Hello everyone! We’ve finally managed to stay in site for almost an entire month. We thought maybe it would slow down the pace of life a little bit, but we found it did not really at all. Time is still flying by. Oh how quickly the month has disappeared. We’re leaving our village again tomorrow morning for a trip to Panajachel, meeting up with some representatives of different aid organizations to exchange ideas and look for possible economic support for second year building projects. It should be fun. Personally I love being on the road alternating between reading my current book and watching the scenery fly by. My perspective on travel here has changed dramatically, as I used to dread it. It felt so full of hassle and stress, but now we know the ropes, and it’s all pretty easy as long as we’re not dumb. It also helps that there are two people, because one of us can be dumb (or asleep) while the other stays alert. But anyway… we’re also going to meet some new-to-us Americans. As proven with our translating venture with the Cascade Medical team, meeting up with non-Peace Corps Americans here is often fun, as it’s both a taste of home and a time full of new-to-us stories and ideas. So it should be good. BUT, I made it my goal to write another post before we leave on Thursday morning, so here’s what we’ve been up to:

I’ve begun to feel a little like we’re home-steading here. I mean, we’ve got the chickens, the greenhouse, Fletch is working on natural stone steps down to our latrine. We’re working on plans to replace our current stream-polluting pit latrine with a composting latrine, and also plans for building a smokeless chuj near the house both for our personal bathing needs and as a teaching tool for the locals. Finally, we’ve just begun efforts to make a sweet loft space in our house. We talked about this about 7 months ago, decided it could be fun, then forgot about it. I guess we were just busy with other things. But we’d had 3 visitors, the space had been tight, and a fourth one was on the way, so we decided we should do this thing. It’s great because it also means we can both be home and not HAVE to see each other every second of the day. This is helpful to our inner peace as well as our mutual appreciation of each other. 🙂 It’s currently a space with a mattress for sleeping and it has lighting. Miman Emily said it was comfy to sleep there. She was sortof obligated to say that in front of our host family since they were aghast that someone would be forced to sleep up there. They thought we were pretty bad hosts. B ut we want to make it into a type of loft-living room. So, we’re busy, as-per-usual.

The greenhouse has been kind of a fun, exciting personal project. It’s as much a learning tool for us as it is for the rest of the community. From the very beginning other people have been involved. I think it’s funny that whenever the girls see me out working, they immediately want to come help. This was back at the beginning of the project. At the time I was worried about their tiny feet in flimsy sandals ending up under the hoe, but thankfully that never came to pass. Now we run garden tours at recess for the kids that come to our door asking to see what’s inside. The school is just across the road from our house. Anyway, the other day I was in there in my rubber boots with the water hose, letting the ground have it as the sun went down. I was thinking, ya know, we’re sort of “Hippy Farmers” in the derogatory sense of the title. As in, ohh we love the earth, ooh we love to plant and watch the seedlings grow and turn into our food, Man…But we don’t really have a clue what we’re doing. However, unlike “Hippy Farmers” we do know how to use our resources and figure things out, so hopefully this will turn into a more successful experiment than the now defunct 1960’s organic food “Hippy Farmer” ventures…hopefully. 🙂 We do listen to all the advice of our Mayan farmers who’ve been living on this land for as long as they can remember, so we’ve got that going for us. Between them, Joel Salatin, and the internet, we hope to eat some of the food we’ve planted.

Something both advantageous and a little embarrassing happened the other day. We woke up to find the greenhouse was left ajar, and assumed that kids had entered and left the door open when they left. A few hours later, Reina came by to see if she could go in and check it out. I told her how I thought some kids had been in that morning, and she said, “No, it was my Dad. He went in to take a look.” She said that they were pretty sure one of the weeds growing in there is an edible, and well liked in these parts, monte (naturally occuring green weed). Reina wanted to come in the greenhouse and pull a load of weeds to put in their soup for the evening. Now, the greenhouse had been in need of some attention to weeding for a few days, and we just hadn’t got around to it. When Reina walked in she said, “It smells so good in here, and it’s so warm,” with a big smile on her face, then, “Look at all these weeds! You should have pulled them out by now if you want anything to grow!” no longer smiling. And there we were chastised for putting off our weeding duties; we can’t be both lazy and successful farmers apparently. 🙂 She confirmed that the weed, bledo, was growing in there. She and Nas came by again to pick it, taking away a bucket full for eating with the family. I think it’s great they can eat the weeds. Green leafy vegetables are something just about everyone needs to eat more of in these parts as they help prevent anemia, which many Guatemalans seem to suffer.

