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!