Borrrrrring

Either your comments are boring or my blogs aren't worth commenting on. Things haven't changed much these days, I suppose less partying, I guess we went a little wild a few weeks ago.

So, this week I only have 8 hours of class, nothing tomorrow. Another student came into town to study, but requested Gladis, my teacher, so we worked it out that I will not have class tomorrow, 4 hours tuesday and wednesday, then 4 more hours added on top of the 6 the week after BELIZE! Jill and I leave for Belize Thursday afternoon. The only reservation we have is at a hostel in Antigua, then we're off to Belize, armed with a few travel books and that's it. I'd say it's the biggest adventure I've been on. In Antigua we're going to climb a volcano and see lava...so cool (or hot actually, haha). That'll be a long blog for sure when we get back. I haven't been so happy in a long time, life here is ridiculous. Volunteering is great (boring sometimes and not mandatory), school is great, friends are great, weather is great, I'm supremely happy. Right now we're watching sex and the city, Amy had her mom send her all the seasons on cd that she owns...so us 3 girls end up watching it randomly with cookies, chocolate, and or wine. This is boring, I'm out.

New Volunteering Stuff

So yesterday I went to Rodolfo Robles to volunteer for my first time. I got there and they took me to the nurses station for the women. Amy, Jill, and Greg work in the men's side. Only Jill and Amy were there with me, kinda, today. So I get there, change into my scrubs, and the nurse shows me how she gets all the pills together, then I go with her to give them out. Next, breakfast for the ladies...but there's a catch...one of the ladies can't feed herself, so they ask me to do it. Ok, I've never fed a baby much less a old woman, I suppose they're the same in reality. More practice for the baby to come! Anyway, so I didn't want to do something wrong, and the lady doens't speak, she just like grunts and semi-points, more like throwing dead hand towards a general object and you guess what she wants, so I asked if I could watch the first time. This lady is so weird, she'll give you the craziest eyes, like she's going to fucking kill you, the nurse ignored it so so did I, so I watched the nurse and then she left me and I did it alone. Doesn't sound like a big task, which it wasn't, but it was weird as hell. She ate just about nothing and then laid down, I didn't know if I was supposed to force her up (that's what the nurse did originally) or let her lay down and leave. So I left. Later I saw her sit up again and bring the tray to herself so I went back and attempted to help again. I fed her then waited around until they were setting up injections. Watched them mix them up, I think I'll be able to do that eventually, soon likely, then I went with one of the nurses to give them. The ones she did went into the IV they already had so it looked pretty easy, she asked me if I'd like to do it, which I did, but I got scared and said another time...perhaps tomorrow. That'll be cool to give drugs, injections, the feeding of the crazy lady isn't so cool, but whatev. I talked to 3 of the patients. They all have TB so I wore my mask. The first girl I talked to is 18, she can't really speak cause her TB is too bad. She was really nice, but I couldn't hear shit. I was bored and didn't want to just approach the beds to chat, and I was cold, so I went outside to sit in the sun. Walked by one lady who seemed coherent, she was, and I talked to her a little, she only has 2 more days and had been there 18 days...she was nice, I don't remember where she's from. Later I sat on a bench and one of the other younger girls came and sat by me to chat, that was nice, we talked a bit, her husband is in Portland, Oregon and has been there for 4 years! Her kids are staying with their grandparents in Mexico, I think, if I'm not getting stories crossed. Then one of her friends came and chatted too..we were outside, I didn't have my mask on, and felt rude to put it on right when they came up to me just because they came up to me...the wind was blowing their direction so the particles weren't coming my way...so I was thinking and hope is the case. The other friend who came up has 6 kids who her husband is taking care of. I told her I was tired cause I watched a movie in my bed until 12 and she had no idea what a movie was! She doesn't have a tv at home and the first time she saw one was in the hospital! Most of the ladies in my area are from very rural areas, can't read or write, don't have tvs, don't even know about other countries really. Today I asked a random question to one of the ladies, "if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go," she said, "yes." Then I asked again and still, yes, then I asked her if she's ever seen pictures from other countries, no. I let her try on my shoe cause she said it looked soft. Her toenails looked like someone had gnawed on them for years, even the tops. These rural ladies also are really hard to talk to sometimes cause they've had no education and speak the jibberish spanish their folks taught them so it's harder to communicate, but it's great for my spanish. Being in the women's area is good cause they just love to talk, if I sit around they'll just come to me to talk. Next time I go they're going to teach me how to mix injections and probably give them, that's exciting. Today I got there this morning and they immediately took me with them to watch a procedure. It's called a bronchioscope. I didn't know what was going to happen to this lady until it started happening. They wheeled her into the room with the table and all the instruments and stuff, there was a doctor and 3 nurses and me. They had the lady lay on her side, put a towel over her head to cover her eyes, then they put this device in her mouth to keep it open which tied behind her head...so freaky looking, there was a hole in the mouthpiece too, to fit something in it. So the doc takes this thing that looked like a black octopus and hooked it up to a tv and other instruments...they were about to put this huge tentacle into this women's throat who they only spraid anesthetic in! FUCK. So I watched this camera go all the way almost into the small intestine of this lady! It was crazy cool. Then they took this other wire thing which has a claw at the end, like the game you play with the claw to get the stuffed animals, and took out chunks of her stomach! The whole time she's like gagging. Nothing much else happened today, just talked a lot to the patients, ate my snack forever to waste time, talked to Amy and Greg a little...then later I am napping forever, going to eat at the Med aka the best restaurant in Guatemala, salsa class, then live folk music at 9! Great day!

