This weekend we got away from our site, and took the 5 hour trip to Huehue to vote. It’s complicated, but the Peace Corps distributed our absentee ballots to our regional representatives, and we all came in to vote by region. Then, the reps go to the HQ in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas and the Peace Corps Guatemala scecretary sends them all Overnight DHL (very expensive, but very reliable) to Washington DC, where national Peace Corps people get them to our local election boards in time, theoretically. The joke here, though, is that George W probably has a mole at Peace Corps Washigton that throws all the ballots into the shredder, as most of the volunteers are pretty liberal, and all voted for Obama. This is, of course, not true (there are SOME conservatives here) but makes for funny dinner conversation.

This was also a fun opportunity to see the sites of two other volunteers. The first one we saw was the home of Emily Crawford, my good buddy from training. Her town is pretty out-of-the-way and small, though not quite so much as ours. Her weather is REALLY nice, too. But she has tough living conditions: she rents a room that is a concrete block shed with a corrugated tin roof about 5’6″ high. The roof doesn’t cover the whole thing, so she gets rain inside, and rats, and cockroaches. Also, the shed is bigger than her bed by about a foot in each direction. No kidding. Here she is, standing in the courtyard in front of the door to her home.

The second volunteer we visited was Cat, our regional rep. She lives in a really crowded, urban setting and has a several-room apartment on the second floor, with a cool terrace you can hang out on. We met her there to do our voting, and she put us up for the night in her guest bedroom, along with another volunteer (Nick) who’s been in Guatemala for over a year. It was fun to socialize with gringos for a day, cook some good food, and generally relax a little. Also, it’s a good chance to catch up on the chisme (gossip).