It has been over a year since I've updated. Clearly the whole update new year's resolution thing did not work out so well. So much has happened in a year, obviously too much to talk about in this one update so I'll just stick to the current stuff.
January has been kind of a crazy month. It was hard to come back from vacation. I went home for a week and it was awesome but also I was running around a lot hanging out with friends, family and running errands. I got back to Guate on the 1st (i spend midnight in LAX). There is a funny story to that too. Some guy (who is such a downer) was talking to me when i got back and to be nice i asked how his new years was. He said it was just him and his mother and it was really depressing. I wanted to be like well you have no idea. I spent mine with a bunch of strangers in an airport so there! hahah.
Anyway, work wise January was kind of off and on. Something awesome that happened was our town mayor approved the funding for a project me and my sitemate have been working on for a while. We're going to start construction on a kitchen for an elementary school in March or April. This project has taken forever, the volunteer before me started it about two years ago so when she left Elana and I took over the project. It's great to see some movement on the project. We're going to build the school out of "eco-bricks" which are plastic bottles filled with inorganic trash. That's another big problem in my town, a lack of trash management. The football field in the village is covered with trash. so another project i've been working on is a trash clean up with the high school students. In the health post we have a nursing student who is performing her practicum so she has breathed new life into the idea. A while back we organized a trash clean up with the high school students and our health promoters as well as the ladies who wash their clothes in the river but it kind of fizzed out. But its funny because before when we tried to organize this it felt like we were the only ones concerned with the environment and now talking with the director of the high school and the local mayors they seem to all be thinking about it. so i guess little by little things are changing.
Also in January I got the chance to go to a workshop hosted by PC focusing on nutrition. it was a day and a half and i learned a lot but more importantly i think the educator from the health center learned a lot too. Hopefully she'll take back some of the info she learned and put it into practice.
So a theme that i've constantly felt here in guatemala is that working days are few and far between but something pretty cool happened this past week. I was chatting with my counterpart in the health post. we were talking about how january went by so fast and I mention that that means that I only have 5 months left. He asked if I was gonna extend for another year and I said nah, no one wants me here I don't even really work and he said that's not true, yes you do. Aww, that warmed my heart. I thought he thought I didn't work but I fooled him! haha. I think we make a good team. I hope I get replaced by another volunteer.
ok that was a bit of a brain vomit blog but hopefully it helped document my crazy life here.
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