Answers

Dylan, Jill still had my shorts to wear so that was fine, I just walked around the town naked. WHAT! No, of course not, my bottoms didn't get lost, so I had my bathing suit and one flip flop of mine and one of Andrews, I think.

Darcy, tranquilo means tranquil. And no, we don't eat healthy meals much. The lunches are filled with carbs most of the time, sometimes not, sometimes a soup filled with vegis, but lunch is also entirely too big. Today for example, I had half a heaping plate of spaghetti, 3 things of fried cheese that were like 4x2 inches, corn on the cob, and a bowl of beets. I am gaining weight for sure, I can feel it...boo! I need to work out but it sounds sooo horribly boring and a waste of time. Ha. Whatev. Darcy, and Dad, come fucking visit me during Thanksgiving, you two could even travel together, cute!

The weekend again

Weeks really fly by here, it always feels like Thursday. Today I got 2 letters in the mail!!! So exciting! One from my seester and one from a friend from CU, what a surprise! Letters are always welcome, they increase my happiness here by like 100 fold. Today it's breezy, chilly, cloudy, and probably will end up raining all afternoon. Once again I don't have to go to the clinic cause she's not in. This week I start volunteering at the TB hospital in the mornings with Amy, Jill, and Greg...I just don't do enough at my clinic to feel like it's useful so I added Rodolfo Robles. They get to give out medicines and give shots into IVs and into butts if they want to learn, so it's more hands on. So now my weeks are like this: MW class 830-1130, lunch 145, volunteering 4-?, T movie/conference, WR volunteering 8-?, lunch 145, class 230-530pm, F nada. So this weekend we went to the lake again but this time with the group and obviously way more tranquilo. We left Xela around 230 on Friday, the weather kinda sucked, cloudy and chilly the whole way to Panajachel. We got to Pana and went straight to the hotel, Hotel Garcia or something, it was a little hole in the wall, nothing special, the bathroom was community so in the bedrooms were just beds and a table and a dresser and smelt like musky rotting cemet, if that makes sense. Walking to the hotel we passed by massive amount of SHOPS!!! It was great, we got so excited to go shopping for CHRISTMAS PRESENTS! They were selling everything, blankets, musical intruments, pipes, jewelry, bags galore, art, other fun little things...so much great stuff and bargain city, though they were pretty tough to bargain with sometimes. So we ate dinner at the restaurant right next to the water which was really pretty and there was live music. Had some drinks. I had chicken filets in bbq sauce with mashed potatoes, real mashed potatoes...yum. It was nice to have good food. Then we went to another bar and hung out, went to another and had some shots, on the way back to the hotel stopped to buy beer to bring back to the hotel to play flip cup, which kinda happened, 2 on 2. Of course this wasn't the whole group...Jill, Amy, Ruchi, Greg, Andrew (who is now gone but was awesome), and I. Then bed time. Next morning got up at 8 am for breakfast and a little shopping before we went to San Pedro. We surprisingly felt great, no hangovers! Woo! Had waffles, cold waffles, and fresh OJ, which is always delicious. Then shopped and bought you all gifts!!! After the shopping spree we hopped into a boat taxi over to San Pedro to the same hotel we were in last weekend. Got to the kayaks again as soon as possible cause Andrew was going to leave at 