Everyday Things

Saturday

I went out on a date tonight. It’s not what you think though- there was no boy for me. Blanca (our housegirl) asked me to go watch some basketball games with her and I didn’t realize that she really just wanted to go meet her secret boyfriend and I had to tag along because she’s not allowed to be out at night without me. I was tricked into being the 3rd wheel and going out on a date with 2-18 year olds for almost 3 hours!! It wasn’t as bad as I expected, since I was pretty entertained by the games. However, the walk home was awkward since they wanted to walk behind me for all 8 blocks or so and do whatever it is 18-year olds who are secretly dating do. I tried to look as normal as possible, but lets face it, I’m the only North-American person in probably about a 45 minute radius, out late at night, with 2 kids following along behind me- I looked and felt ridiculous!!

The other awkward occurrence of the night was having my picture taken a billion times. Sometimes I try to pretend I’m famous or something, but really it’s a toss up between feeling famous and feeling like an exhibit at the zoo. I finally had to ask some kids to stop because they were literally standing right in front of my face and I couldn’t even see the game! AHH!!

Sunday

This morning I voluntarily woke up at 7 and made pancakes for my family. Secretly, it was because I was so tired of eating cereal and really wanted pancakes for myself. However, making them for everyone turned out really well because they LOVED them. My host dad asked me how often I planned on making them again! Not only am I happy because the pancakes were awesome- we ate them with honey!- but also because I love when my family and I find that we have something in common. You´d be surprised how much filling their stomachs can open doors for various topics of conversation. Also, I’m trying to wow them with my cooking skills so that they’ll let me make my own food more often. As it is right now, even if I’m the one cooking, I can’t walk away for even 5 seconds. They will stir, flip, turn up the fire, and add oil, crème, or salt- EVERY TIME. It drives me really nuts but I’m working on it!

After my amazing breakfast, I taught Sunday school again this morning. There were about 10-12 kids there, ranging in age from 3-14. It’s a little difficult to deal with the age differences, but we had fun. I did Bible story puzzles with the little ones and then we did some arts & crafts to prepare for bible school, which is next week. I´m excited, although I know it will be a lot of work and require a lot of patience!
One kid (who is a bit of a pain) asked me what, “shit” meant in English this morning. I really think he had no idea, so I just told him it was bad and that we weren’t going to talk about English today. Hopefully that will do! Anyway, Sunday school was good and then we had a huge lunch (chow-mein –they LOVE that stuff here!) to celebrate getting a new pastor, and a service afterwards. I liked the old guy, but the new one and I have discovered that we have a similar sense of humor, so I’m excited about working with him. Jokes are always welcome!....
It´s also exciting to be a part of my church right now because the women are trying to raise enough money to have electricity installed in these houses that groups from the US have come here and built, and that many of them live in. They government keeps raising the price on them everytime they come up with the money, and it´s really frustrating. It´s also really interesting though, becuase the women do not hesitate to meet with many government officials and other important people, no matter how early they have to get up or how many busses they have to take to get somewhere, or how long they have to wait for a meeting. They are very determined and I think that´s really neat to see, and hopefully, to help with. A group is coming down from Wisconson in January with some electricians, and hopefully they will be able to finalize the project then. I´m excited!

Well, this week I have several things to look forward to. Tuesday and Wednesday Jeannene, a PCUSA mission co-worker, is coming to Santo Domingo to do a workshop with some women here, so I’m pretty excited to get to participate in that. Then Thursday I’m going with the other Young Adult Volunteers to Mexico to get our passports/visas renewed. We’re supposed to stay in Mexico for 72 hours, but supposedly if you pay a bribe, you can go back the same day, which is probably better since border towns in Mexico probably aren’t the greatest places to hang around. I’m pretty pumped though- it sounds exciting when you use words like bribe and Mexico and border-crossing all in the same thought. And even if it´s not, at least I get to see my friends and hang out for the day!

Oh, the pictures are some of the boys from my Sunday school class, and some of the women from my church with a huge pot of chow mein. Both were taken at my house, which is also the church....

Soliciting Christmas Cards

Another thought.... don´t worry, you still have time to send me a Christmas card!!!! It only costs about .80 cents from the US from what I´ve heard, so you have no excuses not to! I would really like a picture of everyone cause I didn´t bring many down with me, so think about that, too!

