Sopris

Food

2008-05-18T09:49:00.004-06:00

Here is some food I bought at the market today--green beans, (small) plums, strawberries, tomatoes, peas, carrots, and plantains.

Below is a native version of the avocado, Persea schiedeana, locally referred to as coyeu. More information here. Unlike the avocado, they have some fibers, and a slightly nutty tasty. They are sought out here, usually costing 5 or 6 times more than an avocado (5-6 quetzales or $0.70).

Computer fixed

2008-04-27T18:15:00.007-06:00

After six months of being out of commission, my laptop is back...new and improved with a 160 GB hard drive. I had run out of space with the old 40GB, but in the process of changing the hard drive (instructions at ifixit ), I pulled the power connector off the board. I moped around for 4 months about this before I finally decided to hand it over to the local electronics man. He had never worked on a laptop, but he did it! And he didn´t charge. Amazing. Hopefully, this will be enough motivation to keep me posting more frequently.

I´m working at the municipality again. I have been going out to organize community groups and help them prioritize their needs. The photo is from a meeting on Monday in the community of Coyegual. Basically they make a list of everything they want for their community, and they decide what is most important. These needs are usually pretty basic. In Plan Grande, for example, they decided that the projects they wanted were--
1. Piped water to their houses (right now half the families are still carrying water from a stream).
2. Building a wall around the school
3. Cementing the main street in their village
4. Building an addition onto the school
5. Building a school kitchen
6. Latrines (many families still don´t have latrines, or they are not in good condition).
I should mention that this community is one of the more abandoned communities of San Antonio.

Monkey breaks glasses

2007-09-04T18:23:00.000-06:00

Paquita the monkey just broke my glasses!!!! I was too close to the cage, and she pulled the glasses off before I had time to react.

In other news, waiting out Hurricane Felix in a hotel in Huehuetenango...

Astrid´s Birthday

2007-04-13T17:45:00.000-06:00

Astrid is the granddaughter of the family where I live. She had her first birthday in March. Now she can walk on her own and talk (a few words--Anny{her cousin}, taxi, agua{water}, chucho{dog, which is what she calls they cat}). She is very cute.

Here she is with her parents, Mina (who is the daughter of the family where I live) and Mauricio.

Schools

2007-03-09T17:32:00.000-06:00

The past couple of weeks I have been going with Mari to visit some communities. In each community, we have been surveying residents (she is doing Food Security surveys, I am doing general surveys). Along the way, I have been taking GPS points and photos of schools. There are more pictures here, and as can been seen from the two photos above, not all the schools are as well constructed and maintained. As far as I know, the school made of boards and mesh wire is the worst. Interestingly, it is located right on the outskirts of the urban area. The community was offered a new building by a foreigner (Canadian or Swiss, depends on who you ask), who has been travelling around the area building schools in memory of his son. For some reason, the community did not want the supplies (he was going to deliver all the materials, but no money), and they wanted the money. Something like that. So, another community, La Cieneguita, was the recipient of the school (the green and red one).

Also in this group of photos are some from Carnaval, which included ladies dancing in the street (and young men dressed as women dancing) and cracking egg shells filled with confetti on people´s heads. That was about it. Also, various pictures, a weird spider, a cake I made, and photos of the forestry guy, Pépe and his parents.

Waterfall

2007-02-17T14:48:00.000-06:00

This is a waterfall we walked to last weekend. There is an even bigger (100m) waterfall right below this one that I plan to visit tomorrow. More photos are here.

I realized that there are some things that surprised me when I got here that I thought I would share:

-People often eat with just tortillas here (no silverware).

-People have metal around the edges of their teeth to keep the teeth from cracking. I thought this was pretty unattractive until I saw someone with their teeth broken. Luckily, nutrition is better now, and most young people have good teeth.

-Almost everyone washes clothes by hand here (only women wash). Machines are expensive here.

-Coffee is the main crop here. It sells for less than $100 per hundredweight. The main crop used to be sugar cane, but people can make more with coffee.

-You can eat mangoes green (with salt).

Something funny happened today--I had heard the refrain of this song (a man singing) "Estoy enamorado de un hombre (I´m in love with a man)." And I thought that was pretty liberal, considering I haven´t seen any openly gay couples here, but, there is a lot of Mexican music here, so maybe it was a Mexican song. Then I heard the rest of the song today--"Estoy enamorado de un hombre, y se llama Jesús. (I´m in love with a man, and his name is Jesus)." That changes things.

That is about all. I´m still working on the web page and the community maps. The goal is to have a comprehensive map with road type and condition, schools, churches, health centers, services, etc... Here are some maps I made to show where San Antonio is.

Water Project Inauguration

2007-02-03T10:45:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago, all of the municipal employees went to El Pajal, a village of San Antonio, for the inauguration of the water project. Click here for a (shaky) video of the mayor, don Oliver, giving the dedication speech.

There are also pictures here of the event, as well as the road construction currently underway in San Antonio (all work done by hand, including digging the trenches).

Search for the Cimarrón

2007-01-24T18:12:00.000-06:00

Our attempt to find the giant sinkhole was not successful, but pictures from the trip are here. It was about 2 1-2hrs. from San Antonio to the entrance path of the Cimarrón. I found the GPS coordinates here, so I may set out again in search of the place. It apparently is quite impressive--200m across and 150m deep. I created a nice map to show the Cimarrón, San Antonio, and nearby areas.