3pm for Antigua to leave back to the states today. This is where things got interesting and completely awesome. We hung out on the boats for a while with our beers and pringles, attempted to have battles standing up on one of the kayaks...didn't work so well. Then someone had the idea to flag down one of the boat taxis to get them to tow us around in our kayaks...GUATEMALAN STYLE TUBING...and it worked! The guy stopped and tied all 3 kayaks to the boat and began to pull us but one of the kayaks tipped and got full of water so we just cut that one loose and all hopped into the 2 left. He towed us around for like 10 minutes, it was hilarious. Like, what the hell are we doing right now, tubing in kayaks behind a boat taxi in a lake surrounded by volcanoes in the middle of Guatemala. Though...things got lost. Greg and Andrew decided to try to hang on to the back of the kayaks and get pulled which looked like a lot of fun so of course Jill and I did it too...but in order to no lose our bottoms, we took them off and put them in the boats with the rest of the stuff...though, somehow Ruchi and Amy didn't realize that my dress, Jill's bottoms, and one of my flip flops got washed out of the kayak into the abyss of a lake never to be found again. Then jill fell off and the boat taxi driver didn't want to go back to get her, so Greg had to paddle out to her half naked ass. It was interesting but all worth it. Though I'll miss that dress. Jills camera also was found drenched in the kayak...we thought it was in the dry bag but, no, it sadlly was not. So we got done kayaking and had the money that our director had given us to spend on lunch after kayaking (the others in the group ate lunch first and went kayaking after us)...we spent our lunch money not on lunch, let's just say that. What else....we took naps later and then went to meet the group at this indian like restaurant for dinner. I had lasagna, it was delicious, and a molten lava chocolate thing, basically chocolate goo...The restaurant was cool, you sat around the tables on mats surrounded by pillows and a neat lamp hanging above, there were probably 10 tables under a hut with a roof of dried banana leave (I think)...nice music, great atmosphere. Then we did absolutely nothing that night but hang out in the hotel room. Next day up and had breakfast, were supposed to catch a chicken bus from San Pedro back home but there was a jesus parade going on on the road where our bus was supposed to be so Liz(coordinator) found a pick up truck for us all to squeeze into once again to take us to the highway where we'd catch a chicken bus...Piling people into the back of a pickup truck with bars is the norm here for transportation, we've done it quite often. The first time I thought it as kinda weird and scary but now I'm used to it and it's kinda like a ride and you get better views and there aren't people who smell squishing you and there's no horrible music blaring like in chicken buses. So, it ended up being better this way cause we got to see a gorgeous view of the lake and the volcanoes. Got back to Xela about 2pm and had lunch in the food court at the mall, always a treat! I had taco bell and it was perfect. That's pretty much it, just hung out at the school after that and did stuff online and watched part of Pulp Fiction, which by the way sucks and I have no idea why it's a "classic." I was sooo bored that I just turned it off. Can someone explain this to me? So, now I'm off to my house for lunch, and perhaps a siesta. Que les vaya bien, hasta pronto.

