SCHOOL VACATION in Guatemala

I graduated college and thought that I was done being on a school time schedule (at least for a few years), but I was wrong. Since I am a healthy schools volunteer I basically have the same schedule as the primary schools (except that I also work after school and during the breaks). None the less, school vacation in Guatemala runs from October 11 - January 15. The Guatemalan independence day is on September 15 and after that school is basically over what with all of the celebrations, exams, and general chillage.

So I started a new facebook album with pictures from this wonderful "time off" (although I think that I am actually busier than I was during the school year, but still, here is the link).

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10200763614393147.1073741826.1246140026&type=1&l=3d44457040

Fiambre: The Guatemalan Version of Chopped Salad

                                                                           Photo credit: Kendra O'Connor

The typical dish for All Saints Day on November first in Guatemala is called Fiambre. Fiambre is a cold salad and can be made from over 50 ingredients. It is kind of like the Guatemalan version of a chopped salad. Families usually have their own versions of fiambre, but ingredients can include: meats including cold cuts, pickled vegetables, beets, pacaya flowers, cheeses, olives, eggs, corn, radishes, or many other ingredients.

Let's Go Fly a Kite at the Gigantic Kite Festival in Sumpango, Sacatepéquez

November 1 is Día De Todos Santos (All Saints Day) and is celebrated in Guatemala in cemeteries. In general, families visit cemeteries to liven up the tombstones (although they look more like colorful cement houses to me) of their relatives. This national holiday is also celebrated by flying kites. There is a noticeable increase in the selling and flying of kites around this time. I've heard the kites symbolize the spirits or souls of the deceased flying to heaven.

One of the most famous places to celebrate Día de Todos Santos is in the small town of Sumpango, department of Sacatepéquez, 25km north of Antigua. In a large soccer field there were probably about 25 different GIANT KITES. And by giant I mean giant! The smallest kites here on display were probably about 8feet tall and the tallest were multiple stories tall (most are more than 13m wide). The most amazing thing is that they are all made out of tissue paper! I cannot believe how intricate they were! The backs of the kites are long bamboo poles. Now not all of these kites are flyable. However they flew kites that were up to 7-8 feet tall. Pretty impressive. It was also highly amusing. They also flew the kites in this same area with all of the spectators so when the kites inevitably came crashing down it was fun to hear the shrieks of the crowd and see hords of people first moving one way to get out of the way and then the other. To quote the Lonely Planet Guatemala guidebook: "Part of the fun is watching the crowd flee when a giant kite takes a nose dive!" They were in no real danger, but it would probably hurt a little bit and I knew at least I didn't want to be the one to ruin a kite by sticking my head through it.  

It was like nothing that I had ever seen and I am so glad that I went! Just remember when looking at the pictures that they are made out of 100% tissue paper!

Kites for sale

Boy flying a kite on top of a tomb

Colorful graveyard

Huge crowd in front of all of the giant kites

This was in the smallest category of kites! These actually got flown

Proud Sumpango

Sumpango 2013!

Kaqchikel (Mayan subgroup) descendents

The backs of the kites - long bamboo poles.

The back of a kite and a kite face down on the ground waiting to be hoisted up

Pulling the kite up

Tzupam - Sumpango in Kaqchikel the Mayan dialect of this region

A close up. I can't believe that this is all tissue paper!

Kites flying in front of a volcano (I think they look like dementors)

When the last animal dies, when the last plant dries, man might understand that you can not eat money

One of the tallest

Walking the kite over

One of the 8-ft kites flying

By the end of the day the wind had gotten the better of a couple of the kites

Dogs and Drying Clothes

So I don't have a blog post to go with this photo, but I just like it so here it is. 

Beach Weekend in Tulate, Retalhuleu

The other weekend thirteen of us decided to take a little weekend vacation to the beach. It was (surprise surprise) an excellent idea. Tulate is in the department of Retalhuleu and because the department of Retalhuleu is a "yellow zone" for the Peace Corps we had to take extra precautions when traveling there. So instead of all of us hopping on a camioneta with our cooler and all of our stuff we hired a private shuttle to take us there and back. It was much more expensive than the alternative but also a lot easier.

