The Katalina Chronicles: Peace Corps Guatemala

I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane

2011-07-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

I finished my Peace Corps paperwork and reports early on Wednesday, and with a final signature I was no longer a Peace Corps volunteer! I had Thursday and Friday this week to relax before flying home tomorrow. In addition to seeing the final “Harry Potter” film, I had two more despedidas. One going-away party was with my Peace Corps colleagues and our boss, and the other was with Kristine (my friend from the capital) and Sachiko.

I feel like there are no more “good-byes” left in me. After a rough week of farewells at site, I am too emotionally drained to do it again. Luckily, I will see these people again, and an “hasta luego” is a lot easier than an “adiós.”

I return to California tomorrow morning! I can’t believe I’m actually leaving, and that I will not be going home to the cornfields and mountains of my site. It’s going to be weird. I’m tired and I’m ready to go, but I will still miss my life here.

I’ll have a month at home, and in August I return to Harvard to study at the Graduate School of Education. I’m going to get a masters in International Education Policy, hopefully to one day work with the leaders of the Ministry of Education in countries like Guatemala. I had a passion for education and Latin America before I served in the Peace Corps, and my job here confirmed that I want to continue in the field of education. A great education—including life skills—can help youth like my students to achieve a future consistent with their dreams.

Through teaching at rural middle schools, I saw a foreign education system at the local level first hand. Many policy makers do not know what happens in those schools—that ninth graders sit in desks for pre-schoolers, or that teachers get offered tenure in August and the students are without a teacher for the rest of the year (both true stories from the same school). I hope to use my perspective gained in Peace Corps to continue to make a difference at the policy level.

Thanks for reading this blog! It has been a fun and reflective way to share my experience in Guatemala with the people at home. One of the goals of Peace Corps is to facilitate understanding of foreign countries to Americans. I hope that through this blog you have learned about Peace Corps and indigenous Guatemala. It is a special country that will always be dear to me, and I am thrilled that more people are excited about this gem of Central America!

Hello, Good-bye

2011-07-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Last week Elizabeth Alter, the volunteer who is replacing me at my site, visited for four days. My job was to show her around site, introduce her at the schools, and set the stage for a smooth transition. She will work in the schools for two years, and her work will focus on training teachers and parents to make “Life Skills” classes sustainable.

I enjoyed the chance to get to know Elizabeth, and we have a lot in common. We’re both super-organized (as she said, “Kate, I am one of the few people who would appreciate this beautiful hand-over binder that you created for me.”). We have a shared obsession of diet soda. More significantly, we both care about development work, and we talked a lot about how to make her Youth Development work here sustainable. My site is in good hands with her!

The introductions at the schools were Elizabeth’s “hello,” but for me it was “good-bye” to my dear students who I have seen grow into young adults over the last two years. If I had to pick a single strength of Peace Corps development work, I would say that the two-year commitment establishes the volunteer as an institution. My students cannot remember a school year in which I wasn’t a teacher, and I am seen as a normal, regular part of the community. It is a longevity and a rapport that short summer trips cannot achieve. The students at three schools gave me going-away parties (“despedidas”), and they were sincere adolescent gestures from the heart.

The students were really sad to see me go. When I had to tell my favorite class of students that I was leaving, Rogelio screamed in anguish, “¡NO! ¡No puedes!” We’ve shared so much together—through my classes, I’ve seen them grow in maturity and critical thinking, and they have come to respect me and care for me. Good-byes with students and teachers were tough, and there were tears. Some students stopped by my house to say good-bye, which was a welcome break from the incredible task of packing.

I also had despedida meals with my host family and the missionaries. I cross-stitched a table cloth for the Colops, the missionary family in town. I framed a collage of photos for my host family.

(you can click on the collage above to see it bigger)

When it actually came time to leave on Monday morning, I was sobbing so much more than I thought I would. I couldn’t believe that I would never walk through the door to my room or wash my clothes at the pila. I spent a year and a half with the host family, which is the longest that I have lived in one place since high school. Leaving was so emotional because their house and that town became my home, where I had a routine and friends. I was ready to leave and to move onto the next challenge, but the people and the place made my two years were a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it is difficult to see that go.

The consolation that I tell myself and that I told my students is that I will return someday (give me five years). Guatemala is so close to the US that I will be back. ¡Hasta luego!

Coming to America

2011-07-13T09:52:00.000-07:00

Houston, we have lift off! No, not the space ship, but a more precious cargo: PALOMA! After weeks of stress and many taxi rides, Paloma the cat is on her way to the US, flying as cargo on Continental. As of this post, her flight from Guatemala City has landed in Houston, en route to San Francisco.

Getting her out of the country was daunting and stressful. The vet in Xela had to examine her to issue a health certificate. On the bus ride to Xela, Paloma peed on me. I walked around Xela in underwear squishy with cat urine! Then I had to return to Xela another day, pay for the certificate, and pay a fee at a bank.

Bringing her to Guatemala City was another nightmare. The safer charter buses do not allow cats, so we had to ride on a micro bus. I threw two years of luggage on the roof, and I prayed that it would not fly off as the bus whizzed around the serpentine corners of the Guatemalan mountains. I held my breath at every corner, but we made it! On this trip I also wizened up to Paloma’s peeing problem. She still rode in a canvas bag, and I lined it with wee-wee pads.

Yesterday I took cabs all around Guatemala City to get Paloma’s export permit. The lines were long, and there was another fee. After four stops, I had all the paperwork she needed.

Today we woke up at 3am (the last time I got up that early was for the royal wedding). I packed my stuff, and we departed from the home of Kristine’s parents in Guatemala City. We had to be at the airport cargo warehouse at 4am because it takes three hours to weigh the cat, pay more taxes, get her approved by customs, and load her onto the 7am flight. I was exhausted, but again we did it!

