2 Year Anniversary!

Time to cook a pumpkin pie- 1 and half hours

Time to prepare lunch for 13people- 3hrs

Newest cooking craze- granola bars (you can add basically anything to them!)

# of times PC was consolidated for hurricanes (Felix and Dean)- 2

Amount of rain we got from hurricane Dean- 20min (during the consolidation, then once we got back to site, we got about 3days of rain)

# of days my office went on strike for problems with corruption with board members and other various reasons- 3 (I did not participate)

Most Unusal Food of the Week- Cow Stomach

Something I will really miss here- Seeing clouds float by. I was out on my trail walking and I noticed what looked like a cloud floating by. It was transparent-like but really, this white-grey smoke stuff just floated on by with all the other clouds in the valley below where I was. You will see clouds that are in the valleys below the pueblo and it looks really pretty.

What You Got There- On Independence day people have BBQs and set off fireworks.

What We Got Here- On Independence day groups of mainly kids from all over take day trips to places like the beach or ruins and then they run back with torches,flags and whistles cheering for Guatemala with a chicken bus following them with alternate runners waiting and honking its horn. Some of them travel far way, about 100miles or so.

Tasty Moment of the Week- I was sent a small tub of that processed orange cheese that you put on nachos. Well, did you know that 1.) You can open that stuff and leave it on the table for 3 days and it does not go bad. 2.) Eatting it on top of steamed veggies was very tasty. 3.) I ate it on my veggies for 3 dinners in a row. Thanks mom for my processed cheese!

Well... What do I do with them Apples? Our two main fruits in this area are apples and peaches. Both of which the quality would be nothing in the US but for here, they are fine. So visiting people during the few months of the apple season you get given a lot of apples. I tried to make apple cider by sqeezeing my apples with an orange squisher, did not work. Made apple chips after hours of baking them. I made upside down apple cake with one of my womens groups. They were very confused and insisted the apples go on top when baking, I told them to trust me about putting them on the bottom.

You know you have been in Guatemala for a long time when.... You visit your host family and they offer you a cup of black beans that have been baking for 8hrs. Nothing better than some fresh beans! (I am serious. They are tasty)

Only in Guatemala can you be walking down the road and you see something which appears to either be a 1ft worm, or a piece of intestin from probably a chicken.

Drunk Worms- A lady in one of my communities was asking me about getting some pills for her husband to take so he would stop drinking. I told her I did not think it worked like that. She said that whenever her husband has worms, he seems to drink more. So she said he is an alcholic because of the worms. Hmmm...

100yr Old Store- One of my organizations I work with changed offices. They moved from a small two room area to a giant house that is probably 80yrs old. So old its cute. So the house comes with a store and so Jake, Lucky and I spent a couple days dusting and painting the place. Its amazing how much dust piles up over the years. Then I painted the front counter with the word Welcome and various fruits and vegetables that they will sell. I discovered peaches and pineapples are pretty tough to paint when you only got a handful of colors to choose from. In the end, the store turned out pretty cute and I think they MIGHT be grasping the idea of having an inventory system. Yea!!!

Saw a kid wearing a shirt that in English said ¨I need school¨ and he was selling books on the bus. Shame shame on child labor

Best tshirt of the week. Man wearing ¨Queen of the Universe, any questions¨

At what point did I get use to seeing a woman get on the bus with a turkey strapped to her back, as if it was her baby. Only reason I noticed is there were two tourists on this bus and they started taking pictures. Didn´t even occur to me to take a picture

Hurricanes Dean and Felix-We got consolidated for hurricane Dean first and all went to Xela. I was actually on the motorcycle and had to ask the driver to take me back to the town cause I had to leave. We spent 3days in a $4 a night hotel and the food was not good. I took it upon myself to organize the food for the other 40volunteers that were there with me which worked out ok. One of the days we went to go do something very important. Something many volunteers had been waiting a long time to do. We ate Wendys. Yep, one opened up in Xela a few months ago so a group of us walked over to it, at 930am, and a few even skipped (serious) and they ate breakfast number 2. I just enjoyed the very clean bathrooms and skipped the breakfast. We also stopped by the Mennonite bakery. They are only open 2days a week and make awsome dougnuts, cookies and milk products. So Jen got some cookies and a carton of milk. First real milk in months. Rachel got a block of cheddar cheese and we just passed the block of cheese around and nawed on that for awhile. I think our tastebuds were in shock. Then I managed to find Reese Pieces in a store. Haven´t seen those anywhere here before. Those were very tasty.

Imagine.... Not knowing how to use a sink. We were making natural medicine and one of the ladies from the community came with us. So in the lab we were working in in Xela, we went to wash our hands and she kinda just stood there and looked at me confused. I turned on the water for her and then told her there was soap over there in the pump bottle, again, had to help her with that. Be thankful for the education we have. Imagine not knowing how to read numbers, open and close a car door, turn on a sink faucet...

What We Got Here- Tubs of water for when you accidently dump a bottle of black paint on your pants, you can quickly toss them into your 50gallon tub of rain water hoping to save them (which it doesn´t)

What You Got There- Washing machines with a whole aisle dedicated to laundry soap

We had a our Close of Service Conference at a nice hotel in Antigua. I joke saying they put us in this nice place to clean us up and stuff us to prepare us to go back to the US. So we had a buffet for all 3 meals for 3 days. I actually didn´t really mind the stomach. But honestly, by day 3, all I really wanted was some typical Guatemalan food. Eggs, beans, tortillas. What has happened to me!?

Favorite Moment of the Week- I really enjoy baking with the women in the communities. They are great at cooking the 10 or so things they know how to cook. So teaching them how to make a banana cake was really exciting for them. I made a cake with my favorite family in Vista Hermosa and the banana cake turned out so good that after we took the picture, and everyone had there small piece to try, the mom took the cake and hid it in her room and locked somewhere. The kids were very upset but she said they would eat it all if she didn´t hide it.