Our chickens are always entertaining. We originally named the Henrietta and Pat, as in Pat from SNL because we thought it might be a rooster but we weren’t sure. I know Fletch has told you we found that they’re both roosters, so it’s safe to call them Henry and Patrick now. We gotta get on buying some laying hens if we ever want our own eggs. Speaking of eggs, we got a bad one in our bunch of huevos criollos, locally produced eggs, but quite fortunately it was on a morning I’d decided to eat hard boiled eggs. When we saw it floating in the pot, I took it out and put another one in for boiling. Que suerte, I hear they’re pretty awful smelling if you just bust them open when they’re bad. But I wonder if that’s a rumor promoted by my childhood cartoon watching? Do any of you know? I didn’t break it open to find out…

We’ve now been home long enough to get into some routines…and then break some of them. We started running again, yay! Fletch’s shorts draw quite a bit of attention. I opt for always running in pants to avoid the stares. But on one of our runs we came home and remembered we hadn’t put the hose in the greenhouse yet, so Jaime put his rubber boots on and ran to water the garden. I kinda had to take a picture. Unfortunately we are temporarily on a running break because last week Jaime could hardly move due to some intense back pain after helping the family haul firewood and working a bit intensely on the stone steps…or maybe just because he’s getting old? 😉 Then he led Emily and me on a hike this weekend and we got off the known routes and ended up on a steep, narrow path covered in decaying leaves. The hike was pretty and fun until my right leg slid up behind me and my foot twisted until I heard a pop. Then I was sad and in pain, and still had to walk an hour home in a thunderstorm. Now my ankle looks like those of the old ladies in church, minus the greyish black knee-highs and varicose veins. The swelling has gone down a little since Saturday. We lucked out that one of the two tiendas in town just bought a freezer to start selling little homemade popsicles for 25 centavos a piece. Fletch bought 2 quetzales worth and removed all the sticks so I could prop up the ankle and ice it.

I’ve also managed to start getting up between 6 and 6:30, finally! I hadn’t been able to do this since before we went home for Christmas. You see, everyone here gets up between 5 and 6am, or so it seems. I feel like I’m hopelessly behind everyone when I get up at 7 or 7:30. The other day I woke up at 6, hopped out of bed, and was pulling on my jeans as I looked out the window and saw Nas out already inspecting his fields. Early to rise, early to bed. I have some trouble with the latter that leads into trouble with the former. Lots of people tend to think, quite mistakenly, that early morning is a good time to come see us. Health President Manuel even told Fletch recently that he doesn’t get up until 7 and all I could think was, “You liar! You come wake us up at 6:30 all the time.” Some women like to bring us hot tortillas or tamales, others come to ask us how much they can get for a pot a relative sent them from the US if they want to sell it here. All these questions could surely wait until later in the morning, but between 6 and 6:30 seems to strike everyone outside of our house as the appropriate time. This monkey’s attitude is a good depiction of how I feel on the inside when these visitors wake me up or invade my early morning peace. I try to keep my cool on the outside, but I’ve found I’m much better at doing that if I’m up, sporting eyewear, dressed and have a hot drink in hand. And on the days that people don’t show up, it’s great to have the quiet time to begin my day. Since the rain is returning, the mornings are pretty moody with all the mist and fog running by outside the window; I like it very much most of the time. Though sometimes I’m a little less than in love with the rain.

We actually missed the first huge rain storm, which included hail, while we were on a shopping trip in town. We’re big lovers of storms, but this time we came home to find our floor completely soaked under the stove chimney and inside the stove all the great ash and coal we’d built up over weeks of burning (it helps the stove run super efficiently) was also soaked. The rain had come in the joints on the chimney and leaked down the inside, and run down the outside of the pipe and in through the hold in the wall, thus the wet floor. We were both sad and upset and stressed out. Trips in to town sap our energy faster than most things, so we want to come home to our quiet and relatively comfy house and find peace. The whole mess made us very upset. But luckily, I decided to bring my very own Eagle Scout/ Mr. Fixit as a consultant with me here to Peace Corps, and we figured out a plan of action–though the plan required the rain to stop and another trip in to town. Even luckier, that day we’d stopped by the post office and picked up Fletch’s birthday package from his parents. The contents cheered us greatly, and after fixing some tea we were less stressed. Now we have a mini-gutter diverting rain off the chimney and lots of silicon sealing in the chimney joints and the hole in wall. We no longer have a wet floor during the heavy rain storms. Yay. The picture is of Fletch hanging out our window fixing the chimney with his trusty sidekicks, Chaly and Alberto, checking his handy work. I have a lot of picture of these three crew-cut heads together in various situations; they crack me up.

Our regular work is going well–Yulais invites us to eat with them after almost every charla. There are certain things we do that are always entertaining to them, putting on a traje is hilarious no matter how many times they see it, as is my attempting to tortillear, or make tortillas. It does look a lot easier than it is. I manage to make tortillas, but they are malformed and uneven, with thick and thin spots that make them break when someone flips them on the plancha. But we do take it (very seriously) as part of our job here just to be entertaining. And you will note from the kid in the background that our policy of serious entertainment is sometimes contagious. And yes, the two girls standing in front of me are the girls who tried to get scholarships from us earlier. We’re still working with them a lot, and I think it’s good for everyone, especially their community, as our health talks would be much less useful without their translation. Last week one was sick and the other absent so we had a guy translate for us, and I realized just how much energy the two of them bring with their translating. The other guy had a smile on his face the whole time he talked, but he sure spoke slowly and nervously. It changed the whole tone of the presentation. So, in spite of the bad deal with the scholarships, things are going pretty well with us and them.

Finally, while spending this last month at home we quietly passed our one year in country mark. Neither one of us can believe it’s gone so quickly. I feel like we can see the end of our service looming before us. What’s really strange though, is to remember how, a year ago, we knew neither the village, the family, or the community members we now consider friends and extended family. It feels like we’ve got so much work to do, and so little time. Wish us luck! And, as always, we miss you guys.