Tonight she lands at 5pm California time. She cannot live with me in grad school housing, so what destiny awaits this Mayan princess in San Francisco?

Paloma will live with my wonderful aunts, Marcia and Suzanne. They are so excited to have her that both of them are picking her up from the airport, “one to drive, and one to hold her.” Both Paloma and I are thrilled that she will have a wonderful home and very open arms to greet her. Paloma will be the femme fatale to the two male cats of the family: Billy and Bob, who weigh 16 and 18 pounds (Paloma weighs a normal 9 pounds).

She will also live with Maddy the dog and three chickens, who will provide the sountrack and the smells of rural Guatemala (nothing like barking dogs and roosters to get you up in the morning).

Perhaps no one said it better than my former site-mate (and Paloma fan) Rebecca: “California will never be the same.”

UPDATE: Paloma arrived safely and on time! My aunts arrived early to the airport, and Paloma emerged about an hour after the flight landed. My aunts were impressed with how beautiful Paloma is in person (of course!). It wasn't long before I received the text, “Marcia is in love with Paloma.” The Cinderella tale of this Mayan princess has quite the happy ending!

The End is Near

2011-07-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

My two years of service are ending, and I leave my site tomorrow morning! I have so many pictures to post and stories from my last week, and I hope to get around to it on Wednesday when I’m at the Peace Corps office. Currently, my life is packing, cleaning, and cat drama (which will feature prominently in a future blog post).

But as I say a final good-bye to this lovely community (whose identity Peace Corps does not allow me to disclose), here is a picture of me in my custom-made traje skirt overlooking the towel factory and across the valley from the center of town.

Boiled Like a Pot Sticker

2011-07-09T22:40:00.000-07:00

Sachiko hosted a Japanese cultural fair at our site, and 21 JICA volunteers from around the country came to share their tea ceremonies, chop sticks, calligraphy, and food with the local people.

The fair was a success, and to celebrate Sachiko arranged a trip to the Fuentes Georginas hot springs in Zunil. Tropical storm Agatha destroyed them last year, and it took months to clear the landslides. Now they are finally open and renovated.

From the Classroom to the Airwaves

2011-07-03T20:34:00.000-07:00

When I taught drugs and alcohol this quarter, to me it was not enough for the students to know that drugs and alcohol are bad. To truly be able to say “no” to drugs, students must be able to stand up to peer pressure, and they must be able to think of alternate ways of dealing with stress/sadness/boredom instead of drinking.

I assigned students a project to put all of these skills together: radio dramas. In the outline of the dramas, a friend pressures his/her companions to drink or use drugs. Then the friends respond with one of the four ways to say “no” to peer pressure (which we studied in class). Finally, the friends decide to do another activity—like eating ice cream—instead of drinking. The dialogues that my students wrote were excellent. They wrote about fictional characters confronting tough and realistic emotions, like sadness for losing a girlfriend or low self-esteem for failing a math test. In their dialogues they practiced saying “no” and responding to the pressure of their friends. If they can do in real life what they did for their project, they will be set.

Coordinating with Sachiko, my students and I appeared on her health-themed radio show to talk about alcohol awareness for teens. The students performed their dialogues on the air, and then I guided them to talk about the facts of alcohol and alcoholism.

The students were nervous, but they conquered their fear and truly excelled in a public way. Not only were they applying what they learned in class, but they were role models for other teens in the community. The show was a hit, and people from across town have told me how impressed they were with the students. I am so proud of what my kids learned and what they shared. For a lot of them, this was the first time they participated in a type of community service, and I hope their memories of the day carry forward in more community-based activities.

Easy Rider

2011-07-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

These three eighth graders biked to class this week. Correction: one of them biked, and the other two hung on for dear life. Their adolescent assurances of “Seño, we know what we’re doing!” did not allay my worries one bit.

Contraceptives Class

2011-06-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

For the final class on sex education, Sachiko and the doctoral student Lourdes from the health center came to two schools to teach about contraceptives. I thought the rain/no electricity/leaky roof/honking bus fiasco of two weeks ago was the worst that Guatemala could throw at a teacher, but this week the schools found new ways to make a tough job even tougher.

Throughout the nurses’ entire presentation the first day, the nesting birds in the rafters of the classroom darted across the room and squawked. I vaguely remember that the birds irked me two years ago, but I think the I stopped hearing them mid-way through last year. The constant chorus was a new challenge to Sachiko and Lourdes, but they powered through it.

The next day I planned for Sachiko and Lourdes to teach contraceptives in four different sessions. However, Teacher’s Day (which is tomorrow) is a week-long celebration, and the director wanted us to wrap it up fast so that his vacation could start early. Thus, the school crammed all 120 seventh-graders into a classroom to hear the presentation all at once.

We managed it, but just barely. Lourdes was speechless at the end from yelling so much, and the students practically assaulted Sachiko to get copies of the pamphlets she distributed (why a seventh-grade boy wants a pamphlet on breast-feeding as a way to prevent pregnancy is beyond me). Full disclosure: I knew the students would go nuts over the free pamphlets, so I fed Sachiko to the wolves by delegating to her the responsibility to pass them out. She’s taller than I am. She can fight them off better.

Despite the hurdles, the students asked thoughtful questions and followed along with most of the information. The main message, as always, was: as teenagers, the best decision for you right now it abstinence. But if you decide to have sex, you need to protect yourself by using a condom.

Finally, I have another tale of condom misuse. Lourdes told us that a husband and wife arrived at the hospital saying that their family planning method was causing stomach aches in the husband. When Lourdes asked what their contraceptive method was, the husband explained that every time he slept with his wife, he swallowed a condom…

Seen and Herd

2011-06-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

At the town market this week, there were more livestock on sale than I have ever seen here before. But it wasn’t just what was on sale, it was how it was on sale. If intricate window displays rake in the big bucks for designer stores in New York, then I guess the Guatemalan equivalent is the promenade in front of the primary school.