My address is:
Julia Grubb
Presgov
Apartado #3
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

and PS, that address only works for letters, not packages, just incase you were thinking of getting me something really great!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

This weekend the other volunteers and I went to Xela to recap our past 4-5 weeks in our communities and have a workshop with a volunteer from 3 years ago, Jennifer Thalman. Hearing what the other 3 volunteers have been doing was great, and as expected, it seems all of us have had both frustrating, but also great experiences (although at this point, the frustrating is winning out for some). To give you the extremely shortened version and without divulging anything private, Leslie and Lora seem to live in the most conservative communities, and have had a few theological and cultural issues. For example, Lora’s family believes that many, many things are sins, including Christmas trees, and they like to evangelize/make people feel really bad about things by going to their homes and chastising them, more or less, which Lora has unfortunately had to do- one time on someone’s birthday!! She also had to take a test of her biblical knowledge, which her host father graded- more than a little awkward…. Leslie’s community has told her she needs to call the preacher or the executive board of her church if she wants to leave her house alone (she’s 22) because she made friends with a 17-year old boy from the next town which was evidently a HUGE problem requiring what sounds like about 10 meetings!! Sarah lives with 16 people in her house, but seems to be liking it fine. She traveled with a group from the US a couple of weeks ago though, who never got their luggage and didn’t get to install the water-purification project they had come here to do, so that was a little bit hard! All in all, we are happy to have made it to the 3-month point, and I think we’re all excited about what the rest of the year has in store!
So other than telling each other our stories, it was great to hang out in the cold mountain weather, take hot showers, and be able to flush our toilet paper (normally the system here can’t handle it). We also got to make a “Thanksgiving dinner,” which consisted of spaghetti, green-bean casserole, and pumpkin pies from the Bake Shop (the best bakery- owned by some American Mennonites). The turkey and dressing were noticeably missing, but we still had fun making the much faster alternative!
Anyway, the workshops we did with Jennifer were lots of fun, and also very helpful for the work we’ll be doing this year. We played tons of games that we can use in our communities and learned many different and fun techniques that we can use to teach all different groups (women, youth, etc). I’m a lot more excited about teaching now, since before I felt like I was going in blindly, not to mention in the wrong language!
We had a free day in Xela yesterday which I spent trying to retrieve my clothes from my past host family (wasn’t successful- I´m hopeing for a moment of conscience on my former host-mom´s part, but not betting on it), ate at my favorite restaurant, and bought some cool stuff at a co-op that represents women from 5 different departments in Guatemala (I liked it because I didn’t have to bargain). So then I took the ever-exciting near-death-experience bus ride back down the mountain to Mazate, followed by the crowded-in-a-truck-bed-going -60-while-standing ride to Santo Domingo. I was glad to get home and sleep in my own bed with my NEW BUG NET (which works AMAZINGLY!- Thanks Dad!!). There’s also another American staying at my house so that he can plan his church’s trip here in January, so it was nice to wake up this morning and be able to tell someone HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
Well, I guess that’s about it, so HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone else, too!!

PS- The picture is a random one of Lora, Leslie, Me, and Jeannene while we were walking to the Bake Shop- nothing too exciting, except that I look freakishly short compared to all my friends who are 5´8 and taller!

Nov. 17

Yesterday I went to IRTRA, which is Guatemala´s huge water park that´s pretty awesome! It has tons of water slides, pools, and a lazy river- all that are really really CLEAN! I was so happy to spend my day there, and it was the beginning of a 6 day vacation, which made it even better. I definitely reccommend it if you´re ever in the area!
So now I´m at the finca (farm) Santa Elena with the other 3 volunteers. It´s so much fun when we all get together and share stories from our communities, which are all really different. It´s such a great releif to be able to talk in English and laugh about rediculous things for a few days! It´s also really neat to learn about the farm and how it´s being diversified now since world coffee prices are too low to support the 80 or so families that work here. Coffee has had such a strong history here and ties right into the books we´ve been reading about the war (Nunca Mas, and Silence on the Mountain- which is amazing, by the way) so it´s interesting to be sitting on a real coffee plantation and discussing them- not to mention it´s beautiful here!
So we tried picking coffee this morning, but only Sarah and Lora actually accomplished the task. I seem to have amoebas, which knocked me out, and Leslie got bitten by an ant (she´s really allergic) so we bummed around all day. They picked 12 pounds though, which sounds like a decent amount, until we realized they would only have been paid about 2 Quetzals (.26 cents) for that amount of coffee beans. It´s really sad because people are paid for the weight the bring in- not the amount of hours- and so they have their young kids out helping them and they still only bring in around 100 lbs. a day. What a hard way to make a living! It´s really hard on the owners, too though, so there´s not really many good answers to the problems facing the significant portion of the population that rely on the fincas to live.
Tomorrow we´re headed to Xela for a few days which promises to be exciting since we´re gonna go to a great Indian food restaurant and we get to go to The Bake Shop (the best bakery ever!!). Not to mention there are hot showers and nice, cool weather there! YAY! Things are looking up here!