Unlike Monterrico, the last beach we went to, this one was only an hour and a half away from Xela. The water is also much much calmer on this beach and we spent most of the weekend in and out of the water and the best part was that the water was warm!    

We had heard from previous volunteers that there wasn't much on the island and to come prepared, but we had no idea just how serious they were. We came with enough food for two dinners and a breakfast, but we were not prepared for us to have to walk over 20 minutes down the beach just to get water (never drink the water in Guatemala!)

Playa de Tulate

Where we stayed

Two of my favorite Peace Corps Peeps, Kelley and Farah

The whole group

Yum lunch

Definitely one of the coolest things that we did while at the beach was releasing a whole bunch of baby Sea Turtles. Apparently the bungalows that we stayed at had a Sea Turtle conservation program and they let us watch as they released them into the ocean! Another plus to the lack of regulations in Guatemala was that we got to pick up a few of the little ones as they made their way into the ocean. I feel like that wouldn't be allowed to happen in the U.S., but we were careful!

Releasing baby sea turtles

Random refrigerator in the middle of the island

A boy and his boat...not quite sure what happened

Then maybe most amusing of all was all of the livestock roaming about the beach. This was clearly not a very touristy spot and it was great.

Our First Weeklong Summer Camp for Girls!

Farah, Luisa, and I all worked together to put on a series of camps for girls in the 5th and 6th grades. GLOW stand for Girls Leading Our World, but the significance doesn't translate in Spanish so we changed the name to señoritas brillantes (bright ladies). First was our camp in an aldea (village) of Luisa's site, San Ramon, next will be camp in my town in December, and then in Farah's site in December. 

Our poster outside of the school

After that first week of camp I am so glad that we have almost a whole month to prepare for the next one. Even though the camp was only four days in the mornings from 8:30-12:30 we finished every day exhausted. There were about 60 girls that came to camp each day. Our camp was based on building leadership and self-esteem in the girls. There is very little hands on learning in Guatemala and students are rarely asked what they think - the focus is on copying down information. So while we did teach them about some very important topics in each one we made sure to make it participatory, asking girls to share their opinions and to present to the class whenever possible, working on their public speaking and confidence.

A trust/team building game. The girl in the back was the only one not
blindfolded and she led her train around an obstacle course via a series
of pre-determined non-verbal signals.

 Some of the topics that we covered were: communication: symptoms of a healthy & unhealthy relationships, self-esteem, leadership, family planning, menstruation, hygiene/fecal-oral contamination, HIV/AIDS, exercise, and of course lots and lots of dinamicas/ice breakers. Some of these topics might seem too advanced for this age of girls, but for some of them this might be the first and only opportunity they have to learn these things. Each of these activities only had about an hour to an hour and a half, but we at least began to introduce the topics many of which the girls had never learned about before. For example there were some girls in their teens who did not know anything about menstrual cycle or how that is related to them being able to have children.

Teaching the basics of HIV/AIDS.

This activity (SIDA o NODA) works out really well because it uses a play on words. In Spanish AIDS is SIDA (síndrome de inmunodeficiencia adquirida) and the verb "dar" means to give. This activity is call SIDA o NODA which is basically SIDA(AIDS or yes it gives (you HIV)) or NODA (no it doesn't give (you HIV)) - and there are pictures of things that either can or cannot transmit HIV (i.e. sharing a toothbrush (noda) or getting a tattoo (sida - of course this will not always transmit HIV, but it is possible). Each small group of girls got two pictures and it was their job to put them into one of the two categories and then explain to the class why they thought it belonged there.

Decorating notebooks

Nametags. The different colors of yarn differentiated the three groups of girls

I took a portrait of every girl in the camp and we printed it out to 

give to each of them along with their diplomas on the last day. 

Taking a picture of a Guatemalan is like taking a picture of someone from the 1900s where they can't smile because the exposure time is too long. Guatemalans do not naturally smile for photos. So I would take a picture of each girl and she would give me a blank stone face and then I would coerce her into smiling. See for yourself. This happened every single time, but here are a couple examples.

 

Trying to get her to smile for her picture

The whole group

Planning all of this was a ton of work, but it was really rewarding in the end and I am so glad that we did it and that we did it together. Next up: my town!

The girls with their diplomas!