The goats were so novel that when Sachiko and I chatted at the end of the day, we started our conversation with the same question, “Did you see the goats today?” Unfortunately, goats are not the must-have accessory this season, and I saw the vendor loading all 12 goats into a pickup truck to return them from whence they came. But maybe they’ll be baaaaack.

Trainee Visit

2011-06-09T20:32:00.001-07:00

Eight of the fifteen Youth Development trainees visited me this week to talk about my work, see my site, and teach at one of my schools. Previously I gave two workshops to all of the trainees about the curriculum and classroom management, but seeing a volunteer’s work first-hand and actually teaching the classes is the best learning experience.

First the trainees visited my house (or more accurately: my room). Some of them were blog readers who knew about Paloma, and they asked her to model her royal wedding dress (Paloma did, and with dignity and patience I might add). I talked about the planning process of theater camp, and how to do year-long curriculum planning. I also answered their more practical living questions, like where to get a bedspread or a water filter.

When it came time to teach, the unfortunate trainees encountered worst-case scenario conditions. It was overcast and dark, and since the school has no electricity the students could not see the trainees’ posters or notes on the board. The pouring rain fell through the holes in the roof, creating huge and slippery puddles. The pounding rain also made it impossible to hear anything, and the incessant honking of the buses across the plaza didn’t help. The goal of these training activities was to build the confidence of the trainees, and after surviving three tough hours I told them, “If you can do this, you can do anything!”

I enjoyed getting to know the trainees during my few days with them. In less than a month I’ll find out which one of them is going to take over my work here!

Much Ado about Nothing

2011-06-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

I visited Rebecca’s old host family today. During the visit, there was a lot of commotion in the town plaza—a presidential candidate was coming!

[I have to lay out two disclaimers that pertain to Peace Corps policy. We are not allowed to participate in political rallies, so I viewed the event from the family’s second-story balcony a block away, literally “above the political fray.” Also, I cannot write about Guatemalan politics on my blog, so there will be no mention of the politician nor any political commentary. Just the spectacle of the event.]

The event was supposed to start at 1:30, but there were not a lot of people in the plaza. The plaza filled when 15 school buses arrived, bringing people from the surrounding communities who supported the party or who had received handouts from them.

The event finally began at 2:30 with the political equivalent of a warm-up act. The actors performed a skit about how this candidate helps people, and they tried to lead the indigenous women in cheers. It failed. As any educator of Guatemalans could tell you, in large groups indigenous women do not speak above a whisper (which has been the bane of student participation in my classes). Instead of energizing the crowd to cheer a rhyme about the politician, the speaker settled for, “Raise your hand if you support the candidate!” A few dozen hands raised in the air is not as impressive as three hundred people calling for a politician, but the fireworks more than made up for the lack of sound.

While we waited, 8-year-old Oscar, the most politically savvy kid I know, shared his views with me. He knew all about the divorce proceedings (“The average divorce takes three months, but they got theirs in one month for political reasons”), clerical duties (“If he runs, he has to resign as a pastor”), and campaign promises of the many candidates. He also shared insights like, “That politician looks constipated in his campaign poster.” Or, “The mayors always pave the road to their houses. In this case, I’m OK with it because I live next door to him.”

After candidates for mayor and congressman (“diputado”) spoke, someone came on stage and said that there was an emergency in the capital, and the candidate would not arrive. We had waited over 90 minutes for an anticlimax. The candidate’s slogan is “gets it done.” Not in this case.

Ojalá que llueva café en el campo

2011-06-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog post comes from a famous Dominican song “I hope it rains coffee in the fields.” A month ago when my site was a dust bowl of dry earth, I really hoped it would rain. Now that the rainy season is here, I am second-guessing my wish. Perhaps an important final verse of that same song could read, “I hope that it rains, but not so much that the roads wash out and I get covered in mud and have to wash my clothes, which for the record will never dry because it’s still raining coffee.”

Here are the events of an especially rainy day this week:

Architectural Digest: Rural Guatemala Edition

2011-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

As I bike around my site, some houses take my breath away. Usually that’s not a good thing. “What were they thinking?” I ask myself. Here is the good, the bad, and the ugly of rural Guatemalan homes.

First, I love these two colorful homes. I wish Americans painted their houses like this.

Next, these are the huge and hugely gross homes of my town. These people obviously have money from US remittances, but I don’t think they got much value for their investment. In trying to build a house fit for an American, they went too far. Brick, stone, wood, and glass are all lovely touches…but not when you do it all on the same house. The finished product is a gaudy mess.

The mayor from 2004-2008 left quite a footprint on the town. He built himself two adjacent mansions, and he built the four-storey market building.

In other architectural news, the municipality office was burned down in arson during the mayor's term, eliminating all evidence of how municipal funds were spent. (Further irony: the burning municipal building was across the street from the firefighters, but they didn’t have any fire hoses).

The previous houses may be out of your price range. To put some perspective on this tour, here is a sampling of what a more typical house in my town looks like.

My parents are remodeling our house in California. When I return home in July, if the house in any way resembles the homes showcased above, I will move out.

Middle School Drop-Outs (part 2)

2011-05-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

*update from a previous post*

Verónica Estefanía, one of my favorite students, is dropping out of eighth grade. She stopped by the school this week to finish her paperwork and to say good-bye. She shared with me her family situation (which was different from the news I had previously heard from her classmates, so I apologize for the inaccuracy of the previous post).

She told me that her father and older brother immigrated to Houston illegally four years ago, and recently he has sent home smaller remittances (the greatest source Guatemalan GDP, even more than tourism). Rumors are that he has a drinking problem, but who knows why he sends home less money? For years Verónica’s family has depended on an unreliable source of income and spent money thinking that the money would always come. Now they are short on funds, and Verónica has to drop out to work full-time sewing indigenous dress for Q65 a week (US$8) to support her mother and four younger siblings.