Dont be decieved by the beauty of this fruit- it is SO DIRTY HERE!

I kinda woke up in a bad mood this morning and have stayed that way. Its so frustrating sometimes being where things are so different. And now that Ive been here almost 3 months, Im no longer in the midset where I will eat or do anything just to be polite. Of course, there are still plenty of instances where I do that, but when Im at home, I just want to have things my way occaisionally and not have to be compromising and doing things I dont like 24/7.... What tipped me off this morning was being served macaroni and cheese for BREAKFAST that I had made 17 hours earlier and left in a pot to be thrown out or eaten by the cook. It had set out on the counter all night and I honestly wanted to give a lecture on the effects of heat on milk and butter to my family this morning. Realizing that would be going overboard, I just waited for them to all finish eating and then fed it to the dog instead. I hope he didnt get sick!! P.S. My dad sent me 11 BOXES of Kraft Mac&Cheese though, which has been GREATLY appreciated!

Another food complaint I have includes cleanliness. First of all, there is no soap in our kitchen, which means no one washes their hands before cooking. Believe me when I tell you that they touch EVERYTHING you eat, too. And bleach? I’m not sure it exists here. Also, could we please not wash the dishes with dirty water that we also use to wash dirty children, our hands, toys, and clothes in? Even the clean dishes are unsafe, as I saw a chicken rummaging around in the bucket that they were drying in. AHHH!!!!.... The pinnacle of my disgust occurred one morning when I came to breakfast to find chicken waste all over the kitchen floor. It’s going to sound bratty, but I went back to my room and waited for it to be cleaned up before I would eat. Farm animals and the kitchen just don’t mix! GET THEM OUT OF HERE!!!!

It would be really mean of me to say these things if they had no alternative way to clean things or couldnt afford to use a little extra water or buy soap or something, but I assure you that is not the case. I honestly feel like a lot of times, it is a lack of knowledge about the effects of germs in the kitchen, and the whole house for that matter. I’ve decided maybe I should do a workshop here on cleanliness. Maybe I could prevent some illnesses or something (my own included)….. Seriously, I know the problem in my particular house may not seem extremely serious, but Ive seen other houses right down my street that are HORRIBLY dirty and unsafe. Ive also seen countless children who are filthy and covered in rashes and such, and Dina (my hostmom) tells me its because their parents dont know any better. Kids DIE from diseases here all the time that could be prevented by simple prevention of germs!! Its really frustrating!

....So I intended to write something intelligent today, but instead I decided to complain. To make up for it, Im including this nice, pretty picture of vegitables in the market in Xela. That way you can see some of the yummy things that I DO get to eat here and that make me very happy!....And now Im going to go home and watch movies and pretend Im not in Guatemala and STILL being eaten alive by mosquitoes for a couple of hours. I hope everyone is doing great and I will try to write something informative or cheerful soon!!

Synodica Conference

Wednesday-Friday of this week, I went to the Synodica Conference near Coatepeque. Its basically the meeting of all of the Presbyterian Women in Guatemala. (This entry is going to be a mess because I cant figure out certain punctuation marks on the computer. SORRY!) It was really neat to get to see the women from all the different areas. These women represent different races, many of the 23 indigenous languages spoken here, varying climates and thus clothing styles, and varying income levels. It was amazing to see them all working together and sharing with each other the work that they do in their own communities. It was also good to see empowered women since women here are often not very educated and not respected in society.

I would be lying if I left it at that, though, and acted like I had a great time there. The meetings lasted about 12 hours a day and the conditions there were much worse than I had imagined. It must have been over 90 degrees and the one toilet didnt actually flush after the first day. I tagged along with some people who had been invited to stay at a house, but really we were sleeping on the concrete floor of a garage, which wouldnt have been too bad except that we were about 8 feet from the main highway of the coast of Guatemala and the door of the garage didnt shut all the way. So all night I felt as though I was sleeping in the street and waiting to be run over by a truck. The so-called bathroom included a hole in the ground about a block behind the house (I opted for trees instead) and a bucket of water in the yard with a 3 12 foot tarp that you could stand behind. Most people here are pretty short, but I still dont think 3 12 feet quite does the job! Actually, I can put my personal guarantee on that, since I used it twice....

Leslie (another volunteer) and I were discussing that this is what we had thought we might be living like in Guatemala when we first came here, but since we have been in better conditions, its hard to adjust to the worse ones at this point. It made me think alot about living without the comforts Im used to, and how much Im willing to give up before I go crazy! In retrospect, Im thankful for opportunities to live with these people and have these difficult experiences, but its not easy after growing up in the States, where we are used to things being CLEAN, comfortable, easily accessable, and where we run on SCHEDULES. Its very different from people who grow up here and dont know or cant afford for things to be different. The whole experience prompted me to make a list of frustrations about the differences Ive experienced here, and Ive decided to work on trying to get over some of them. BUT no matter what, there are some things I just cant do- like eat meat that has been sitting in a 100° market all day with flies on it, or bathe in water with worms. Thus, I will never be fully part of my community here, but I am working on being as close as I can!!