More San Antonio photos

2007-01-24T18:02:00.000-06:00

Three photos from San Antonio: the park fountain, a cloudy day view from my room, and the spice shop (where I can buy cumin, cloves, and oregano. No nutmeg.). Lots more photos here.

Market photos

2007-01-24T17:57:00.000-06:00

Here is the link to some pictures that Santiago took of the market here in San Antonio. Market days are Sunday (it´s busy 7am to noon), but there are vendors every day.

La Ermita

2007-01-22T13:00:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures from La Ermita, which is a site to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe. The site is located on a hill above town.

I am currently working to develop maps of the town of San Antonio, as well as the villages and hamlets (17 in total). The other project I am working on is developing information about the potential tourist sites in the area (including La Ermita, caves, waterfalls, rivers, ruins, etc.). Tomorrow we have a meeting in Huehue with the design team of the website.

San Antonio Huista

2006-12-21T09:30:00.000-06:00

I´ve been in San Antonio almost a month now, and I finally have a few pictures here. The picture to the left is the view from my room. I rent a room in a house with two grandparents, an aunt, and four grandchildren. They have a busy shop downstairs, as they have a good location across the street from the market. As can been seen in the photos, my room opens onto the terrace where they dry coffee. Everyone here seems to have a plot of coffee.

The other fruits in the photos are coyol (which is a mini coco) and jaboncillo (which apparently can be used to wash clothes, but it didn´t work for me).

The feria pictures (and the ferris wheel) are from last week when the town celebrated the Virgin of Guadalupe Day.

We have a week of vacation now, so I will work on taking more pictures.

Swearing-in Photos

2006-11-22T13:06:00.000-06:00

I am quite happy to be done with training. Here are a few final photos (from the swearing-in ceremony, my host brother, and the street outside the host family's house).

Today I had my Spanish interview; it went well, but apparently I avoided using the subjunctive. Tomorrow we have Thanksgiving dinner in Guatemala City, and Friday morning we go to our sites.

San José Poaquil

2006-11-20T12:43:00.000-06:00

Here are some new photos. Some of the photos are from the "family appreciation day" that we had for our host families. There are also some pictures of San José Poaquil, Chimaltenango where Kara and I went to learn more about ArcGIS mapping software.

In other news, I am now officially a volunteer, as we had our swearing-in ceremony this morning in Antigua.

Granadilla

2006-11-19T09:31:00.000-06:00

This is a granadilla. It tastes a little like kiwi. More info here.

Training is finally ending, and tomorrow is our swearing-in ceremony.

Cookies and Pizza

2006-11-15T09:33:00.000-06:00

Last weekend I had a good time making pizza and chocolate chunk cookies with Marvin and Brenda. Here Marvin is happily kneading the pizza dough. There are a couple more pictures here of the process, as well as a couple of a waiters' race in Antigua.

I just started reading La Ley de los Santos which is an old antropology book about a Pokomam community near Guatemala City. Before that I read Señores bajo los Arboles about the Armed Conflict, El Dragón y la Princesa by E. Sábato, and Hombres de Maíz by M.A. Asturias. I would definitely recommend Hombres de Maiz (Men of Maize) for anyone who has free time and interest in Guatemala. El Dragón y la Princesa is like El Túnel (Tunnel), the other work I've read of Sábato. It's dark and confused and strongly Argentine. Señores bajo los Arboles is a good book too, but it is more descriptions of the violence and destruction of the armed conflict, about which I feel like I've read enough for now. Books in Spanish are expensive for some reason, which is why I have borrowed books so far. Another thing that strikes me is that people here refer to the 36 years of violence as the "armed conflict" rather than a "civil war" or "war" as we do in the US.

Kites

2006-11-06T08:28:00.000-06:00

We went to Kite Celebration in Santiago Sacatepéquez for Todos Santos (Day of the Dead) on November 1st. There are more pictures here of both that event and family events.

Exciting Day

2006-10-24T07:16:00.000-06:00

Today we will find out our sites. Only a few more hours before we find out where we will live for two years.

Also, new photos from our trip to the departments of San Marcos and Quetzaltenango can be found here.

Zaculeu, Huehuetenango

2006-10-13T16:52:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago we visited Zaculeu. These are Mayan ruins (Mam), restored by the United Fruit Company. More info here.

Photos

2006-10-12T12:00:00.000-06:00

This was right outside the center. Eventually the dog made it through the gate.

Pictures from Pachalum, department of El Quiché.

The municipal hotel: Pachalum plaza: Pachalum water park:

Words

2006-10-11T15:24:00.000-06:00

There are many unique words here. I plan to add to this list. I also plan to eventually add photos to the list.

Picture	Word	Meaning
	comal	clay disc/pan, used to cook tortillas
	pila	multi-use sink and water storage
	mixin	cat
	patojo	kid, child
	guacal	shallow bucket, originally 1/2 a squash
	pisto	money
	shuco	dirty

Graduation

2006-10-10T08:58:00.000-06:00

Graduation was in May, but I never got around to posting the link to the photos. Here it is.

Photos from Guatemala

2006-10-10T08:42:00.000-06:00

My dad posted some of my photos. You can find pictures of the airport and my new house here.

The photo to above is from Santa Ana Huista near the Mexican border.

Monastery

2006-06-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

Visiting Mum. This is the outfit that she picked from GAP today.