First Blog in a Long, LOOOOOOng Time

Wednesday, December 8 2010




Each week I say to myself this is the week I will start writing more, but instead of starting immediately, I say, and tomorrow I have all the time in the world to do it. You know the rest. So today is that tomorrow, and although I don’t have a lot of time, I figured I’d give it a start and hopefully I’ll have some interesting stories to share. So, getting off on the right foot, I’ll share some good things that have happened in the past couple months.

It’s been really really cold lately at night, so a month or so ago I bought an incredibly warm blanket and I haven’t had problems since. When I went to the store to price different types and sizes, the lady running the shop and I pulled it out of the bag to see how big it was, what it was made of, etc… We pulled it out and she said, l“ook, on this side there’s a beautiful flower”, I smiled because it was a nice print. Then we turned the blanked over and she said, as if teaching me something I could never have figured out on my own, “and on this side, there’s the Virgin Mary”. I barely held myself back from laughing thinking to myself well, of course it’s the Virgin…What am I going to do with this blanket, face up or face down? I finally decided to buy it after getting her down to Q225 from Q250 (about $30) and have slept wonderfully ever since. By the way, I decided face up.

I recently made friends with a few youths from the community, one who doesn’t like soccer so plays basketball with me whenever we have sports days, and one of his buddies who likes both. I taught two of them how to pass a volleyball correctly and they are both naturals. All I have to do is find one more person with a little control and who is willing to listen to a few instructions and I will have my long-awaited Concrete-Doubles volleyball game (not to be confused with sand-doubles or grass-doubles). Really, I’m just happy to have friends…even if they are only 17 years old.

I scored a goal in a pappy-fút game last week (soccer, but on a basketball court), the only goal for my team though so we lost. I am really enjoying soccer, and now wish that I had started playing it earlier in life. I feel like a dumb gringo when I ask how many people are on the field at one time, or when I ask how many minutes are in a half.

I have made a couple really good friends in my town. One is my neighbor, 20 year old Oscar who studies and works about 3 hours away so I only get to see him every couple weeks, but whenever he comes into town we always have really interesting conversations. His younger brother Luis gave me worms…composting worms. Another young guy in town is the brother of two co-workers, he plays guitar and so does his friend Luis, an 18-19 year old who is the son of one of my other co-workers, and they come to my house some nights and we play guitar and keyboard together. Once we got together in the church and plugged in a base, electric guitar, electric drum set, and two microphones to their speaker system and jammed for hours. They also invite me to play sports with them, even though I’m a girl and am terrible at soccer, we always play a little basketball too which gives me athletic credibility.

I have collected over a thousand worms for composting, each one hand picked from dried cow and horse poop that I find in the pastures around my house. It’s a great opportunity to hang out with the young children of the community who are out with the goats and sheet during the day. They usually have nothing better to do so they even help me. We count them one by one in k’iche’: jun, keb’, oxib’, kajib’, job’…even though I can only count to five.

It’s also avocado season, which means I eat about ten or more avocadoes per week. I could live off of guacamole, refried beans, and campo cheese for at least two weeks. I’m also getting ready to plant more cilantro because my last crop drowned due to lack of drainage in my planter, and also some mint, basil, and whatever other herbs I can get seeds for. This will be using the abono (compost) that my worms have been making me during the last couple months.

Now for a couple not-so-good things:

I have fleas in my bed and in my room. Last week I picked 23 of them out of my wool blanket and drowned them. Since then I have picked off about 10-15 more. I have a water bottle sitting by my bed called my “flee cemetery” just for this purpose.

I have been having some problems with communication with my counterpart lately, but after Flavio’s visit to me last week (Flavio is my Peace Corps boss) he helped me clear up a lot. We decided that my projects for this next year would be four:

1) Developing a system of accounting for the association and their small business projects
2) Environmental Education in the four schools in my Aldea
3) Promoting tourism and supervising it’s organization and development
4) Music classes in the school

I am most excited about #4, music classes! I’m going to teach them how to read sheet music, keep time, and play as a group rather than just fiddling around and sounding terrible together. I’m least excited about #3, but, as my program is called “sustainable community tourism”, I really should put some of my resources into that.

Well, I’m going to leave it at that for tonight. More positives than negatives which is always a plus. I’m going to try and update my blog on a weekly basis plus photos when I get the chance with faster internet. But any of you out there who are actually reading this – REMIND ME! If I know that people are actually keeping up with my life and are interested in reading about it it gives me way more motivation to actually write a summary. I crave communication with the outside world people, so be it email, chat, facebook, skype, whatever. I want to hear from you. Don’t you forget that.

Much luv as always,
Kat, aka “Talin”

P.S

PICTURE CAPTION: Taken three months ago when I went for a stroll to a neighboring town about an hour away. I talked with the señora (woman) for a little while then proceeded to my destination. As I was walking away I turned around and realized how beautiful the scenery was and I snapped the photo as a recuerdo (souvenir) of a typical walk about my town. It’s normal to see more sheep and goats than people during a 1-2 hour walk.