Dylan's Request

Ok, so Dylan wants to hear more about my daily life...it's not interesting. Here's a day in my life now:

I wake up to my alarm at approximately 7:30am, used to be earlier when I cared if I was on time for breakfast but now I just wait until my mom knocks on my door and says, "kira, vas a desayunar," which means "kira, come eat breakfast." So I roll out of bed and put on some clothes and head to the dining room. Usually I have either corn flakes and a banana to cut up into it or mosh, which is like oatmeal but way soupier, with banana as well, and tea, tea always. I eat it, usually alone or with the family friend, Yomarra. Then I go shower or not, get ready, chat a little with the 4 year old, Camila, who if I'm wearing my backpack she makes sure I leave with the top and bottom straps buckled, she says it's mas seguro (more safe) and not to take it off until I get to school...it's precious. I have to squat for her to buckle me up. Then I say either, "que les vaya bien," or "buen dia," to the mom who is doing camila's hair in front of the television while she draws or eats. Then I walk to school. Usually it smells very strong of exhaust, and often school buses come by and spit out a huge cloud of black exhaust into your face and it's awesome. Kids are being taken to school in their school uniforms, drunks are passed out on corners sometimes or else just sitting there starting into the future they don't have, dogs everywhere. I just walk to school, ignore the things said if they are said cause I don't know what they're saying anyways. Though good thing I actually listened the other day cause the guy was telling me my backpack was open...that would've been bad to yell fuck off in spanish to him! I get to the school and say, "buenos dias" to everyone I see and sometimes ask them how they are...go get tea or coffee depending on the night before. Then I go into the library and use my computer if I have time or I go talk to Paco and give him a little lovin'. Then class begins. We usually talk more than we study, which is was more fun, we talk about love, boys, differences in life here and in the states, gossip, drink more tea or coffee. There is a 15 minutes pause in class where the family has made a snack for us. It ranges, we get tostadas with black beans or guacamole or this red stuff, tortillas, cut up tortillas, vegis, tomales, fruit, hot chocolate...it is all really good. Then back to class for 15 minutes which is retarded and done at 11:30. Then I've got nothing to do until 1:30 when I need to head home for lunch. I usually sit here in the library and chat online or go run errands. Then I walk home, same stuff in the street, go to my room until my mom says, "kira, vas al almuerzo," and eat entirely too much food in silence. Sometimes they talk to me, sometimes I talk to them, but most of the time it's too much effort and I have absolutely nothing to say...and there are 6 others at the table so I get stage fright. Then I have until 3:30 to go to my volunteering. If I didn't shower in the morning I shower then or else I go back to the school to hang out or read or nap. Then I go to my doc's office and wait until 4 for her, don't talk to anyone there really, they all just stare. I've only gone 2 times now in 2 weeks cause twice she wasn't in and twice she didn't have any patients. The 2 times I've gone it's been great though. One mom stared at me and I was kinda like, what in my head, and she said I had really pretty eyes. I suppose it's weird to see blue eyes here cause everything about everyone is brown. Though I have seen a few brownies with blue eyes, pretty rare. After volunteering depends on what day it is. Sometimes we hang out, sometimes we have a conference, sometimes we wait and go out later, sometimes we eat out...In the street I don't really get bothered, I think it's cause I'm huge compared to the guats. I do hear a lot, Hi, or Hello, or I want to be your friend, in english, which is always kinda funny. There really aren't too many interesting interactions with the people. If you see an indigenous woman with a bunch of stuff you try to not look at her or she will try to sell you everything she's got to the point she'll ask you what you want to pay. I think the people here are used to foreigners, a lot come here to study spanish, there are spanish schools everywhere. I've gotten used to the cars, you just have to go for it and cross fast, they won't really hit you but they'll get close so it's best to just stay out of the way, but now if I hear a car I just step up on the sidewalk. Sometimes cars or buses will swerve at you on purpose just to fuck with you, that's really annoying. I don't remember if I told you all this but here, the indigenous women have like 12 babies cause the boyfriend or husband thinks that keeping them preggers will keep other men away so they know their woman isn't with another guy. If they're not preggers they aren't allowed to bathe so that the men stay away also. That's why they all smelllllllllll. So weird, but yet the men have tons of gf's and screw around a lot. Men here are known to not be faithful at all, most of my teachers aren't with their husbands anymore cause they got a new gf or had many. Also, apparently there are men called "Gringo Hunters," whom look for foreign girls in the bars and try to smooze them and they like invite them to hotels but then ask the gringo to pay for it and make the girl pay for everything at the bar and food...weird. I stay away from the men in the bars, they're weird. We have gotten to know a few guys though that are legit, only cause one is the salsa instructor and the other is a student there. We just dance with eachother in the group and not stray away, too dangerous and hard to even converse. This place is just weird. The mountains are more unsafe than the city. Everyone litters and no one cares. Men piss everywhere, I've seen a couple wangs. There is security at the hospital and visiting hours that aren't set and sometimes doors are open and sometimes not, it just depends on the time and whos working. They wash clothes in pilas which are like old fashioned but huge washboards (tried it once and never again, felt like my knuckles were going to break off). There are men with shotguns in front of mcdonalds. If you're loaded, you eat at mcdonalds or places like mcdonalds. There is no fashion. Having parakeets shows economic status. Kids hook up in the streets around sundown cause they can't do it at home. The kids aren't taught about the war here at all. Having bed bugs or fleas is normal. No one is taught about contraception so they all get preggers quick. Everyone is late, always. You can bargain for everything, even hotel rooms. Well, that's all I got for now...any other requests? This weekend we go back to the lake, I think I said that, should be fun, but probably more tranquilo. There's this restaurant here that is sooo good, it's a mediterranean restaurant with awesome tapas, and if you buy a bottle of wine you get a free tapa, we're going there tonight for a goodbye dinner for 2 of the students at the school that we've made friends with. Ok, adios! I still need to write about the weekend working near Huehue...borrring...but here are some pics from it!

