Monday, July 19, 2010

It’s Official: I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer!

Hola everyone -

Sorry it's been so long since my last post...the last half of training was crazy! We were traveling more than we were in our training communities. But now that I am an official Peace Corps Volunteer (woo hoo!), I should have a lot more time (maybe too much free time) to update this blog more regularly. But I'm going to try to update y'all on the past two months pretty quickly:

Field-Based Training
As part of our overall training, everyone went in groups to visit different volunteers for a week. I went with 6 others to visit PCV's (Peace Corps Volunteer) Abby and Lauren in San Marcos, a department in the west that borders Mexico. It was absolutely beautiful! We spent the week giving different charlas (educational talks) to different groups: middle-school classes, health promoters, food vendors and womens groups. The highlight of the week was when we gave a 4hr workshop on HIV/AIDS to a group of 70 high school students. It was pretty entertaining...especially the condom demonstration. See some pictures by clicking on the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=181216&id=513464862&l=836bf6cf9b

Site Assignment and Site Visit
On Thursday, July 1, after much anticipation, we all found out where we'd be spending the next two years of our lives. I'll be living in San Juan Atitan, Huehuetenango (pronounced way-way-tin-engo) in the northwestern department of the country. I was VERY excited with my site! I'd had a feeling ever since getting here that I might end up in Huehue. It's very mountainous, very indigenous and is kind of known as the wild west of Guatemala. I was also excited to find out that I'd have a sitemate living in the same town as me, Brittany. She's from Oregon and I think we're going to get along great! It's a brand new site for the Peace Corps, and there's a lot to be done, so they decided to assign two volunteers to the town.

The following Sunday, everyone in the Healthy Homes project traveled together with our trainers and project directors to Quetzaltenango (or Xela), known as Guatemala's second city in the western highlands. We all spent the night in a hotel and on Monday morning all of our counterparts from our different sites came to Xela to meet us and for an orientation meeting. Each PCV is assigned to an individual counterpart who works for the Ministry of Health in their community. This ensures that there's communication and collaboration between us, the volunteers, and the local health centers. Most sites just send the one counterpart to meet their PCV, but Brittany and I were very surprised when an entourage of 6 people showed up to our orientation to meet us: 2 from the health center, 2 from the local NGO that I'll be working with, and 2 representatives from the municipality. The muni reps were both dressed in the traditional dress that everyone, including men and children, still wear in San Juan. So everone was very jealous of us! Even other Guatemalan counterparts were having their pictures taken with our muni reps in their traditional clothes. After the meeting, our entourage drove us up to our site with ALL of our luggage in a bus. It was definitely an interesting ride! Our town is only 12km off the main highway, but it took us 1.5hrs to go those 12km because it was literally straight up a mountain on an upaved road. The views were absolutely amazing (we're at about 12,500ft), but it's going to take some getting used to! As soon as we arrived, we were rushed into the muni building to meet the mayor and many other people whose names we wouldn't remember. Everyone seemed very excited to see us and curious why two gringos were there with so much luggage. San Juan isn't used to getting tourists, so just being tall and white, we definitely drew a crowd!

The rest of the week was spent getting to know the town and our counterparts. Brittany will be working with the CAP, the 24hr health post and I'll be working with a local NGO that covers half of the outlying communities. We were both assigned to 2 different aldeas (small communities) outside of San Juan that we'll be working with. Normally at a new site it takes several months to get settled and talk people into working with the strange new gringos, but that doesn't seem to be the case here at all. We already have our first several months planned out, including what topics wee're going to cover with the womens groups, projects with teh schools and a health fair. So we left feeling very excited, but at the same time a bit anxious about all that there is to be done! San Juan has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the entire country, so that will be a big focus with the womens groups that we'll be working with. We'll see how it goes!

Swearing-In
This past Friday, July 16, 46 of us were sworn in by the US Ambassador as official Peace Corps Volunteers at the Peace Corps headquarters. It was a great ceremony! I was also honored (and VERY surprised) to be elected by my training group a couple of weeks ago to give our swearin in speech at the end of the ceremony...in Spanish!! I didn't vomit on myself or the ambassador, so I considered it a success! Brittany recorded part of it, so I'll see if I can post it on here somehow. All of our host families, the Peace Corps staff and a rep from the Guatemalan government were there, so it was a big to-do! Afterwards, we all went to Antigua for the weekend to celebrate. It was a great end to training!!


Well, I guess y'all are caught up now. I arrived at my site late yesterday afternoon without any problems. I'm staying in a hotel now until my bed that I bought last week is delivered to the house that I'll be living in for the next few months. I'm living with another family, but it's a bit different than during traiing. I'll cook for myself (I bought a propane stove) and my room is somewhat separated from the family. Not to mention that only the children speak Spanish, everyone else in the family only speaks Mam, the local Mayan language that I'm going to have to learn. But I'm still pretty excited about it!

Here are a few random pics from training. As soon as I take some of my site, I'll be sure to post them.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=181206&id=513464862&l=81e7ef7de5

Thanks to everyone for your emails! and for the bday cards! It was like having my birthday all over againi since it took them all over a month to get down here! I'm going to be opening a PO box in my town, so I'll let everyone know the new address once I have it.

Miss y'all! Be sure to keep in touch!