I've made it safely through the first round of elections here and only suffered from ennui, which, considering the hubbub leading up to all of this, is quite good. I live on the outskirts of town which saved me from hearing the campaign songs that played all day everyday for the last few months. The songs were especially annoying because they are all popular songs redone with political lyrics, so I'd be walking down the street and start bobbing my head to Don Omar only to realize the lyrics are about jobs and progress instead of dancing.
Elections were Sunday a week ago and then the town immediately transitioned into preparations for Independence day, which was Thursday. There was a great parade with every school in town wearing different outfits and doing human pyramids and other routines as they went through town. I took tons of pictures but my internet is very slow so I'll have to post them later.
As I suspected it would be, work was very slow the last two weeks and that gave me way too much time to worry about work without actually being able to accomplish much. I had a few meetings and went around to different hardware stores to price the materials for the stoves. Right now I'm working on the community proposal with my counterpart and some community leaders to apply for Small Project Assistance grant money (through USAID) but its quite a process and we'll have to have a few more meetings before that can be sent off for review.
This coming week I'll be in the next town over working with Hearts and Hands, a Canadian organization that builds stoves in that municipality, doing translating and stove building. I'm very much looking forward to the work; the Guatemalan staff is really great and I'm getting to know some of the Canadians that come as there are usually a few that come more than once a year (this will be my fourth time working with the organization). Its also nice to have a clear-cut job since Peace Corps work is very rewarding but everything requires a lot of patience and flexibility because things often change and because of the difficulty of communication (no one has land lines, many people have pre-paid cell phones but never have money on them, so they can't call you anyway) there is always a touch of uncertainty about whether an event will happen as planned.
It has been an interesting and trying couple of weeks and I am looking forward to more work and a change of pace. It will also be good to be busy and not have to dwell on my extreme jealousy of everyone who is able to celebrate the beginning of fall with pumpkin spice lattes.
