I just had to share this because I get such a kick out of it. One of the things I love about blogger is that they keep track of all sorts of stats for you. Here are my all-time page views by country. Am I really that interesting that I've had 75 hits from people in Russia?! So cool!
United States 1,285
Russia 75
Germany 23
Guatemala 15
Ukraine 13
Panama 11
Chile 8
Japan 4
Latvia 2
Argentina 1
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Clinic and choosing my section
I was a little lazy this weekend so I didn't get to chat about how the clinic went. All in all things were really great. The nursing supervisor Rosa is phenomenal. She's serious about getting crap done but also really easy going and funny. She keeps calling me George for some reason. She tries to say Shawn even though I told her Esteban is totally fine, then she told me she didn't like Esteban because it's too long. I should've waited to make up a name for myself because a lot of the kids here have pretty awesome names: Wilmer, Axel, Otto. I totally would've loved to be called Otto.
The doctor in the clinic seems great too. Her name is Karla, she's also from Guatemala and just started working here six weeks ago. She knows her stuff but has a really relaxed attitude with the kids and staff which is nice. Generally speaking, the clinic staff seem great! Once I can speak enough Spanish for them to actually get to know me, I think we'll be in good shape :D
Now that I'm out of the super touristy Antigua and spending more time with real Guatemalans, I'm learning a lot more about our cultural differences too. For example, passing someone on the street without saying hello is considered very rude, as is seeing someone eating and not saying "Buen provecho!" (similar to 'bon appetite'). That can mean that you say good afternoon to thirty people while you walk to the store and another thirty on the way back. The Germans tell me that its the same at home, they need to say "Guten Appetit" every time they see someone eating, even if its in a restaurant. I guess we're just rude in America, we don't have anything like that at all.
Another really big difference is that it's very rude here to be direct with someone. This is the most non-confrontational place I've even been. If someone says something you don't agree with you need to praise them on everything else they said and then hope that they need between the lines and discover that maybe you don't agree with the last thing. It's so passive-agressive. It also makes it next to impossible to get anything accomplished. We were trying to get room assignments done and what could have been decided in less than five minutes took two days because we had to tip-toe around anything that could possibly be thought of as too direct. I seriously felt like my face was melting off, it caused me physical pain to have to sit through that. I might have been somewhat obnoxious with my interjections ("Let's take a vote!" "What if we each give you an answer in private?" I was so close to suggesting that everyone close their eyes and then raise their hands for the choice they wanted, but I was worried that I wouldn't be able to say that out loud without a cinderblock of sarcasm plopping out of my mouth and onto the floor) Obviously this is already infuriating me, I can only imagine how it's going to be when I actually need to get stuff done for the clinic.
There are some very cool differences here too (well, depending on how you look at it.) There are no rules at the clinic about needing to be a nurse to work there. They've had "nurses" here in the past who have never even gone to school, they just give them on the job training for what they need to know and let em rip. The amount of evaluation necessary here is a lot less than in a hospital, plus they have a doctor to check up on things if needed, but it's still a little scary to think about. The vaccinations here are given by a dude from the United States who majored in economics, no medical background. Great experience for him, scary for anyone on the other end of the needle :/ But of course I get to benefit from the system too because here I'm allowed to do things I normally couldn't, like give stitches. I've never done that before (because doctor's do that in the states) but the doctor here said she'd teach me. Great skill to have for my backpacking adventures, good thing my malpractice insurance is up-to-date :) Side note: did you know that in Germany nurses aren't allowed to give injections or any medicines via IV? Only doctor's can do that. Cray cray.
So as you can tell by all my German references, I've been learning a lot from the other volunteers too! Out of the 12 of us who are just starting now, one is from guatemala, one is from italy, two are from Austria, five are from the US and three are from Germany. Since we all speak different languages we have no choice but to communicate in Spanish which has been good. I do cheat at times when I'm in my room because Holger speaks fluent English, but otherwise I've been really good about it. And I'm picking up a few words in German too, woohoo!