My house & Huehuetenango

May be the longest blog ever

I hate it when I dont blog for a long time and then I start forgetting stuff and have to work backwards. But that is what I have to do. LINDSAY PREGGERS AND I'M SOOOO EXCITED! I can't wait for the little snots! Hopefully I will know enough spanish to be able to only speak spanish to them so they learn. Wow great! Ok, so my life. Today is tuesday, which I did nothing but sleep in and run errands cause tuesdays we dont have class and my doc wasn't there so I just watched a movie really. It's great having my computer here, I'm pretty much online always. Though that may change cause I'm going to add another volunteering thing so I have more to do. Monday I volunteered and had class. It's so hard to speak spanish after a weekend of not speaking it at all. So this past weekend we went to Lake Atitlan, Amy's friends were in town so we had planned on hiking to the lake but it didn't work out cause one of her friends scheduled their flights on sunday, not monday so we just went to the lake. There were 10 of us! Not the whole group but Amy, Jill, Greg, Elena, Andrew, Amy's 2 friends, John was there, Ruchi, and Ruchi's roommate. We took a direct bus to Panajachel then a 30 minutes boat ride to San Pedro. As we neared the lake, the clouds loomed and rain was for sure going to be coming, which it did on the boat ride. So we pack into this little boat with windows and head to San Pedro with rain in our faces...though the boat had a top and a tarp that we eventually put in front of the boat so we wouldnt get super soaked...it wasn't raining that bad either. So got to San Pedro where Amy and her friend already were since they came in the morning (we had to come later because of volunteering/class) and they had found the hotel we would be staying at. The hotel was great! It was nice and small, cheap, like Q130 a night so divided by 4 was perfect, and it was clean, nice bathrooms, hammocks in front of each room and plants and such. Pictures from other people to come, my camera was dead. So we get there and immediatley run into Amy and her friends at the closest restaurant to the dock, eating and boozing, perfect. We all sat and had some drinks and food to start out the weekend. The weather still wasnt great. Unloaded our stuff at the hotel afterwards...what else friday...well first of all this place is full of marijuana and probably any drugs you want. When you walk around you get whifs of weed often, there are people selling pipes everywhere and asking you if you want to buy drugs...interesting. Though there are a lot of little shops to buy gifts in too that you all will probably get stuff from at Christmas! Then after dropping our stuff off at the hotel we got some beer I think and hung around in hammocks. Then we went this bar called Buddha, I don't know why, drank more, played drinking games, bought some marijuana from a random as well as papers, oops, went home, smoked, I focused on cutting up a mango for us while jill and greg listened to some music...later jill passed out and greg and i played memory, ironic, then made up some random game with cards, it was interesting. Andrew was wasted and decided to not use the door and just climbed through the window, which at the time was hilarious. Then we all passed out...Saturday kicked ass. We all got up and had a great breakfast with bloody marys that were way spicy but only spicy after we swallowed them. Then later we bought a bunch of beer and headed out to rent 5 kayaks for the 10 of us. It was a beautiful day and super warm (by the way now it's raining really hard and has been for like 2 hours and it's sooo cold!) So we went out and tied out kayaks up and drank and laughed and it was perfect. The lake is beautiful. The only boats on it are the taxis from one place to another, which is weird to me cause the lake is beautiful and huge and since there arent any boats the water is so calm and flat. We proceeded to get tipsy then our 3 hours were up so everyone went in but jill and i. we stayed and finished out beers and talked of life and love, as usual. Afterwards is when things got interesting. Jill and i were pretty tipsy and having fun walking back to the hotel when we ran into our waiter from friday afternoon...who was like, hey come here, wanna smoke? Which it totally wasnt sketchy cause it was into a restaurant, wide open where people could see so we were safe so we went in...it was hilarious, we got so high and attempted to speak spanish then they would attempt to speak english and it was all screwed up...we all just laughed a lot and smoked 2 joints. it was soo fun, at one point jill and i just stood up and were like, thanks, and left...we went back to the hotel to see if anyone was there but they werent! jill and i were standing on the balcony upstairs when people in the group walked up and we completely geeked out and couldnt stop laughing...they got the idea right away. They came upstairs and jill and i could barely talk to them, it was hilarious, but because we were high we thought they didnt want anything to do with us so we though they hated us but they thought we were just being weird cause we were sitting in the hammock outside their room with their window open just looking in at them...so weird! Then, we went downstairs to put on our 80s spandex outfits and surprised them all with those, it as so great. Anyway, we took naps afterwards cause there would be no way to go out later...naps, then a bar, then another bar, the stole a kayak from earlier and kayaked a little which was awesome, then bedtime! The next day we didn't do much, just went back to panajachel and caught a bus back to xela, though, our bus broke down somewehre in the middle of guatemala so we had to get on a different bus that was packed...GREAT WEEKEND and going back again this weekend with the group.

