Saturday, June 23, 2007

More pics...


This is a picture of the view from Cantel, where we taught classes. The picture doesn´t do it justice, as you can imagine.















We visited a women´s association that is involved with small agriculture and some animals. They let us dress up in ¨traditional dress¨and we had a blast. Here we are pictured with many of them women in the association and their children.














Little kids at the association putting on a skit/dance for us. Adorable!!



















This is a very common way for indigenous women to carry their babies, wrapped in this cloth around their bodies.













Picture perfect! She walked around & handed us all a fresh plum. The women´s association went to great effort to make us feel welcome.
















This is a picture of one of the current volunteer´s houses. To the right, is my Spanish teacher, Jorge.













From left to right, Carlos (small business technical trainer), Michael (youth development trainee), Jorge (my Spanish teacher), Mosiah (youth development trainee). These were the guys on our trip, the girls definitely had them outnumbered :)

Almost there..

Well, next Wednesday June 27th we find out our site assignments, where we will be living and working for the next 2 years. Man, training really has been alot of hoops to jump through, but it is nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. After we find out our site assignments, the following week, we visit our site for about four days to decide where we want to live & familiarize ourselves with everything. We are required to live with another family for our first three months in site before we can live by ourselves, unfortunately. This is a requirement because it is thought to help us integrate into the community. I know most of us are very ready for some independence & time living alone, especially since we will have already lived with a host family for the three months of training. In any case, just being in our final site will be exciting, it is so hard to picture what life for 2 years will be like when we are still in training just because it is so different.


One of the more recent training activities that we have done is spend a week in the Western highlands of Guatemala, in Quezaltenango, also known as Xela. There, the small business development adults as well as youth development training groups taught 2 hour classes for 5 days to 6th graders about business fundamentals. It was a very long week, it seemed, but enjoyable at the same time. The scenery in this part of Guate is particularly gorgeous. The microclimates within Guate vary so much, that is is nice when we visit other parts so we can see that difference.

I have finished with my Spanish language classes, me and four other girls. They needed our teachers for those who are still at a lower level, and we are all considered Advanced in our Spanish level. We do still have one 2 hour a week Spanish class for any questions or things we would like to focus on in our language development.


I am attaching a few more photos. They are from when we went to Xela and taught at the schools and visited some other nearby associations. Next time, I will post pics of my new host family. Enjoy! Miss you all very much!!







This photo is of our ¨going away party¨from the school in Cantel, close to Queztaltenango in Western Guate. Nothing like finishing a dance party with the electric slide! :)






Some of the girls dress in ¨traditional¨clothing whereas others dress more modern. This is a highly indigenous area of Guate.





This is a pic of the girls in the two training groups for small business development: adults and youth development. We are visiting another Peace Corps Volunteer currently working in the Quezaltenango area.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Photos of Guate






















One month in...

Well, I´ve been here four weeks and a few days so far. Things have been going fairly well, with definitely some ups and downs. I just changed host families and my new family seems like they are going to be perfect for me. They are very caring & the mom loves to talk!! I am living closer to the training center now, too, which will be very convenient.
Over the past month, I have had the opportunity to visit 3 current volunteers in their site. 2 of them I just visited for a couple of hours, and then this past weekend I spend 3 days with a volunteer in Eastern Guatemala, we were only a couple of hours from El Salvador, actually. Very tropical in Eastern Guate, with lots of lucious fruit trees, accompanied by warmer weather and humidity, of course :) Can´t ever have the best of both worlds, you know :)
I really enjoyed having that hands-on perspective of a current working volunteer, he is actually about to finish his service in a little over a month.
That sure seems a long ways away for me....2 years, yikes!!
I have been having fairly regular Spanish classes with two other girls, and our classes are about to end b-c they have decided we speak at an advanced level & they need to put our teacher with some new learners.
We have also been doing technical training for small business, training to train, basically. Such as giving business classes to adult entrepreneurs, some 12 year old kids, too. The reason for teaching business to the youth is because here the majority of kids end their schooling in 6th grade. So, we teach them business fundamentals and encourage them to continue their education at the same time.
Our training group is going to Quetzaltenango in a couple of weeks to work with several classrooms at a school. Myself and one other girl are assigned to teach a classroom of 26 for 2 hours a day for 5 days a week. This gives us the opportunity to have hands on experience teaching the business fundamentals in the classroom setting. Although our primary job will be to work with adults, we often have the chance to pick up secondary projects. The classroom setting would be one possibility.
I have included a few photos in my blog, finally!!! Sorry it took me so long, computer access isn´t always convenient. Feel free to email. Would love to hear from everybody!!