This week is the last week of orientation, then we start working for real. Aside from my regular 8-5:30p job in the clinic, I also need to work two nights a week in a section with the kids. Today we took a tour to see all the different sections. They're sectioned off by age, babies in one house, girls broken up by age in another house and then the same thing for boys in another. The babies were by far my favorites (and by babies I mean 2-8 year olds, there aren't actually any babies here right now.) I totally got my baby fix when a three year old girl jumped into my arms and starting playing with my beard (beards are really uncommon in Guatemala, I've seen maybe three or four other people with them in the last seven weeks). I also really liked the kids with special needs. They have about 15 kids with CP, autism, Downs and Rett syndrome. It'd be easy work for me, really similar to being in a group home, plus my friend Stephanie works there, so it'd be fun. They're really pushing me to go to the older boys though, kids who are 14-18. I have ZERO interest in this. They don't let girls go there though, and with only two male volunteers here, if one of us don't choose to go in this section, the guys wont have a volunteer with them. They have other staff, its not like they'll be alone, they just wont have the benefit of having a foreign person there. I told the staff that I'm not a benefit to them anyway since I have absolutely nothing to offer these guys; I HATE sports and unless they like baking and cross-stitching, we're probably not going to get along. They asked me sit and have dinner with them tonight just to feel it out, and of course I happened to sit next to the kid who also hates sports and is in art club. He won me over, but not quite enough to counter-balance my loathing for all the jock kids. I have until tomorrow to decide, so we'll see.
I chatted with Mom today. She offered to ship me out a care package which totally got me excited. (I've been secretly compiling a list of requests just waiting for someone to offer...) Sadly though, I mentioned it to a friend and she said that her parents had offered as well but then changed their minds when they saw the shipping charges. I went onto the post office website to see what she was talking about, and sure enough it looks like a care package would probably cost close to $60 to ship. Noooooo! So no more raspberry jelly and crackers for me :( I'll just have to wait until I come to the US to visit in June, then I can smuggle things back with me.
Tomorrow another one of the old volunteers leaves. They've been trickling out the last few days, though the big waves will start this weekend. It's hard to know where we fit in right now because a lot of the older volunteers are mourning the loss of their friends who are leaving and not really interesting in mentoring new folks. I'll be glad when I get settled into my new (and FINAL) house on Sunday and can wait for all of this to blow over. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I fear my tourist days are over for the moment...
The doctor in the clinic seems great too. Her name is Karla, she's also from Guatemala and just started working here six weeks ago. She knows her stuff but has a really relaxed attitude with the kids and staff which is nice. Generally speaking, the clinic staff seem great! Once I can speak enough Spanish for them to actually get to know me, I think we'll be in good shape :D
Now that I'm out of the super touristy Antigua and spending more time with real Guatemalans, I'm learning a lot more about our cultural differences too. For example, passing someone on the street without saying hello is considered very rude, as is seeing someone eating and not saying "Buen provecho!" (similar to 'bon appetite'). That can mean that you say good afternoon to thirty people while you walk to the store and another thirty on the way back. The Germans tell me that its the same at home, they need to say "Guten Appetit" every time they see someone eating, even if its in a restaurant. I guess we're just rude in America, we don't have anything like that at all.
Another really big difference is that it's very rude here to be direct with someone. This is the most non-confrontational place I've even been. If someone says something you don't agree with you need to praise them on everything else they said and then hope that they need between the lines and discover that maybe you don't agree with the last thing. It's so passive-agressive. It also makes it next to impossible to get anything accomplished. We were trying to get room assignments done and what could have been decided in less than five minutes took two days because we had to tip-toe around anything that could possibly be thought of as too direct. I seriously felt like my face was melting off, it caused me physical pain to have to sit through that. I might have been somewhat obnoxious with my interjections ("Let's take a vote!" "What if we each give you an answer in private?" I was so close to suggesting that everyone close their eyes and then raise their hands for the choice they wanted, but I was worried that I wouldn't be able to say that out loud without a cinderblock of sarcasm plopping out of my mouth and onto the floor) Obviously this is already infuriating me, I can only imagine how it's going to be when I actually need to get stuff done for the clinic.
There are some very cool differences here too (well, depending on how you look at it.) There are no rules at the clinic about needing to be a nurse to work there. They've had "nurses" here in the past who have never even gone to school, they just give them on the job training for what they need to know and let em rip. The amount of evaluation necessary here is a lot less than in a hospital, plus they have a doctor to check up on things if needed, but it's still a little scary to think about. The vaccinations here are given by a dude from the United States who majored in economics, no medical background. Great experience for him, scary for anyone on the other end of the needle :/ But of course I get to benefit from the system too because here I'm allowed to do things I normally couldn't, like give stitches. I've never done that before (because doctor's do that in the states) but the doctor here said she'd teach me. Great skill to have for my backpacking adventures, good thing my malpractice insurance is up-to-date :) Side note: did you know that in Germany nurses aren't allowed to give injections or any medicines via IV? Only doctor's can do that. Cray cray.
