We headed out of Santa early in the morning to get to our meeting with Peace Corps and the Ministry of Health. All the volunteers had to prepare presentations about all the projects we’re doing, how they’re going, what challenges we’ve encountered, what lessons we’ve learned. Since this is a brand new program our PC project directore is trying to iron out the wrinkles as we go, and I think he’s doing a pretty good job. It’s definitely not an easy task. What we found out at this meeting is something we’ve suspected along: we got REALLY lucky as far as where we were sent and the counterparts we work with in our home site. Some of our friends haven’t made out so well. It sometimes happens that getting a PCV in some towns is like having a trophy that walks around and talks. Certain leaders want to show off the trophy, but they don’t want to do anything with it. One of our friends is having a pretty big problem with this at the moment, and it remains to be seen how the situation will be remedied. Really, any problems or setbacks we’ve suffered so far have been minimal to some things our volunteer friends have been putting up with. This is a difficult spot to be in, because we don’t want to shove it down anyone one’s throat that things are going pretty well for us, but we also don’t want to be dour for someone else’s benefit, so we did the best we could.

After we wrapped up our presentation and sat down, Fletch looked at me and said, “I feel like I’m sitting beside myself. This is not a good sign.” We were the last to present, thankfully, but by the time we got to the hotel in the early afternoon he was already running a fever, and we had an appointment to meet with the local Rotarian president that night. We were supposed to head to Xela for a good friend’s birthday weekend the next day just for a little fun and socializing with our friends we see too infrequently, but I figured we should go home if he wanted to. I ran out and got him medicine, then left him napping while I caught up on some very belated letters to friends. And once he woke up he was alright to go out to dinner, not great, but ok, and he wanted to go to the birthday party because we were supposed to go sit in the hot springs much of Friday. He wasn’t going to find a hot bath anywhere close to home if we turned around, but he was definitely in the mood for one. I was surprised how well he held up for the somewhat battering ride from Huehue to Xela and then to the hot springs. I think it was just the idea of sitting in hot water for hours on end that kept him going. Secretly, I was glad he’d decided he could make the trip, as I really wanted to see everyone too.

From Xela you have to take a bus fro about 30 minutes where they drop you on the side of the highway. From there, you stand at the edge of a dirt track until a truck comes along and will negotiate a price to take you the rest of the way up into the mountains. We could’ve walked, but it would’ve taken about 2 hours, and I’m not sure Fletch would’ve held up. Luckily we only had to wait 5 minutes or so until this nice young guy came by offering a fair priced ride in…the back of a pick-up. In groups we always seem to ride in the back of trucks, but for limited amounts of time, it’s actually pretty fun.

The scenerey was Guatemala, pretty beautiful. Honestly I’ve never heard a volunteer claim that their site was anything less than beautiful. We had to drive through tons of croplands, getting sprayed by random sprinklers and a little mud splatted up our backs (poor Lyn in her pretty white shirt…), but we were going to take a bath, right? A great time was had by all, on the truck rides and at the baths. From left to right: Casey, Anne, Lynn, Dan, Jaime/Fletch, Emily, Ashley, and me.

So here are the actual springs, and while Anne and I are having a good time, I think this picture is funny from the top half up. The guy in the back looks like model from an advertisement, for soap or hair products, in this hot spring with his muscles and long hair. At one point a group of us girls were sitting in the pavillion area snacking away on junk food, and we realized, oh, there are the showers, and this very attractive man is in it, right in front of us. Suddenly, I can’t remember who–just that it wasn’t me, even if it sounds like something I would do–felt the need to exclaim “There’s a hot guy in the shower!” forgetting we were not in run of the mill Guatemala, but at a tourist destination. And the guy did indeed speak English. We had no choice but to fall over laughing, all of us, like we were 12. Sometimes we are just all class here. We must be careful about using English as the default language…

For a bit it seemed the springs had made Fletch feel a little better, but it was really just a trick. He got sicker and sicker. Here is cuddling with our friend Zach on the ride back from the springs. Zack hadn’t brought a jacket and was very cold, then mysteriously he showed up at our in service training last week sick with the same symptons Fletch had. Too bad for Zach, Fletch didn’t get him sick, a mosquito did. A blood test showed the poor guy is the first from our training group to come down with denghi. At least Fletch didn’t have that. Sometimes the symptons get so bad people report feeling like their bones are breaking. My spanish teacher from training said when he had it his skin was so sensitive for a few days he felt it was burning if anything touched it. The worst part about denghi is that there is no medecine for it because it’s a virus, just tylenol to control the fever and help reduce the body-aches. This is another reason we are thankful we live in cold climates. We do not have mosquitos hardly ever, and they don’t have denghi all the way up here.

Fletch wanted me to hang out with everyone, since he couldn’t. So I spent the weekend, running to hang out with our friends, running back to take his temperature and give him more pills. By Saturday evening he showed no signs of improving, so I decided I was going to call the PC nurses. Just as I was headed out to do so he asked, rather pathetic sounding, “Can you do one more thing? Can you call the nurses to see if we should be doing anything else…” I laughed and told him I was on my way to do it, I just wasn’t going to tell him in case he told me not to. Thus began the dialogue with the nurses that had Jaime locked in the hospital by Monday morning, undergoing one test after another.

I must say, I’m glad he’s generally healthy, because he’s a pretty big grumpy pants in the hospital. He almost walked out of the hospital before the doctor came to see him, and I feel if he’d been there by himself he probably would have made it. I have a huge fear of people being mad at me, and I was afraid the PC nurses would be pretty angry about such conduct, so I kept shuffling my feet. Just when I couldn’t hold him off any longer the doctor came in to see him and told him how it was going to be. Thank god. It’s not that I wanted him, or me for that matter, to be stuck in the hospital, but I didn’t know what was wrong with him, and I certainly wasn’t succeeding at making him better. So from then on my job was to run around and coordinate things, and try to keep grumpy pants from getting grumpier. It was a long, tedious week, for both of us as you can tell by reading his account of it all. I spent it sleeping on a bench in his room. But, as Monty Python would say, he got better. Yay. We finally got to go home, double YAY. And again, we had five days at home before we had to leave AGAIN.