Verónica is the smartest, hardest-working student that I teach. When I assigned the students to research two professions, most students did not even bother to do the assignment. But Verónica investigated three careers. She is the first person to raise her hand in class, whereas most of the other girls are too shy to ever participate. She is full of questions, and we had great conversations last year about life in the US and the difficult consequences of illegal immigration.

I am so, so disappointed that she is dropping out. My site is losing a future leader and one of its few shining stars. I encouraged her to read the newspaper and attend English classes at the library, and she says that she will return to school next year. But typically here, when a student drops out, she is out for good.

Classroom Management

2011-05-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Classroom management is a challenge in rural Guatemala. Either because they do not know how or because they have given up, teachers do not enforce classroom rules. Students pass through six years of primary school with no conditioning in the norms necessary for successful learning, and when they arrive in middle school, they (especially the boys) are entitled monsters. Too many middle school teachers are content to shout their lessons over the handful of student conversations and disruptions. Students have never been told to raise their hands to participate—calling out is the norm. Simply put, there are no expectations for student behavior, and there are absolutely no enforcement mechanisms. But not in the class of Seño Katalina.

A seventh grade class on Tuesday was the perfect storm: the students didn’t know me and were unfamiliar with my rules, it was right before recess, their regular teacher was out at a meeting, and we were studying sex ed (a giggly topic). I reviewed my rules at the beginning of class and explicitly stated my expectations for their behavior. However, like going four rounds in a boxing match, I had to pull out all my punches from my classroom management repertoire.

When the students delayed in opening their notebooks and stopping their conversations, I looked at my watch and started taking minutes off of their recess—6 minutes total.

Then when kids were paying for photocopies, one wild child screamed at me, “¡OTRO!” meaning that he wanted another photocopy. I have never experienced such disrespect from a Guatemalan student. I stopped, turned icy cold, and said, “Never speak to a teacher like that. That shows no respect. You are a young adult—act like it.” When that kid returned five minutes later to ask permission to go to the bathroom, I relished answering, “No.” That kid continued acting up, and eventually I had to send him to the director’s office with a 100-word essay assignment.

Then recess arrived. I told the class that I would count to 30 seconds after the bell rang at the end of recess, and if they weren’t in the room by then, there would be consequences. (As far as I know, no other teacher has this rule, and so most students extend recess for five minutes. I seem to be the only person who values classroom time). Despite my warnings, there were six late stragglers. I had already given out extra homework…what other punishment was left?

Taking inspiration from a conversation with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, I pulled out the ultimate penitence: wall sits. During five minutes of wall sits, the six boys groaned, whined, and sometimes called out in pain. I felt like the Spanish inquisition—inventing terrible tortures to enforce conformity (but they deserved it). After that, I had 100% compliance from the class. No one else dared to test what horrors I would cook up. As I left school that day, the boys jokingly pleaded, “Seño, take us home on your bike! My legs hurt!”

The positive in all this is that the students eventually get it. The students from my classes last year know my rules, expectations, and hand signals. They respect me for it. I obserced a crazy class that another teacher was leading, and when I spoke up the room automatically quieted—they know that I will not talk over them. This week I’m giving a presentation to the new Youth Development trainees about classroom management. I’ll share my repertoire and provide tips…and I’ll definitely endorse wall-sits.

“Paloma, Get off my Stuff!”

2011-05-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

Paloma has a sixth sense for sitting on exactly the thing she shouldn’t be sitting on: a new towel I’m cross-stitching, the shoes I want to wear, and—most recently—photocopies. Although she has a special kitty bed and her own basket, she would prefer to sit on the pristine, fresh photocopies that I’m laying out for class.

Close of Service Conference

2011-05-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

This week the volunteers in my training group from May 2009 (so long ago!) attended our final Peace Corps Meeting: the Close of Service Conference. More than anything else, we celebrated that WE MADE IT! We started as 32 people, and now our group is 21. Among the Youth Development volunteers, we were 16 in the beginning, and now we are a mere 8 people!

In a wonderful change from the US$3.50 hostels where we usually stay, Peace Corps put us in a beautiful hotel where we attended three days of meetings. There was time for reflection, resumé preparation, career search, and logistics of all the paperwork we have to complete before we leave in July. We also practiced interview skills; namely, how to talk about our work here without slipping into Spanglish. Quite literally, a conversation between two Peace Corps volunteers sounds like this:

“Yesterday I went to my aldea to teach a charla, and this joven wouldn’t stop molestaring. All of the other kids are so pilas, but he is not.”

“Do you know when the MARPS conference is?”

“Saber. Oh! On the camioneta the ayudante played the loudest banda music. ¡Púchika!”

During the reflection activities, volunteers shared their thoughts on their service. Some people “found themselves,” some people never want to leave Guatemala, others found Guatemalan husbands, and still more want to change the world in a big way. I could really note the changes in some people in my group.

Peace Corps to me was not about self discovery or the idealism of saving the world. I am much more concrete and realistic than that. I had a passion for Latin America and teaching, and this job was a way to do both of those things while helping people who really needed it. I “found myself” before Guatemala, and if anything my work here confirmed what I already knew. However, there were some new changes in me that I didn’t expect: a love (obsession) of cats, passion for cross-stitching, interest and learning about Japan, appreciation of living in nature, and the amount of TV I have watched (to quote my brother: “Kate, I work in television and am in front of TVs all day…but you watch more shows than I do”).

I have two months left to write my reports, to transition work in the schools to the next volunteer, and to get rid of the mounds of stuff I have accumulated. Not to mention that I have to eat my way through the 30 cans of tuna I have stored in case of natural disaster. There is a lot to do, and I’ll be busy! Speaking of which, I have to sign off to grade papers. ¡Adiós!