So as you can tell by all my German references, I've been learning a lot from the other volunteers too! Out of the 12 of us who are just starting now, one is from guatemala, one is from italy, two are from Austria, five are from the US and three are from Germany. Since we all speak different languages we have no choice but to communicate in Spanish which has been good. I do cheat at times when I'm in my room because Holger speaks fluent English, but otherwise I've been really good about it. And I'm picking up a few words in German too, woohoo!
This week is the last week of orientation, then we start working for real. Aside from my regular 8-5:30p job in the clinic, I also need to work two nights a week in a section with the kids. Today we took a tour to see all the different sections. They're sectioned off by age, babies in one house, girls broken up by age in another house and then the same thing for boys in another. The babies were by far my favorites (and by babies I mean 2-8 year olds, there aren't actually any babies here right now.) I totally got my baby fix when a three year old girl jumped into my arms and starting playing with my beard (beards are really uncommon in Guatemala, I've seen maybe three or four other people with them in the last seven weeks). I also really liked the kids with special needs. They have about 15 kids with CP, autism, Downs and Rett syndrome. It'd be easy work for me, really similar to being in a group home, plus my friend Stephanie works there, so it'd be fun. They're really pushing me to go to the older boys though, kids who are 14-18. I have ZERO interest in this. They don't let girls go there though, and with only two male volunteers here, if one of us don't choose to go in this section, the guys wont have a volunteer with them. They have other staff, its not like they'll be alone, they just wont have the benefit of having a foreign person there. I told the staff that I'm not a benefit to them anyway since I have absolutely nothing to offer these guys; I HATE sports and unless they like baking and cross-stitching, we're probably not going to get along. They asked me sit and have dinner with them tonight just to feel it out, and of course I happened to sit next to the kid who also hates sports and is in art club. He won me over, but not quite enough to counter-balance my loathing for all the jock kids. I have until tomorrow to decide, so we'll see.
I chatted with Mom today. She offered to ship me out a care package which totally got me excited. (I've been secretly compiling a list of requests just waiting for someone to offer...) Sadly though, I mentioned it to a friend and she said that her parents had offered as well but then changed their minds when they saw the shipping charges. I went onto the post office website to see what she was talking about, and sure enough it looks like a care package would probably cost close to $60 to ship. Noooooo! So no more raspberry jelly and crackers for me :( I'll just have to wait until I come to the US to visit in June, then I can smuggle things back with me.
Tomorrow another one of the old volunteers leaves. They've been trickling out the last few days, though the big waves will start this weekend. It's hard to know where we fit in right now because a lot of the older volunteers are mourning the loss of their friends who are leaving and not really interesting in mentoring new folks. I'll be glad when I get settled into my new (and FINAL) house on Sunday and can wait for all of this to blow over. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I fear my tourist days are over for the moment...
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Orientation/My Fellow Volunteers
Things have been moving along pretty fast here and unfortunately my internet connection has been almost non-existant, so I'll have to gloss over a lot to cover everything. This week we started our orientation. The lady in charge is named Erika, she's the volunteer coordinator here. She's a super sweet lady from Sweden who reminds me SO FRIGGEN MUCH of Cyell (for you WGA employees). She looks like her twin sister and acts exactly like her: really kind but also totally scattered. It's actually kind of nice to have someone around all the time who reminds me of home.
The training has been going pretty well though we're covering all of the boring stuff right now (company hierarchy and the like). I finally got to meet the director of the clinic today along with the head nurse there. They seem really nice, though I think they're a little disappointed at my inability to speak fluently. Due to international licensing issues, I'm probably not going to be doing a ton of hands on stuff here (wish they had told me that before) but it actually works out in my favor. I had been worried that I was going to miss something pretty big in the clinic due to language issues, and now I dont think I'll be doing a lot of that. We're going to discuss my duties more tomorrow, but for now it looks like I'll mostly be in charge of doing workshops for the kids. Workshops including....(drumroll)....SEX ED! Woohoo! I'm seriously psyched about this. I'm a huge advocate for early sexual education for kids and I'm really happy to be helping them with that. I have to wait until my language gets a little better before I start doing the inservices, but hopefully within the next month or two I'll be good to go!
