Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Mi Casita: Before and After

I will let the pictures do the explaining.  It's definitely a "Maggie" house. I love it so much I don't know if I will be able to leave it.

Ok, so maybe I will elaborate a little on the photos.  The black door is mine.  The grey door is Raquel and Hector's.  We live on the second street, one street away from the main road.  A lot of people stop by my house frequently.  It's obvious when I am home, which makes it nearly impossible to ignore people knocking on my door.


This is the view standing at my front door. The plaid curtain leads to my kitchen and the other one to my bedroom.

My Addy Wall!



My super cozy, comfortable bed!

 
My wall of letters...majority from Daddio. Thanks Daddio!


My tiled kitchen, which I love! Thanks Mum!

 
I am pretty excited about my four burner stove that I am borrowing from a friend's family for the next two years.

 
Here's the bathroom. The shower is to the left.

 
The first pila is where I wash dishes. The second one is my own. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour of my little house.  I am super happy and absolutely love it!!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

September Photos

                        Addison "Midget" Kelly Stone loves sucking her binki or "dummy" as they call it in New Zealand.  Super cute...reminds me of a special little girl (wink wink)!  Molly and Arran are perfect parents. I can't wait to hold her in December.

We celebrated Josefina's 36th birthday and Sergio's 4th birthday! Josefina's sister, brother-in-law, and six cousins came over for a surprise visit to the house with a birthday hat made out of newspaper for Sergio, a cake, and juice. Guatemalan's have a tradition to smash the birthday celebrant's face into the cake!
This is a group of sixth grade female students from one of my schools in a village in Patzun doing a traditional dance from Coban.  During the month of September the schools have all sorts of activities, such as electing Miss Independence, singing and dancing, and eating, to celebrate their Independence.  I was a judge for the dance competition.

While celebrating Guatemalan's Independence Day the biggest event is the parade on September 15. The students march in the parade with their school. Their costumes are all coordinated. Most of them play instruments. Some of them twirl flags, march with signs, or carry food representing their birth place. Everyone in the town goes to see this. I did not do the best job capturing this experience- this was when I was sick.  Hopefully you can see the students marching with flags and all of the spectators sitting on the arch.


Alright, I will do my best to put this all into words. I wish everyone was here to experience it with me. Lydia, Laura and I created our own little "female running club", which we named PATZUNERAS. Aside from Lydia, Laura and I the only person that would really train with us was Karina (number 004). So the first day we could register for the 15K race, Lydia, Laura and I arrived about five minutes before registration start time. They kept telling us that everything would be ready for us to register in 10 minutes. Long story short, we were the first to register two hours and twenty minutes after the official "registration start time". At least we have the first twelve numbers- eight Peace Corps Volunteers and four Patzuneras.

We had a ty-dye party at Lydia's house- attempting to make sunflowers with brown in the center, yellow, then green (side note- it's so meant to be that I am here in Patzun- Kansas and Patzun have the same flower)! Before the race we wrote "Patzuneras" on the front of our shirts and our names on the back. We planned a big pasta dinner for everyone the night before the race; however plans changed- our Guatemalan friends were not able to make it and I moved houses. But Lydia, Laura, Colin (site mates), Pedro and I enjoyed the pasta dinner! The next morning was race day. I hardly slept the night before- nothing to do with the race- I was super excited to get things set up in my new home.

So RACE DAY! Christina, from my training group, traveled about four hours to join us for the big competetion! Our team of nine females missed the buses that took us the 15K to the start of the race. Race started in Paticiza and ended in Patzun. The nine of us ended up piling into a five seater car for the 25 minute ride to Paticiza. Laura got car sick and I had been getting sick (# 3) most of the morning. Laura and I somehow managed to find some sort of place to use the restroom before the race. I was hoping to stay plugged during the race because they did not have any sort of porter-potty's. Laura and I ran to the start line, passing an insane amount of men peeing on the side of the street, just in time to hear the countdown. The females were supposed to start 10 minutes before the males; however, within thirty seconds there were males running on top of my female friend who tripped at the beginning of the race. After this incident I kind of chilled back and let the insanity pass. Eventually we got on a long stretch of rolling highway. This was my favorite part! You could see thousands of colorful people running in the distance. Another one of my favorite parts was everyone on the side of the highway cheering, "animo! animo! Moooggie!", and offering water and gatorade in plastic sacks. There were so many spectators. I will spare all of the details and just say that I did more walking than running this particular day (which is a little sad because I was able to run it during training). Karina and I successfully crossed the finish line together! I ran straight to the bathroom. Everyone from the "female running club" did a great job! One of our friends was the last person to finish the race- just to finish the race is quite the accomplishment! It's not an easy course.

My host aunt from my first host family got married!  It was quite the celebration.  I arrived at Elizabeth's house at 7am ate some soup, drank some coffee and responded to everyone asking me where my friends were (aka a date- really uncommon to go anywhere solo, let alone a wedding).  From Elizabeth's house we took two bus loads to the church where we had a Catholic wedding ceremony.  After the ceremony we went to the reception a block away (in the same facility where I work at the resource center).  At the reception people gave speeches, we presented gifts, I served food, then we danced! 


MUM'S VISIT!!  Due to the tropical storm, Mum's flight was diverted to Honduras.  Fortunately I had two super nice friends from Patzun who waited outdoors with me at the airport for four hours.  Seeing Mum for the first time was so exciting!  We took a shuttle to the hotel in Antigua, then we ate a light dinner.  It was a wonderful evening.  The next day we did some shopping, eating and relaxing in Antigua.  When we got to Patzun we had a Merry Birthday celebration/dinner with Raquel, Hector, and my site mates.  The next day we did a little walking tour around Patzun.  We stayed the night in Guatemala City because Mum's flight left early the next morning.  I can't wait for more visitors in the future!