Last week....god i dont want to blog moreee...I dont even remember last week much...lost my phone one night...actually I think someone stole it or it just fell out behind the bar cause all my other stuff was there like money and cc's. though someone is answering it. well today i went to take care of that but now i have to take a form to somewhere and bring it back monday and bla bla bla still no phone. i find i dont really need it much though. anyway, what else last week, nothing really, began volunteering projects, which i only did once since my doc wasnt in on wednesday and thursday she didnt have any patients. Last week Jill and I tried to hike up this hill nearby for exercise and got about halfway up when this truck came down and told us to be careful and that there was a lardon(theif) further up...we thought at first he was the creepy one but then he drove off so we turned around and walked down. pretty scary, good thing he was the one to tell us and we didn't find out for ourselves. We got a ride down from a truck full of natives cause they were scared of the ladron too and as we passed people they all kept turning around. I suppose it's kinda normal. Not going up there again, unless in a big group, armed and dangerous. I dont remember what happened, not too interesting. So the weekend before we went to a really small village near Huehuetenango for our construction project. It took about 6 hours to get there!!! The first 4 were on the way to Huehue, then another 2, standing in the back of a pickup truck, crammed with 10 of us, at least it wasn't raining. The ride up was really neat though, the landscape changed so much up the mountian. It seemed like we went from Guatemala to Scotland...the landscape changed so much. ...to be continued

finally a blog

so sorry i havent blogged in a while...sometimes its hard to find the time and other times when i have time, i dont feel like blogging. but now im just waiting for the time to pass until i need to go to my volunteering project at 330 so i figured, why not. I think i wrote about my teacher taking me to a clinic to see if i could volunteer there, well, it worked! the original doc who she knew already had too many patients but a pediactric doctor (female), took me in! its really great, i like it a lot, even though ive only done it once. but like all things, ill probably get bored with it, but im hoping over time she will let me do stuff like weigh the babies, give medicine, or whatever. you dont have to worry about getting sued here so the doctors dont care as much in some aspects. and now dad is talking to me on messenger so i will have to finish this another time...life is good, im alive and kickin!