So tomorrow is my first actual day in the clinic. I'm nervous but also excited. One of the other new volunteers is going to be a doctor in the clinic and she and I are pretty much in the same boat as far as our language skills go, so I'm glad to have someone else to pal around with. Her name is Nicole, she's a very shy/quiet vascular surgeon from Germany. Let me give you a little run down of the other volunteers here. Well not everyone, but the main people I've been interacting with. First there's Holgar, my roommate. He's a handsome 40-45 year old German man who speaks fluent English. He's actually going to be the English teacher here (which I find kind of funny). He seems really nice so far, though we're still getting to know one another. He went to school to be a priest, but then changed his mind last minute. He's very religious but seems to be pretty open-minded too. I like him.
There's a girl from Germany named Anni who is going to be the speech therapist. She seems pretty quiet too, which automatically makes me like her, haha. She taught us a German card game last night which was fun.
My two closest friends here so far are the two American girls who arrived here the same time as I did: Stephanie and Charlotte. Stephanie is pretty awesome, she reminds me of a mix of two of my old friends, Angie from NAC and Tara R who I grew up with. She's really cute and funny and we tease each other a lot. Her Spanish is a lot better than mine so I constantly ask her how to say things. Stephanie used to work at a camp for kids with developmental disabilities and she's going to be working with the special needs kids here too (she's a tia which means she'll be basically helping them all day with everything they need- ADLs, meals and school). My other friend Charlotte is going to be a tutor here. Everyone in her department is gone (the other volunteer left early and the teacher is out on maternity leave) so she'll need to run the show on her own which is a totally intimidating thought. She seems pretty well put-together though, plus her Spanish is really good, so I think she'll pull it off.
Here's where I'd insert a pic of us if I had one. Well, I have one of me and Stephanie in Antigua, here we are.
I dont have a lot more to talk about in this post, so now I'm just going to share some random pictures. Here is the room I'm staying in now, and the volunteer house. There are three volunteer houses in total, I'm just staying in this one until there's room for me in my PERMANENT house (which should happen in about three weeks). They have it nicely decorated though!
We have a dog here too! Her name is Marie. Actually its a stray dog, she just hangs around here a lot because another volunteer used to feed her. She's dirty like other strays but she's a lot friendlier. She wags her tails and runs up to people when they walk down the path. She's really sweet.
The orphanage produces a lot of it's own food here, particularly it's meat. We took another tour and saw more of the animals. Here are some goats (mostly used for milk) and some baby pigs (which will be dinner in a few years.)
They have a pretty large farm, too. Check out the plants! They also grow their own flowers for landscaping here.
Lawnmower
And here's where all the cooking is done for the orphanage. They have almost 400 kids and over 100 staff who eat their meals here. The stoves are low to the ground because the pots are so huge
And you know those really colorful buildings I posted a pic of last time? Turns out they're a Montessori school. They're so cool inside, check out this castle library:
The training has been going pretty well though we're covering all of the boring stuff right now (company hierarchy and the like). I finally got to meet the director of the clinic today along with the head nurse there. They seem really nice, though I think they're a little disappointed at my inability to speak fluently. Due to international licensing issues, I'm probably not going to be doing a ton of hands on stuff here (wish they had told me that before) but it actually works out in my favor. I had been worried that I was going to miss something pretty big in the clinic due to language issues, and now I dont think I'll be doing a lot of that. We're going to discuss my duties more tomorrow, but for now it looks like I'll mostly be in charge of doing workshops for the kids. Workshops including....(drumroll)....SEX ED! Woohoo! I'm seriously psyched about this. I'm a huge advocate for early sexual education for kids and I'm really happy to be helping them with that. I have to wait until my language gets a little better before I start doing the inservices, but hopefully within the next month or two I'll be good to go!