PS. I got to ride bumper cars at the mall last week and it was AWESOME!

Seatbelts and Such

Two days ago, after a 10 HOUR MEETING of our Presbytery in San Antonio, Suchitepequez, I actually got to ride in the front of the truck with Angel, my host dad (this is rare since I usually sit in the truck bed). I reached for my seatbelt and realized it didn’t work. He said, “Oh, it doesn’t work, but you don’t need it. It’s safe.” HA. My dad (in Shreveport) would have freaked out at that point, as I wanted to, too! Driving in Guatemala doesn’t seem to involve important things like laws, insurance, good roads, or patience…. Oh, did I mention Patrick let a 13 year old kid drive him up a mountain the other day? AND, he has pictures of another bus driver driving with his eyes closed!!... But anyway, on the way home from the Presbytery meeting, Angel accidentally hit a man on a motorcycle who was coming from oncoming traffic! I had been sitting on a wood plank in the bed of the truck with the 2 youth who were with us, so I didn’t see it coming. Luckily, no one flew out of the truck, and the man on the motorcycle was ok. Of course like 8 cars stopped to argue the situation- that’s how they decide who is going to pay- and then 8 police showed up in 1 truck, which was a little unnerving since they will sometimes just throw everyone involved in jail until they can figure things out…. And then yesterday I got in another car where a man told me that seatbelts weren’t necessary in Guatemala and I informed him that I’d been in 2 wrecks in the past month, so I’d be using mine, thank you very much! I wanted to ask him where exactly he thought seatbelts WERE necessary, but I thought that might come out a bit rude….there’s no point to this story at all, except that I’m getting a little more nervous about transportation here, especially since there have been 2 accidents in the past month where busses have slipped and fallen down mountains!!


Oh, one other funny thing- in addition to my real jobs here- teaching and working with youth and little kids- I’ve found that I have many unexpected jobs in my community as well. For example, Angel has brought me his cell phone 3 times this week and asked me to fix it because he can’t get calls or messages. It’s like he thinks I had a previous job with Cingular or something. He stands over me and waits until I fix it, too, even if it takes like 30 minutes….. my second odd-job is American T-shirt Translator. There are like a billion used American clothing stores in this country, so EVERYONE is walking around with t-shirts that say things in English that they can’t understand. For example, “Jesus is the MAN,” “Senior Party 1987- Middle of Nowhere, Iowa,” “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was HOT Like Me? (the best is when you see extremely unattractive people with shirts like that)…. The list could go on and on, but I’ll spare you until I see any particularly hilarious ones. But people are always asking me what their shirts say and it’s really great when I get to let them know that they’re wearing something ridiculous!

November 2

I experienced my first holiday with my family here in Santo Domingo this week. Wednesday was All Saint’s Day, and Thursday was Day of the Dead, which are celebrated like crazy here! When I woke up on Wednesday, our house was full of women from my church cooking empenadas to sell outside of the cemetery (they’re trying to raise money to provide electricity to some houses that they helped build with groups from the United States). We went to the cemetery about 10 and it was packed with people who were all putting flowers and wreaths on their loved-ones graves. It was really neat! And outside of the cemetery, people were selling all kinds of food, listening to music in big tents, and even drinking beer! (not the people from my church, of course, since drinking is a big sin for them) It was exciting though to see all of the people from my city hanging out and having a good time.

On Thursday I went along with my host mom to visit a sick man in my community. So far, I thought my little city here consisted of only about 8 streets. Boy was I wrong!! To get to this guy’s house, we rode in the back of a truck for about 30 minutes through HUGE fields of palm trees and then sugarcane, crossed a river twice, got out and walked for about 10 minutes, crossed an awesome wooden footbridge over the river that was suspended by cables and shook like crazy, and climbed up a small part of a mountain. I felt like Indiana Jones- it was an awesome adventure! Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera because I thought we were just visiting someone that lived on one of the 8 streets that I thought was the whole town. But my host mom told me she’d bring me back since I liked it so much….. on the way back, there was a downpour and of course, I was riding in the back of another pick up truck. I was so soaked, but I was standing back there laughing because it was so horrible that is was actually really fun! And it was the first time I felt like I wasn’t getting better treatment just for being white. In fact, the driver didn’t bring out the tarp to cover the back until some Guatemalan girls got in the back with me and I was already soaked to my underwear!