Mother’s Day

2011-05-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

May 10 is Mother’s Day in Guatemala, and this Antigua-Guatemala City chicken bus took the celebration to a new level. Balloons decorated the entire bus. Perhaps in a misguided attempt to honor women and mothers, a TV screen on the bus showed sexy young women in music videos.

On another ride that same day, a vendor boarded the bus, recited poetry and Bible verses, and then gave banana bread to all the mothers. Out of respect for the real madres, I declined his offering, prompting laughter from the people around me. In a refrain I have heard too many times here, people remarked, “But she’s so OLD! How is she not a mother?”

Hey, don’t rush me!

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Angela!

2011-05-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

My host sister Angela turns 14 today!

We’re having a party for her on Sunday, but today I gave her a present.

Media Literacy and Alcohol

2011-05-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

Adolescents are not good at long-term thinking or reasoning through consequences, which presents challenges when it comes to teaching them about the long-term risks of alcohol. Emotional dependency and liver problems seem remote to 15-year-old boys who can buy beer on any street corner.

When it comes to alcohol, local culture also sends mixed signals: the Evangelicals do not drink because it is a terrible sin, but alcohol is readily available and the men who do drink get completely wasted (it is culturally unacceptable for an indigenous woman to drink). The teens are caught in a do-don’t double-bind, where the option of “drink in moderation” does not exist. So adolescents either choose not to drink, or they get dangerously drunk.

To get the students to reason through the realities of alcohol, this week I taught a class on media literacy. They examined beer ads and compared the benefits promised in the ads to the real-life affects. What is this ad saying about people who drink? How do media messages compare with reality? Most especially, Gallo beer proclaims that it is the “pride of Guatemala”—is it? The goal was for students to do their own analysis of long-term consequences, and then make recommendations as to whether or not a person should drink.

However, the class hit a snag when the local teacher tried to “guide” the students in reasoning through the long-term effects of alcohol. My co-teacher is Evangelical, and his lecture went like this: “If you have one drink today, you’ll have two tomorrow. By next week you’ll need five drinks. You won’t have any money to buy more, so you’ll steal and end up in jail and then die.” He also believes that any alcohol consumption qualifies the person as an alcoholic.

The teacher completely missed the point of the activity. Just as the kids were almost arriving at a concrete understanding of the consequences of alcohol, the teacher creates an unrealistic connect-the-dots scenario in which alcohol brings certain death. (Only profound professionalism kept me from banging my head on the desk). The teacher also missed the philosophy of teaching: the students learn when they discover it for themselves, not when it is preached to them.

After the lesson, I gave feedback to the teacher about the “discovery” component of these classes. I still need to sit down with him and define “alcohol abuse” (more than 7 drinks a week for a woman, or more than 14 for a man). My job this year is to train teachers to give these classes, and so here’s to hoping that it goes better this week.

Royal Wedding Fever

2011-04-28T06:11:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the royal wedding, and Sachiko and I are spending the night at Virginia’s house to watch the coverage starting at 2am Guatemala time. My brother asked, “WHY?” Frankly, there’s not much going on in rural Guatemala. We’ll live vicariously through the British.

Speaking of the Brits: for people like Paloma, who does not recognize American independence, the royal wedding is a big deal. Queen Elizabeth’s corgis invited her to the wedding, and Paloma passed along these pictures.

There has been much speculation about Kate Middleton’s dress, and Paloma’s outfit is no less noteworthy. To commemorate the day, she commissioned a couture plaid and sequin dress with hand-sewn embroidery. Never one to break with protocol, she topped it off with a hat. Only a feline fashionista like Paloma could pull off such daring ear holes. Avant garde, no?

As you can tell, Paloma and I have caught royal wedding fever. It appears to be a contained virus because no one else in Guatemala cares. Unfortunately, general indifference has not tempered our enthusiasm. I mean, what is a girl supposed to do during the endless and depressing processions of Holy Week? The answer: cross-stitch a royal wedding dress for a cat.

Puberty Superstars

2011-04-26T17:43:00.001-07:00

Today I taught a class on puberty and adolescence to a group on eighth graders, some of whom were my students last year. I apologized for the repetition; however, when they could only name “getting taller” and “more hair” as the changes pubescent teens experience, I felt less guilty for covering the subject a second time.

So we talked about body hair, wet dreams, and Justin Bieber as a case of voice changes (he can no longer sing the high notes of “Baby” in the original key, and also proving that the teen idol is universal). When we got to menstruation, we ran out of time. “Until next week, you guys!” I said.

That’s when Jonathan, one of my favorite students remarked, “Aww. You were just about to get to the good part with the necklace.”

My mouth dropped open. “You remembered that?” And suddenly breaking away from the Spanish, I exclaimed, “YES!!!” with the fist pump of a World Series pitcher who strikes out the side. They remembered the necklace (collar) with the 28 days of the menstrual cycle (also used for family planning in the rhythm method). Some of this teaching sticks!

Seño Katalina walked home happy today.

Good Grief for Good Friday

2011-04-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

Cold, wet weather dampened on the Holy Week celebrations, but the procession must march on.

I was sick with the flu all week (sadly typical at the start of the rainy season. The feces and bacteria in the fields wash into the water and people get sick). I missed the crucifixion reenactment and the fight between the Romans and the “Jews,” but I did venture out on Good Friday to see the alfombras (carpets) that Catholics create to greet the procession as people march about town.

Middle School Drop-Outs (part 1)

2011-04-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

I received the disappointing news last week that my student Verónica Estefaní is dropping out of eighth grade. Her parents need her in the home to take care of her four younger siblings. She says she will continue to study next year, but when kids drop out they are usually out for good.