So tomorrow is my first actual day in the clinic. I'm nervous but also excited. One of the other new volunteers is going to be a doctor in the clinic and she and I are pretty much in the same boat as far as our language skills go, so I'm glad to have someone else to pal around with. Her name is Nicole, she's a very shy/quiet vascular surgeon from Germany. Let me give you a little run down of the other volunteers here. Well not everyone, but the main people I've been interacting with. First there's Holgar, my roommate. He's a handsome 40-45 year old German man who speaks fluent English. He's actually going to be the English teacher here (which I find kind of funny). He seems really nice so far, though we're still getting to know one another. He went to school to be a priest, but then changed his mind last minute. He's very religious but seems to be pretty open-minded too. I like him.
There's a girl from Germany named Anni who is going to be the speech therapist. She seems pretty quiet too, which automatically makes me like her, haha. She taught us a German card game last night which was fun.
My two closest friends here so far are the two American girls who arrived here the same time as I did: Stephanie and Charlotte. Stephanie is pretty awesome, she reminds me of a mix of two of my old friends, Angie from NAC and Tara R who I grew up with. She's really cute and funny and we tease each other a lot. Her Spanish is a lot better than mine so I constantly ask her how to say things. Stephanie used to work at a camp for kids with developmental disabilities and she's going to be working with the special needs kids here too (she's a tia which means she'll be basically helping them all day with everything they need- ADLs, meals and school). My other friend Charlotte is going to be a tutor here. Everyone in her department is gone (the other volunteer left early and the teacher is out on maternity leave) so she'll need to run the show on her own which is a totally intimidating thought. She seems pretty well put-together though, plus her Spanish is really good, so I think she'll pull it off.
Here's where I'd insert a pic of us if I had one. Well, I have one of me and Stephanie in Antigua, here we are.
I dont have a lot more to talk about in this post, so now I'm just going to share some random pictures. Here is the room I'm staying in now, and the volunteer house. There are three volunteer houses in total, I'm just staying in this one until there's room for me in my PERMANENT house (which should happen in about three weeks). They have it nicely decorated though!
We have a dog here too! Her name is Marie. Actually its a stray dog, she just hangs around here a lot because another volunteer used to feed her. She's dirty like other strays but she's a lot friendlier. She wags her tails and runs up to people when they walk down the path. She's really sweet.
The orphanage produces a lot of it's own food here, particularly it's meat. We took another tour and saw more of the animals. Here are some goats (mostly used for milk) and some baby pigs (which will be dinner in a few years.)
They have a pretty large farm, too. Check out the plants! They also grow their own flowers for landscaping here.
Lawnmower
And here's where all the cooking is done for the orphanage. They have almost 400 kids and over 100 staff who eat their meals here. The stoves are low to the ground because the pots are so huge
And you know those really colorful buildings I posted a pic of last time? Turns out they're a Montessori school. They're so cool inside, check out this castle library:
Sunday, January 8, 2012
First Impressions of the Orphanage
I'm here! It's feeling a bit surreal at the moment, it slowly starting to dawn on me that this is going to be my new home for the next year. It kind of hits me in waves, one moment I'll be really excited and thinking of this as a summer-camp type thing for a week or two, and then the enormity will rush over me and I'll be like, Oh man, a year is SO long. The thing I hadn't really counted on to help in this process was the fact that a lot of other people would be starting their volunteer positions at the same time as me. Right now there are only three of us, Stephanie (the girl I took language classes with) and I arrived Friday afternoon, and the other volunteer Charlotte came later on that day. It's just been the three of us this weekend, we're expecting eight more volunteers to come in tomorrow (Sunday). It's pretty cool, a lot of the volunteers are going to be from Germany, Italy and Australia, so we'll be able to learn a lot about their cultures too. There's only one more dude coming, a guy from Germany, so we're going to be roommates. It's so weird to be talking about someone I haven't met yet, but who's going to be such a huge part of my life for the next thirteen months. I was talking about that with the girls earlier today, it's weird to be meeting everyone knowing that we're going to be such a huge part of each others' lives for the next year.
Before I jump ahead of myself, let me tell you what the orphanage is like. I think I mentioned in previous posts that it's in a pretty rural area. When you first approach it, you're greeted by a sign welcoming you.
There's a wall surrounding the whole campus with a large gate in front. The gate has a guard posted 24-hours a day (so you can all sleep soundly knowing I'm safe at night.)
There are several buildings and I still haven't figured out exactly what is what (I think our official tour isn't until the other volunteers arrive), but here's what we discovered so far:
The school buildings
The cafeteria (on the left) with some very colorful storage buildings
And finally the medical clinic (my new job!)
