? I am talking about at young ages like 3yrs old. Can’t blame it on TV here because, well most don’t have that. I was watching two little boys fight over an empty box to play in and one was 3 and the other 2 probably and it made me wonder, where do they learn to push, pull body parts and pinch at such a young age?

Why Do NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) Compete? Here in my part of the country there is a ton of aid being given mostly because this is one of the poorest parts of the country and also was very damaged by the 30yr civil war and hurricanes. So you would think all these groups come and want to help the people, you know, save the world. Well then why does it seem like they are competing half the time. Organizations don’t really help other organizations, they do things that make other projects that other groups are working on difficult to accomplish. Overall the level of sustainability (ability for the work/effort being given or taught to carry on once the aid organization pulls out) is many times non-existent. My latest job inspiration in life is to look into the field of “NGO Sustainability Consulting”. Working with these aid groups to show them how to take their work and make it something of a positive and long lasting effect. Unfortunately, many of the larger organizations sometimes forget about the reason they are suppose to be there and more so look to getting “the numbers” to boast to the investors and donors.

“Having food and clothing with these we shall be content” 1 Timothy 6:8

Does This Sound Like A Fair Trade?- I will trade you one kitten for a live adult chicken (actually the chicken has about 2-3 times the market value as the kitten)

Most Unusual Site- I pulled up to a house in one of the communities on the moto and saw this baby sheep stumbling around and then the mom turned around and it had literally just been born. It was really gross because the placenta was hanging out the back of the mom and the owners were saying “oh, it will fall out in a few hours…” like it was no big deal. Where is my camera when I need it!

“Hey, They Took My Posters, Great!” I made flyers for our greenhouse that grows vegetable plant seedlings. I attached little pieces of papers with the phone numbers on them which to me was common sense if you are selling something in the US. Well, my coworkers were very impressed and said I was really smart/creative and had never seen that before. Anyways… I posted them in a few communities and then a week later when I went back to check on them some hadn’t taken any numbers, some had all the numbers missing, and one flyer actually had the bottom half torn off because that was the remaining phone number slip. Glad they wanted the numbers, but was it necessary to take the entire lower section of my flyer?

Good News- My house owner decided to remodel my house since it has so many problems
Bad News- They said it needs to be empty to do it because well, they are tearing it all down
Good News- They are waiting till November to do it
** She told me all this in that order, I almost had a heart attack and thought I was going to have to move out of my house until she said they decided to wait till Nov. Phew!

Biggest Accomplishment this week- I have realized that I can pack for 3days of traveling with nothing. I traveled last week and the only thing I carried in my backpack was an extra shirt, pjs, which can be doubled as clothes in case anything happens to my jeans, underwear and shower stuff. Small enough to fit it all in a purse basically. Yea! Couldn’t do that before PC.

You Know You Are Having a Bad Day When: You are a chicken and the cow steps on you and breaks your leg and you flop around for the rest of your life. Poor guy.

(I made the presentation.. I told them to do the talking and I would control the slides)

Beautiful Culture: Is the man that stops while climbing up a steep hill with a load of hay on his back to tip is hat to you in greeting.

Life Lesson of The Week: Don’t squeeze your peanut butter and jelly cracker sandwich together. Its quiet a mess.

“Hmm… This is from Ohio..” In one of my random clothing shopping trips I found on the purse rack a nice planner. I decided to open it and found someone’s address book in ti with their phone numbers and everything. I believe it came from 2001 in Ohio. So next time you toss your planner, beware, might end up for sale in Guatemala.

Wanted To Take A Picture But Was On Bus Moment Of The Week: A Dad was walking the giants cows on ropes and his son (probably 4yrs old) was walking the sheep, however it was more like sheep walking the little boy and he was trying his hardest to get them to stop.

You Know You Are Tired When: You get out of the car you just slept in while traveling and head for the wrong bus absolutely convinced it will pass by your town. Luckily the community men I was traveling with said “Olivia! That bus is going no where near Tejutla! Where you going?!?!” and I snapped out of it.

I had a dream about having culture shock when I come back. Hmm….

Freaking Language Issues!- I had a meeting on Friday and I thought according to my coworkers text message we were suppose to be at the main office at 8am and were presenting at 11am. Well nope! After a few hours of waiting, come to find out that we are meeting at 11am a mile away. GRRR!!!!!