July- Happy ONE YEAR in Site

ONE YEAR?! How time flies.  July was a great month!!

The Peace Corps Volunteer Advisory Committee hosted a super fun Fourth of July weekend celebration.  I played with my department, Chimaltenango, in a three-on-three basketball tournament.  The next day we played soccer- volunteers verses employees, including the Ambassador.

This is the majority of the Youth Development volunteers, from my training group, that were at the BBQ, talent show, yard games, part of the Fourth celebration.

Anacleto and I hosted a celebratory lunch for the Amigos de Patzun scholarship students who completed a "Life Book" regarding their past, present and future goals.  The students did an excellent job with the big project!!

Our team was invited to play in a basketball tournament in a near-by town, San Martin.  We lost, but had a great time! Mary and I with our diplomas.  It was a GREAT weekend. The next day....

Laura and I ran "Las Rosas" half marathon in Antigua, Guatemala. It was INCREDIBLE!!  The views, the comradery, cheering support (especially Abby)....It was wonderful!!  One challenge was running on cobble stones.  I never got an exact time, but I think I ran in about two hours and four minutes...and loved every second of it.

We celebrated Cesar, Laura's host father's, birthday.  Look how big the baby is! Also, Colin, my old site mate who was here for my first three months, came back to Guatemala for a visit!

Raquel and Hector's niece, Karla, celebrated her 15th Birthday!! Doesn't she look like a princess??

The supervisor, who is in charge of the schools that I work with, asked if I could do a teacher training.  We had at least five meetings about the topic and who we were going to invite.  We decided on participatory education and 20 middle school teachers. Yeah...we ended up with 40 teachers from preschool to middle school.  I really don't think it was a miscommunication/lack of Spanish; more so a cultural difference (for lack of better words).  So I invited Lydia, my site mate, to help out.  It was very successful and really enjoyed doing it.

One week in July the Health Center's around Guatemala promoted free HIV/AIDS testing. I had the opportunity to go with the social worker, Alicia, whom I've been collaborating with, to one of the villages.  A group called, Proyecto Payaso= Clown Project, from Sololá  did an amazing dramatization with catchy songs about HIV/AIDS.  AND THEN the Health Center did NINE HIV tests, which is double the number of voluntary tests that were done last year (not including pregnant women).

A group of female students from Colegio Renacimiento competed for "Miss Independence" by giving a speech about either women in politics, personal values or peer pressure.

Quick background of the Youth Development project- The Ministry of Education wrote a curriculum for all middle school students. Then PC created a Youth Development Life Skills curriculum based off of the Ministry of Education's curriculum. Before I got to Patzún none of my schools had even read the curriculum. The students had hardly received any sex education. Two out of three of my schools agreed to collaborate with me to do a four hour presentation about reproductive health/sex education with seventh and eighth grade students to catch them up to speed. Another small success story.



Looking back, July was a great month!!