The orphanage also grows/raises its own food. We couldn't find the fields but we did find the animals! They have pigs, goats, cows and chickens (from what we could see). I had homemade goat cheese for breakfast today! I had to take a video of the pigs because I felt like a picture just wasnt capturing the sheer number of pigs. There were probably 60 or 80 of them! I guess that's what you need when you have 500 mouths to feed, though.
The houses where the volunteers live are WAY nicer than I expected. I felt like they were cottages in a retirement village or something, the lawns were so well manicured!
Here are some inside shots. This isn't the actual house I'm going to live in, just a temporary home until the volunteers who are returning home leave. We have a three week overlap so they can train us, so once that's done we'll move into their old houses. (The house we're staying in has a lot of beds in each room, usually there are only two)
We didn't see many kids on our little walk around, I'm wondering where they're all hiding. They seem to keep pretty busy during the day, so that's good. Hopefully they have someone planning a lot of activities for them.
Since we didnt really have anything to do today, we headed into the local town of Parramos. It's only a 15 minute walk from our new house and a lot of the other volunteers go here for their grocery/beer/hang out needs. This is the same place that I went to that street fair a few weeks ago and I showed Stephanie and the other new volunteer Charlotte around a little. Here's the fountain in the park
We also grabbed some liquados (smoothies) from a little shop. It wasn't the cleanest of places and we were a bit worried that we'd get sick from it, but it seems like we survived unscathed.
After we got back we hung out at the house for a bit and I taught them how to play 500. Hopefully we'll be playing a lot over the next few weeks. I miss playing it at home.
Tomorrow's a big day. After all the new volunteers get here we're going to go out for a meet-and-greet dinner. I'm looking forward to getting a feel for all the people I'll be living with. Hopefully the ones I've met already are an indication of what's to come
Before I jump ahead of myself, let me tell you what the orphanage is like. I think I mentioned in previous posts that it's in a pretty rural area. When you first approach it, you're greeted by a sign welcoming you.
There's a wall surrounding the whole campus with a large gate in front. The gate has a guard posted 24-hours a day (so you can all sleep soundly knowing I'm safe at night.)
There are several buildings and I still haven't figured out exactly what is what (I think our official tour isn't until the other volunteers arrive), but here's what we discovered so far:
The school buildings
The cafeteria (on the left) with some very colorful storage buildings
And finally the medical clinic (my new job!)
The orphanage also grows/raises its own food. We couldn't find the fields but we did find the animals! They have pigs, goats, cows and chickens (from what we could see). I had homemade goat cheese for breakfast today! I had to take a video of the pigs because I felt like a picture just wasnt capturing the sheer number of pigs. There were probably 60 or 80 of them! I guess that's what you need when you have 500 mouths to feed, though.
The houses where the volunteers live are WAY nicer than I expected. I felt like they were cottages in a retirement village or something, the lawns were so well manicured!
Here are some inside shots. This isn't the actual house I'm going to live in, just a temporary home until the volunteers who are returning home leave. We have a three week overlap so they can train us, so once that's done we'll move into their old houses. (The house we're staying in has a lot of beds in each room, usually there are only two)
We didn't see many kids on our little walk around, I'm wondering where they're all hiding. They seem to keep pretty busy during the day, so that's good. Hopefully they have someone planning a lot of activities for them.
Since we didnt really have anything to do today, we headed into the local town of Parramos. It's only a 15 minute walk from our new house and a lot of the other volunteers go here for their grocery/beer/hang out needs. This is the same place that I went to that street fair a few weeks ago and I showed Stephanie and the other new volunteer Charlotte around a little. Here's the fountain in the park
We also grabbed some liquados (smoothies) from a little shop. It wasn't the cleanest of places and we were a bit worried that we'd get sick from it, but it seems like we survived unscathed.
After we got back we hung out at the house for a bit and I taught them how to play 500. Hopefully we'll be playing a lot over the next few weeks. I miss playing it at home.