I talked to Virginia the missionary and my friend Sachiko about the news. I saw it as irresponsible and unfair that parents would have more children than they could reasonably take care of, thus robbing the oldest daughter of her studies by forcing her to be a second mom to her siblings. Unfortunately, this is common, especially for the daughters: another dear student of mine dropped out of theater camp in December when her mother gave birth of a sixth child, and Mayra had to pick up the weight. Mayra wanted to go to high school, but was unable to.

Virginia agreed with my point of view, but she stressed that it is a very American perspective. As a traditional culture, Guatemala values its elders and its adults more than its youth. Parents do not calculate the impact of their decisions on their kids; instead, adults put what they want first and unplanned pregnancies happen. Having many kids is a guarantee that someone will take care of them in old age.

My students are aware that their role is to serve their parents. Many of my students see a high school education as a way to earn money for their parents, not as a way to intrinsically value education. Partly because they are busy but also because it is not a priority for them, parents do not come to the graduations, sporting events, and the performances of their children. What a shame.

We agreed that there has to be some middle ground between cultures like the US who spoil their youth but relegate their elderly to isolated communities and nursing homes, and a culture like Guatemala that puts the needs of its adults ahead of nurturing its youth. Sachiko noted that Japan, a more traditional culture like Guatemala, tried to have it both ways by having fewer children to be able to give them more, but its young workers are now buckling under the financial responsibilities of supporting its elderly.

What are Verónica’s career prospects with only a seventh grade education? What are the chances that she will make it out of poverty? Will she have the critical thinking skills and the knowledge to be a leader in her community? The answers to those questions just make me sad.

The “Aha!” Moment

2011-04-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

I had two “aha!” moments in my teaching this week. I love it when what I teach suddenly clicks with the students, and in one “aha!” you can see it all fall into place on their expressive faces.

The first moment came during a demonstration in a class on alcohol called “What is a drink?” As we discussed the differences between beer, wine, and liquor, students said things like, “One shot will affect you a lot more than three beers.” Oh, really?

Using food coloring and water, I simulated three drinks of beer, wine, and liquor. The “drinks” all had the same amount of food coloring (representing the alcohol content), but different amounts of water so that the liquor was more concentrated than the beer. When we poured the drinks into three different “stomachs” (2 liters bottles filled with water) the kids were stunned into silence—the three bottles were the same color! The three drinks contain the same amount of alcohol! My students now understand the “concentration” of alcohol in drinks and in our bodies, and never again will they claim that beer is “safer” because it has less alcohol than a shot.

The second “aha!” moment came during a class on puberty. I’m starting the sex ed unit with a new group of seventh graders, and we began with puberty and adolescence. I’m not sure if it was in fascination or in horror (or both), but the explanation of menstruation left the kids speechless. I use a drawn diagram, a fertile collar (to explain the cycle), and a dramatic reenactment of a fallopian tube grabbing a floating ovum (OK, maybe that was what freaked them out). They hung on every word I said as the mysteries of life (and body odor) suddenly revealed themselves. I really like teaching that unit, and I look forward to the weeks ahead.

The sex ed course feels especially relevant in light of data from a survey that my teachers and I recently did at one school. We gave anonymous questionnaires to 189 students to probe their knowledge about HIV and the prevention of STDs. 7 of the male students surveyed said that they were sexually active (4%), and given the underreporting in these surveys the number is probably higher. As much as they would like to deny it, the surveys made it clear to the teachers and to the parents that some students are sexually active, and we need to give the students the knowledge to protect themselves. An especially interesting data point was that 85% of students who were not sexually active said that HIV was very serious, but only 45% of sexually active students thought that it was serious. Their answers help us see the holes in understandings and attitudes between grades and between doers and non-doers, and I’m helping the teachers interpret the data and apply it to their teaching.

Onions

2011-04-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

Twice a week I go to the market in town, where growers come with fresh produce from neighboring municipalities and sometimes the Pacific coast. Usually I get broccoli, mango, bananas, tomatoes, and onions. The produce is really cheap and really fresh, although most vegetables have a life expectancy of 3 days (they don’t have the genetically modified preservatives of foods imported to the US), and—yes—sometimes there are bugs crawling in the broccoli (an occupational hazard).

The sweet onions that they grow here are a staple of my diet (whole wheat pasta with broccoli, sautéed onions and parmesan cheese). This week the onions, which are slightly smaller than my fist, were especially beautiful and especially cheap.

So when are you coming over for dinner?

La Gringa Ciclista Hangs Up her Helmet

2011-04-10T19:24:00.001-07:00

As a consequence of my surgery, I am not allowed to ride my bike for six weeks. This has put a cramp in my style as the “gringa ciclista.” Instead of riding my bike to schools up to two miles away, I have to walk everywhere.

Up to an hour and a half of my day is now dedicated to walking to class, which is tiring when you consider that I also stand up during four hours of teaching. The dust tornadoes are miserable, and it gets really hot around noon when I start my treks.

But on the positive side, I can stop and visit with people passing by instead of merely screaming, “¡Buenas taaaaarrrrdddessss!” as I whiz by on a bike. Many times I run into former students who graduated and are continuing in high school. I ask them what they are studying, how they like it, and how it compares to middle school. All of them say that it is a lot of work, and when I ask for their advice to the current middle schoolers, they unanimously say, “Do your homework now because it’s not that much compared to high school.” Amen to that.

I really enjoy running into people. I feel more connected to the community when I can stop several times along my trip to say “hi” to friends. True, some of the boys who are my students just duck and look the other way (as if seeing a teacher outside of class were like seeing a freak of nature), but most students greet me with a polite and enthusiastic, “¡Buenas tardes, seño!”

So for now the gringa ciclista is in retirement, but it is only a matter of time before I pull a Brett Favre and make a comeback.

