Randomness

Picture dump! Look at this lovely mess. This is a bowl full of papaya seeds drenched with honey. My parasites got so bad last week that I decided to give this a try. I had read an article about papaya seeds being a natural anti-parasitic, and since we all now know how powerful honey can be for your body, I decided to give it a go. Papaya seeds contain an enzyme called papaine which is commonly sold as a meat tenderizer. Papaine naturally breaks down proteins, and when eaten will break down the proteins that make up parasites, killing them. It's a highly effective natural treatment (one study showed that parasites were eradicated in 23 of 30 participants after three days of treatment, pretty good for something so simple.) I ate about half of cup with two teaspoons of honey to cover the taste. No more diarrhea :) But who knows, my body tends to get rid of the parasites on it's own and then get reinfected again after a few weeks. Next time I won't wait as long to try this. If it cures my diarrhea in the first two days, I'll call it successful.

Look at this itty bitty banana!

I thought you might be interested in seeing what the inside of a clinic looked like. This is a new eye doctor that we'll be using for the kids. The office was actually closed this day which is why there are no patients. Usually this place would be standing-room only.

Antigua is having a book fair right now. Actually, Antigua is having a lot of stuff right now since it's the month for their patron saint. They have a big carnival set up and parades and what not. I was excited to see the book fair though since book stores aren't very common here. I was hoping to find something cool to bring home, but they were mostly old books that had been donated. Nothing really appealed to me. I miss Borders :( I thought this book was interesting though. It's Darwin's "The Origen of Man" but it has a corn cob on the cover. Mayans believe that Man was created from corn; the four colors of corn (white, yellow, red and black/blue) represent the different races of men. Corn is considered a very holy grain here which is one of the reasons it's so integrated into the diet (Guatemalans typically don't eat flour tortillas. Corn tortillas are served with every meal here).

I volunteered to help with the new volunteer orientation one morning. During the class a couple of kids came in with a huge birthday cake for Erika. All of us had forgotten that it was her birthday! Her husband works is in charge of the workshops here and usually has the kids bake her a cake every year, but he's been really sick so he had one delivered from town instead. I got to have a piece since I was there, talk about being in the right place at the right time! Btw, it was delicious. I can't wait for my birthday!

Obviously the 4th of July isn't a holiday here, but that didn't prevent the volunteers from celebrating. We had a big party at Nathan's house, but I was too sick to go. Luckily we had a big group of visitors from the United States here, and they decided to throw their own party! They bought ice cream for everyone (that's a shit ton of ice cream!) and set off fireworks. The fireworks were actually really great, way better than I expected! I took the opportunity to give the kids a US History lesson

Here's a bitter sweet game of Brandy Dog with the Europeans. We were missing our normal players since they've headed back to Switzerland and Germany, so here's Hannah teaching the game to Kim, our soon to be new player.

And finally, here's the great new belt that Rubin the chef gave me in exchange for English lessons. I love the color of it, and the fact that it was made a few miles down the road makes it super awesome. Sadly it's about five inches too small for me, so my new goal is to drop enough weight to wear my belt on the plane ride home.