Tomorrow's a big day. After all the new volunteers get here we're going to go out for a meet-and-greet dinner. I'm looking forward to getting a feel for all the people I'll be living with. Hopefully the ones I've met already are an indication of what's to come
Friday, January 6, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Jungle Hike
Sadly, today was my last activity with the school. Tomorrow I head to the orphanage (which I'm pretty much terrified about at the moment). Luckily, I'm leaving the school with a bang because today was totally awesome. First of all, I cooked lunch for everybody at the school. One of the teacher's had mentioned to me in conversation one time about not liking eggplant. I had told her that was because she had never had my eggplant parm before. She had no clue what eggplant parm was! (Italian food isn't very popular here.) It was the same with both of my teachers, so I went ahead and made a big tray for everyone. I couldn't find eggplants in the supermarket, so my teacher brought me to the market. Generally speaking, the supermarkets don't really have a large selection of fresh items, it's mostly for just buying packaged goods. Fruits, vegetables and meats are usually purchased from the big market in Antigua. I had been to the market before but hadn't really seen much in the way of vegetables. I explained this to Hugo and after a bit of a conversation I realized that I had never actually been INSIDE the market, just outside where the overflow is. He took me inside and I was totally floored. This place was ENORMOUS. I'm talking probably two hundred stalls, if not more; fresh fruits, vegetables, spices and grains everywhere you looked. It was so amazing! I was SO disappointed that I hadn't known about this place sooner.
So our activity today was to a place called El Paraiso Azul (the Blue Paradise). All I knew about it was that it was some kind of bird sanctuary. I figured we'd walk around a few cages and see different types of parrots and stuff. Turns out it was a two mile hike through the jungle! It was totally awesome (despite me being completely unprepared).
Here's all of us getting ready to start the hike (My friend Tamra's taking the pic) The girl all the way to the left is Stephanie. She's going to be a volunteer at NPH with me for the next year.
Okay, so I've never really spent much time in the jungle before (I rode a bus through one in Belize once but it was just a drive-by). I was a little enthralled, as you can probably tell from all the random videos I shot. But hey, I figured all my family and friends would get a real kick out of seeing this! (Ignore my inappropriate comments during the last video)
The way the trail was set up, you walk through relatively flat land until you're pretty deep inside the woods, then they have a pretty impressive series of wooden stairs that zig zag up the mountain side. We were all hurting by the time we got up to the top, but it was worth the pain.
And here's the view from the top. They had a nice little bench built up there, it was really beautiful. We actually didn't see or hear any birds the whole day, but it was a great hike.
So our activity today was to a place called El Paraiso Azul (the Blue Paradise). All I knew about it was that it was some kind of bird sanctuary. I figured we'd walk around a few cages and see different types of parrots and stuff. Turns out it was a two mile hike through the jungle! It was totally awesome (despite me being completely unprepared).
Here's all of us getting ready to start the hike (My friend Tamra's taking the pic) The girl all the way to the left is Stephanie. She's going to be a volunteer at NPH with me for the next year.
Okay, so I've never really spent much time in the jungle before (I rode a bus through one in Belize once but it was just a drive-by). I was a little enthralled, as you can probably tell from all the random videos I shot. But hey, I figured all my family and friends would get a real kick out of seeing this! (Ignore my inappropriate comments during the last video)
The way the trail was set up, you walk through relatively flat land until you're pretty deep inside the woods, then they have a pretty impressive series of wooden stairs that zig zag up the mountain side. We were all hurting by the time we got up to the top, but it was worth the pain.
And here's the view from the top. They had a nice little bench built up there, it was really beautiful. We actually didn't see or hear any birds the whole day, but it was a great hike.
Nacimientos
I waited to long to do the blog entry for this and now I’m feeling lazy and unmotivated, but I still wanted to share the pictures. All the churches here around Christmas time have nacimientos, or nativity sets. They can range from simple to super elaborate (one that I saw had a working waterfall in it). They usually run from Christmas to the beginning of February or so, and they can be a good source of revenue for the churches since they bring in a lot of tourists/spectators. Here are a few of the cool ones we saw around Antigua:
Here's a tall one. It was built to actual size (well, not ACTUAL size since I doubt a cow would be happy living in there, but it's big enough to accommodate people)
What is this, a nativity for ants?!
God I love models
Here's a random shot of the ceiling of a church.
Here's a tall one. It was built to actual size (well, not ACTUAL size since I doubt a cow would be happy living in there, but it's big enough to accommodate people)
What is this, a nativity for ants?!
God I love models
Here's a random shot of the ceiling of a church.
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