SO many changes

Once again, crazy is the only way to describe my life over the past two weeks but it’s the good----no even GREAT---type of crazy, don’t worry!

I’ll try to put this in some sort of order but here we go: what APS and I have been working on….

Due to my persistant recommendations, we’re most likely getting two Healthy Schools Peace Corps Volunteers to Nebaj in March 2012!

The 30 Healthy School/Rotary Club project is coming together poco a poco…

I have been linking together several major organizations (not sure if I should name names?) to work together on school sanitation projects all over the country!

I quickly organized an event in Nebaj’s plaza for Global Handwashing Day on Oct. 15^th! Although I was unable to attend and participate it was a HUGE success combining three other organizations around Nebaj and the local public who happened to be passing through the park. What happened? We took flyers and soap to the plaza where people washed their hands in the fountain! Check out the photos!

I was reminded by my wonderful friend Joan that Oct 15^th was also Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day picks one topic and elaborates on it. This year’s theme was WATER! Joan shared this link with me, check it out!  Now I’m trying to play catch-up and do my own Blog Action…

I’m going to work on a radio initiative with Cultural Survival to get messages out about hygiene and water issues. The messages will be in Ixil (the language spoken in Nebaj) and possibly other indigenous languages! It’s a great and simple tool to communicate with the local population as in many parts of Guatemala and the WORLD it is the only source of information rural communities have. Celebrate radios!

Another exciting update is that Jodi and Tristian Moss’ hard work back in April as PhotoPhilanthropists has come to fruition on the Peer Water Exchange website! Check it out and especially the links to the stories on the left side! We are excited to host another PhotoPhilanthropist in November!

My personal update would be that I’ve been busy, doing site visits, giving health lessons at schools, saying goodbye to good friends, welcoming new friends, and really getting comfortable in my new home. Siobhan has been a tremendous help to this process too as she surprised me with a completely made over living room when I came home after a weekend in Antigua. She even made an excel sheet with all 620 books and plans to classify them! Also, I bought Scott’s bed after he left and now I’m sleeping like a rock instead of sleeping on a rock…

Thanks for being involved!

Giant buckets, bike races, dancing trees, and landslides

September was full of settling and shaking things up a bit. I came back to Nebaj for a few weeks to ground myself after a busy August. I started working more intently on Healthy Schools in Nebaj and was surprised and happy to see that some of the parents began sending their kids to school with toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, towel, etc. So now when I visit the schools I can incorporate these materials into the lessons!

September 15^th is Guatemalan Independence Day and I spent the day with friends in Nebaj watching the parade, eating good food, watching football, etc. The two most interesting parts of the parade were people dressed up as trees with signs saying “Don’t cut down trees” and Guatemalans dressed up as gringos with huge plastic, caricature-like masks.

At some point that week Scott made a Guatemalan bucket-list of things he needs to go in Guate before flying out mid-October. Xocomil was on that list and with Jenny’s help we were able to make that happen the weekend after Independence Day. Jenny lives here in Nebaj and has a car so she drove a bunch of us to Xela and then to Xocomil the next day for a great day of fun in the sun at Guatemala’s best (only?) water park! It was very high-class and we were spoiling ourselves but it was great fun.

 I then traveled back to Antigua where I spent a few days with friends, new and old. At dinner one night I met a freelance journalist, Connor, who came to Guate to learn Spanish and happened upon an interesting event in Panajachel: the 18^th annual Cycle Messenger World Championships. Kinda random, but even more random that this was the first year it wasn’t held in Japan or the US. You can read about it and be entertained by other articles here: http://connorboals.com/

Then on a Tuesday night Scott and I traveled to Guate City and crossed another item of his bucket-list: TGI Fridays. We ran up the bill, enjoyed some Negros Modelos, and learned that you should call at least a half-hour early for a taxi when in make-believe suburban America. We managed to only arrive 10 minutes late to the airport where we met Siobhan! She’s the new volunteer for Agua para la Salud and my new house mate.

Siobhan, Scott, FABIOLA!!, and I traveled back to Nebaj on a Thursday morning. I say Fabiola with excitement because she was able to find some time to come visit me in between her intense last few months of university. We had some great plans for that weekend but unfortunately it has started to rain relentlessly in Nebaj. We spent a lot of time indoors, playing games, cooking, and eating. Sunday the clouds parted and we hiked to the mirador to get a nice view of Nebaj just before Faby left on her long bus ride back to the city…which was not complete without a little boy throwing up on his chickens (of course!).

Since then I have been busy in meetings and orienting Siobhan to Nebaj life. We are trying to get a Peace Corps Healthy School volunteer here in March. The support from the needed authorities has been wonderful and I have high hopes for our hard work.

Unfortunately the rain has not stopped, at ALL. There was a Peace Corps lake reunion planned for the first weekend of Oct that we were unable to attend because of road conditions---especially the landslides. We tried leaving for a Saturday day-trip to Huehue instead and we literally couldn’t get out of Nebaj because of a huge landslide just outside of town---on the only road leading out! I’m hoping the worse of the rains will be over come November but this rainy season has been fierce and unyielding.