Last month we got a visit from Joe and Katy, one of the three married couples in our training group. We’ve already gone to see them in each of their villages (they were relocated about 3 months into service), but I was starting to worry they’d never get here: we DO live pretty far out of the way. But a side project gave them just the excuse they needed to cross the Cumbre and visit our pleasant little village.

We spent much of the time hiking around our scenic valley, talking to locals and touring the place. By dumb luck, we came to one of the neighbors down the hill just as they were firing their oven for the weekly breadmaking. Tortillas are king here, but bread has a tiny place too. Xeka is a sweet bread that is a sort of treat, given with coffee in the afternoons when you have guests. As we were talking to the baker’s wife, we stumbled upon a great idea: pizza! For months, Emily and I have been thinking of teaching the locals how to make pizza, in part to give them some new ways to incorporate diverse nutrition into their diets, but mostly because it’s fun. The baker’s wife seemed interested in the notion, so now we have a way to cook several pizzas at once and make a big social event out of it.

As we were leaving the baker’s house, Nico called. He and Katal had just left our house a few hours earlier, having spent the morning with us for breakfast. “So, we’re done with the market and have all our groceries.” There was a pause. “And, um, you guys are having so much fun that we don’t want to go back to our site yet. Can we come back to your house for dinner?” Those two have a pretty remote site that is hard to get to, and many of their villagers went to the coast for the harvest, so it’s pretty lonely right now. After a quick conference, we all decided that six gringoes in a wooden box could be even more fun that four, so they should hop on the next available microbus back to our village.

And it was fun indeed. Nico and Katal brought the vegetables, Joe and Katy had the hard-to-get spices and cheeses from Huehue, and we had the kitchen. Add a little teamwork and a really big stainless steel pot, and it was time for Chili Party. My buddy Pedro even showed up. “You’ll really get a workout tonight,” I told him. “It’s six gringoes, pure English.” He was sweating by the end of the party, but had a great time and managed to follow 90% of what was going on. I might have mentioned it before: he has the best English skills of any of the locals, though he is too humble to admit it. A good time was had by all.

And Joe and Katy’s side project? A promotional video for our program. Last year, Joe did a great video to promote Peace Corps Guatemala’s health program abroad, but this new one is “inside sales”, to get local counterparts in the Ministry of Health excited about having their very own Peace Corps volunteer. Joe just released the video this week, and it’s avilable on YouTube. It’s all in Spanish, which won’t be a problem for about a quarter of our readers, but for the rest of you, it’s still worth a look to see the beautiful shots of our village and the countryside. We are most of the second half of the video. Enjoy!