Tomorrow is three months in country; I can’t believe how quickly the time is passing. Three months ago today I was in Atlanta just meeting all the other nominees/trainees now volunteers. We’ve certainly come a long way from there but it’s still only the beginning, and that is so exciting. I think the next couple months will feel a bit slower because I am just getting used to my new home here in the Western Highlands. The town is absolutely beautiful and I’ve been out to a few of the aldeas (smaller towns connected to the municipality) and will start doing workshops there next week. The two rural health technicians that Melissa, my site mate, and I work with are awesome, very “pilas” as they say here (literal translation is battery— think energizer bunny, that used to be an expression, right?). Today we were out visiting one of the aldeas that is prioritized because of high rates of maternal mortality and malnutrition. While we were out, we made plans for health talks with a few school directors and scheduled a meeting with community leaders to introduce our project and to insure their support of our presence in the community. We walked back to the highway because the health worker with a car had moved on to another community to do vaccinations. It took about two hours to get back, but it was a gorgeous walk through the mountains and the air was cool from the clouds hanging low around valleys.
I know I am going to be happy here because everyone has been really friendly so far. There is certainly plenty of work to do, and I do like to be busy. Also, I don’t know if I could be unhappy when I know there will be no snow in my life until 2012!! I love the weather here; it is never really cold or very hot. Another lovely contribution to my happiness is the French press I bought myself in Antigua. I drink fabulous coffee twice a day and there is a great bakery in town where I buy royales (similar to a scone but slightly less dense and less sweet). My other favorite thing beside the work is my free time to read and chill. Ben Harper makes me so happy, the more I listen to him, the more I love him. I’m listening to his album “Fight for your mind” right now and my host sister is beside me doing her homework. She is in kindergarten and is working on capital and lowercase letters and numbers. She reads everything to me so it took over an hour to write less than a page but it was fun because she is totally adorable and keeps asking me to translate what I’m writing, which is good practice.
I am currently in the middle of Madame Bovary and still haven’t figured out if I like it or not. The writing is good but the characters aren’t terribly likable or interesting. Perhaps things will pick up in the second half. Before this, I was reading “Mirrors” by Eduardo Galeano, who, as many of you know, is one my all-time favorites. It wasn’t his best book, it wandered a bit, but I still love him. It was a fairly feminist book, which didn’t surprise me since he is an amazing person and really political and if you are going to get into the politics of humanity it is difficult to ignore the participation, or rather the exclusion, of women in the history of politics. Perhaps in my post-Peace Corps travels I will get to travel to Uruguay and just wander around until I “coincidentally” run into him. Haha that would never happen but its OK to dream, right?
Well, I am about to continue coloring my health stories (one of our dynamic teaching methods) and listening to Mr. Harper. My host sister is done with her homework and is drawing butterflies now.
I wrote all this last Thursday but haven’t had a good enough internet connection until today to post it. I still stand by the sentiments of last week and will give more updates soon!
