Happy Post St. Patrick's Day

My St. Patrick's Day came and went without the usual celebrations and greenery. Except for my breakfast. My town is mostly Evangelical but I don't think that even the Christians celebrate St. Patty's day here. So I made my favorite breakfast which just happens to be totally green. 

My recipe for Green Eggs (minus the ham because I don't have a fridge):

Put a lot of spinach in a blender - I have the magic bullet small blender so I just fill that up

Add 3-4 egg whites (or fewer whole eggs)

Blend

Cook

Enjoy! 

It's a great way to get in your veggies! I also like to add Chia seeds for a little bonus. 

I also like to accompany most of my meals with guacamole. It is finally starting to be avocado season here so nice ripe avocados cost about 1Quetzal each (13 cents!). 

English Homework Helper

I taught a week long BEGINNER English class during school vacation to four teachers. (I don't have a picture of it or else I would have blogged about it before). We just covered the basics like: the alphabet, simple greetings, colors, body parts, and conjugating verbs in the present tense. I really enjoyed it and I think that the teachers did too. They especially liked the "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" and alphabet songs. After our last class they took me out to lunch at the new small fast food fried chicken and French fries place in our town as a thank you. I am hoping to replicate this class again, but in the meantime I just help some of the teachers and my host siblings with their English homework when they need it.

The problem is that most teachers are obligated to teach English but there is not a single teacher that I know of (I work in 10 schools) who actually speaks English - or can have a simple conversation in English. So what they are teaching the kids I have found to be sometimes incorrect, if not grammatically then at least in pronunciation. It also puts me in an awkward situation with my host siblings when I see that they got a question marked wrong that they really got right or when their teacher's sample answer is completely off. I took a picture of my host sister's English book. Her teacher had written out the answer to question #1 which I have written below:

Q: What date does your school year begin?
A: I am my class the 2/24/14

Oh boy.

Another thing I noticed was how strange the questions in the book are. It made it very hard to answer. I.e.:

Q: What does the Principal wish to you?

What on Earth? This makes me wonder if my Spanish books back in the day were this bad. Probably.

Picture disclaimer: this is one big mess and she later realized that she wrote the answer to #5 in #4s spot. My other host siblings are much better at English.

This pretty much describes it in GIF form:

http://howapcvputsitgently.tumblr.com/post/86102804366/when-i-found-the-5th-mistake-in-the-national-english

Ecological Park in My Site

A short 5ish minute walk from my house there is this really cool ecological park. It just opened up a couple months ago and it is really nice. There are trails through it, although the entrance is on top of a hill so any way you go you are in for a pretty good climb coming back. It costs 5 Quetzales to get in (about 64 cents). They have a little soccer area, swings, a slide, waterfall, and a stream. I am hoping to use it to do some good environmental education in my schools. Below are some pictures that I took when I went with a couple of my host siblings one afternoon.

The bridge was kind of bouncy which didn't seem like a good sign

Princess and Jamie

Greenhouse / baby tree nursery

Carnival or Fat Tuesday in Guatemalan Schools

Yesterday, Fat Tuesday, is commonly known as Carnival, or Dia de los Innocentes (Day of the Innocents) in Guatemala. I was invited to a celebration at one of my schools and boy was I unprepared for what I would walk into. For one thing I should have picked up my own arsenal of confetti first. Apparently the tradition here is to wear masks and throw confetti (called pica pica) and colored hollowed-out egg shells (called cascarones) filled with confetti at people. Call me a wuss, but the eggs actually really hurt because they didn't just throw them they slammed them into peoples' heads. I legitimately almost left before the event finally started at 9:30 I was already so covered in confetti. The vast majority of kids were wearing masks which ranged from homemade to store bought. A bunch were made of the same construction paper cutout which made me think that more than just one school day was taken for this event. Such is life in Guatemala.

The event started with each grade dancing. There were no choreographed dance moves. It was more like the just stood in a line and wiggled around while music was playing. The Kindergarteners were super cute (see first picture) below). After dancing they had the "cascara fight" where they threw what seemed like pounds of glitter, confetti, and egg shells at each other. Me being the new person I feel like I got the most glitter and eggs cracked on me. This was literally the least pleasant. I kinda tried to stand up against the wall of the school so at least I wasn't attacked on all sides. When I got back I took a shower, but even today I am still finding glitter. It really is the herpes of craft supplies.

Only two of the older kids wanted to dance

ALL of those specks are confetti

Getting hit in the head with a cascaron filled with confetti

Getting hit in the head with a cascaron filled with confetti

His egg creation

A bunch of kids wanted their pictures taken as I was leaving - they are so cute it's hard to be mad at them even if I was covered head to toe in confetti and glitter.

Puro Campo

My poor mint plant. So I saw that my it was looking sparse and unhappy but I just attributed it to the chilly weather. Then I saw this (it is the little plant on the ground) and now I know:

Puro campo - pure country life