Relentless Lent

2011-04-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Today the neighbors across the street are hosting the Lent procession (just like last year). To “celebrate” the event, they played a monotonous funeral march all day at an inescapable volume. It is what a circus music would sound like if the lion ate the ringleader. It is such a downer. I keep compulsively hugging Paloma just to feel alive.

I visited the neighbors a few times to check on the progress of their procession preparations. In addition to taking pictures, I was sure to ask, “So, what time do these idols, the music, and the incense leave the street?”

How about some marionette theater?

Three weeks to go until Easter and already I am going crazy. Why is it that Semana Santa (Holy Week) is so much longer than just seven days?

Happy birthday, Peace Corps!

2011-03-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

Peace Corps turns 50 this month as it celebrates the day President Kennedy signed the executive order to create the agency.

To commemorate this anniversary and to look ahead to the future of the agency, Peace Corps Guatemala celebrated at the home of the US ambassador to Guatemala. Almost all 200 volunteers in Guatemala attended, plus Peace Corps Guatemala staff, representatives from the US embassy, and representatives from Peace Corps Washington.

At two hours, the ceremony was too long, but it meaningfully recognized the volunteers who completed their service (like my now-departed sitemate Rebecca) and the new volunteers who swore-in that morning (including Rob, who will take her place).

With less than four months left in my service, I am on my way out. I feel fortunate to be one of the 4,000 volunteers who have served in Guatemala, and I hope the agency will continue to thrive in the years to come.

Hospitality

2011-03-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

I had surgery last week, which was not fun. But my mom visited and I got to spend time at a nice hotel in Antigua and at my friend’s house in Guatemala City, which was fun. Under the circumstances, it was a pretty good week.

The surgery went well, and the hospital was sterile without being as white-washed and soulless as in the US. My room overlooked a garden, and it featured a flatscreen TV that was bigger than the TV in our Antigua hotel. I felt well cared-for and comfortable.

It helped that the surgeon was a friend of the Boehm family, my friends in the capital whose daughter Kristine I met in college. My friend’s mother, María Luisa, knew the surgeon because he was her brother’s best friend in high school, and as the surgeon reminded her, “You were my date to the graduation dance!” Their friendliness made me feel comfortable up to a point, but it was strange to hear my medical diagnosis sandwiched between the doctor’s remarks: “María Luisa, your sister was such a knockout!” and to my own mother a flirtatious “Kate is not your daughter, she is your sister!”

After the surgery, my mom and I took it easy for a few days in Antigua. I slept or stayed in bed for most of it, but it was a nice hotel with a nice bed. Sachiko and Rebecca visited me!

I also spent a few days recuperating at the Boehm family home in Guatemala City. I cannot express their generosity and hospitality during my recovery. They accompanied my mom during my surgery, drove us around, and made us feel at home and at ease. They are wonderful!

Now I am at site, welcomed back by my host family and Sachiko. It is a testament to how well the surgery went, and how well I was taken care of by my mom and the Boehms that I feel like I’m coming home from a grand vacation. Although, next time I go on vacation, please don’t cut me open.

Hump Day

2011-03-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

If you think you’re having a rough week, take heart:

There's more firewood than horse!

I Spy: Meat Edition

2011-03-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

I cannot fathom buying meat that just hangs there with the flies all day, but there are at least 8 carnicerías in town. So I suppose for a lot of people the conversation goes: beef—it’s what’s for dinner.

Slippery When Wet

2011-03-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

During a class on careers, I coached my students in writing their resumes. The theme of the day was: “Professionalism! This piece of paper must be perfect!” They were doing well until…

The rainy season gave us a sneak preview this week when—out of nowhere—it dumped rain during a class. Not only could the students not hear me over the pounding of the metal roof, but the roof itself has a handful of holes. Like a reflex as swift as the onset of rain, the students deftly moved their desks into a formation that best avoided the trickle of rain and its corresponding puddles.

Maneuvering through the waterfalls to talk to me in the front of the class was like video game, expertly dodging left and right to avoid the water. Unfortunately, most of the kids’ resumes got wet and smudged. I told them we would start again next week with clean copies. I struggle to teach like this, and more importantly, the students cannot learn like this. Give me shelter!

¡Adiós, Rebecca!

2011-03-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

(I struggled not to title this blog post: You’re LEAVING me?!)

Rebecca is finishing her two years as an ecotourism volunteer in Guatemala! She had started a community tourism project and trained local guides, taught English to over 100 kids, led two theater camps, trained librarians and planned events and the library, and most importantly: she has been an amazing friend to everyone she meets. I feel so fortunate that Peace Corps put us in the same site so that I made a life-long friend.

With seven days to go until she departs, she is busy with going away parties, packing, Peace Corps paperwork, and showing the incoming volunteer around our site. Still, she found time for us this weekend!

Virginia took us to Xela’s most over-the-top convention center and restaurant to celebrate my birthday and Rebecca’s close of service. I passed this place in a bus before, but I had never gone in. The trip finally satisfied my curiosity.

Whenever Guatemala tries to emulate something gringo, it usually turns out somewhere between a bad photocopy and black hole of tastelessness. This convention center fell somewhere between the two. It was aiming for a Nepolianic theme, but it came up a little short. Nonetheless, the food was good! And the garish decorations were entertaining.

Today we held a lunch in Rebecca’s honor here with the host family. Sachiko cooked yet another amazing dish, and we honored Rebecca’s two years and her plans for the future.

Becca, we will miss you so much—so very, very much! Guatemala will not be Guatemala without you! Luckily, St Louis and Tennessee are in the middle of the US, and thus easy to visit! For Rebecca’s going-away present, I created and printed a photo collage of her two years. I uploaded it here in its full resolution (click on the image) in case Becca’s relatives want to print it out.

Semuc Champey

2011-03-05T21:10:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I ventured to Coban, Alta Verapaz, the hot and sticky part of Guatemala that feels and looks like what you imagine Central American to be. I visited some geologically-fascinating waterfalls and pools. At this spot the Cahabón River passes through a 300 meter-long cave. The river disappears from sight, and all that remains is the water that spills over into a series of beautiful pools on top of the cave, like a very long bridge over the river. The site is known as Semuc Champey, which means “where the river hides beneath the earth” in the Q’eqchi’ language.

I climbed to a lookout point, which was a 45-minute climb up steep rocks in unbearable humidity. Every time a Guatemalan guide passed my disheveled and sweaty self, they would say, “Pobrecita!” To which I replied, “I live in Xela. I don’t do heat!” And the guides knowingly nodded their heads, suddenly full of respect for me—I am the Guatemalan equivalent of a penguin trekking in the Amazon.

Getting there and back was an adventure, but not the good kind. Semuc Champey is a 2-hour drive to Lanquín along nasty dirt roads, plus another half an hour on more bad roads to the river. On the way home, I waited for a microbus to take me to Coban, but for 45 minutes none passed. Finally, a large flatbed truck meant for carrying animals passed by. What choice did I have? The Q’eqchi’ señoras and I hopped into the back on the truck, and we sat on top of the sacks of grain.

Half-way to Coban, the driver transferred us to a different truck. There, an older guy tried to talk to me. He had no teeth and spoke in half-Spanish and half-Q’eqchi’. Added to that, the motor of the truck was roaring, and I couldn’t make out a word of what he was saying. To emphasize the utility of conversation, I exaggeratedly screamed at him that I couldn’t hear him. He decided to sit closer so I could hear (NO! Leave me alone!), and even my fake excuse of “No Espanish!” didn’t deter him. Finally, his stop arrived, and I was alone in the back of a truck in who-knows-where…which didn’t feel safe, but neither did getting off and waiting alongside the deserted highway. Finally I arrived safe and sound in Coban, glad to have seen the site, but relieved to be out of the heat and stress of a dodgy truck.

Greatest Birthday EVER!

2011-03-04T22:43:00.000-08:00

I turned 25-years-old today! To celebrate, Sachiko took Rebecca and me out for dinner at our favorite Xela restaurant, where I ate my favorite sandwich. After a great meal and good conversation, I threw out an idea that we joked about months ago: What if we go to the casino?

I cannot overstate how out of character it was for me to suggest a casino. When my parents took me to a casino in Nevada for New Year’s Eve a few years ago, I pocketed the $10 that they gave me to play. I do not risk money. But tonight, why not try Xela’s only casino, the Fantastic Video Lotería.

As we tentatively entered the casino, the men started whistling and hitting on us (badly) in English. Ignoring them, we approached the computerized slots and tried a few with no success because we had no idea what we were doing. What’s the difference between cherries and a 7? I called the resident expert on gambling: my twin brother Alex (who also turned 25 today). He advised, “Go to the roulette table and bet on black.”

I did. First I put in Q50 (US$6), but the roulette table was computerized and I pressed the wrong buttons and lost my money. Faithful to my brother’s advice, I put another Q20 on black…and won! Over the next 20 minutes, I alternated between red and black, and I continually bet on the number 4 (for my birthday). Luck was with me: I won BIG on 4, and I won regularly on red/black. I finished the night with Q700 (US$88), ten times what I first put down! What a thrill!

Sachiko and Becca had fun cheering me on and living the high, and they got friendly with the other Guatemalans at the table. Becca commented at the end of the night, “It was educational. Now I know how to play roulette.”

We rounded out the night with a sleepover, tea, and a movie. Thanks to my friends for a great night, my brother for the roulette tip, and everyone who sent me birthday wishes. What a day!

Un-American

2011-02-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

This week my Brazilian Havaianas flip flops broke after three years of dutiful service. I went to Payless Shoe Source in Xela to find replacement shower sandals. These “American Eagle” flip flops were on sale—US$5!

But something was not right. Let’s take another look at the “American Eagle” logo. That’s not the lettering nor the symbol I remember from the American company.

My flip flops did not come with a box, but Rebecca says there is a disclaimer on the “American Eagle” box she got from Payless. It says something like “Payless American Eagle is not related to American Eagle Outfitters USA.” Maybe the box should also say “We apologize for willfully misleading you.”

Newsworthy

2011-02-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

I know someone famous! Rebecca was in yesterday’s newspaper (one of several newspaper articles about her over the last two years, not to mention her TV spots). She finished training the tour guides and participated in their graduation and grand opening of tourism last week. ¡Qué bonita! And props to Rebecca!

Striking a Chord...er...Fly

2011-02-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

Rebecca returned from job interviews in Tennessee, and she brought me the coolest gift ever: a guitar fly swatter from Nashville.

She also gifted me 10 different flavors of Jello (from blue to cranberry to peach) that are unavailable here in Guatemala. ¡Gracias!

Life Skills and Teaching Skills

2011-02-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

My work this year focuses on handing over the Life Skills class to the local teachers. Whereas last year I taught 90% of the time to model the curriculum, this year the teachers are the leaders of the class. They choose the topics and lessons, and we split the teaching 50-50.

This week teachers taught the classes for the first time, and I observed them and participated in the class discussion. My reaction to their teaching was as mixed as their methods. On the plus side, the teachers did really well when they followed the curriculum. The curriculum is dynamic and participatory. Almost all of the lessons start with an activity where the students experience or do something, and the classes end with discussion questions to debrief the activities and extract how it relates to the topic. It is experiential learning, and it fits well with a Life Skills class.

The teachers’ lessons went wrong when they fell back on the two standards of Guatemalan teaching. First, teachers think that dynamic activities are good. I would add the qualifier that activities are only good IF they are in service of a learning objective. Something fun but pointless is a pernicious waste of time. Two teachers added fun games (called dinámicas here) at the beginning of the lesson. Each took 30 of the 70 minutes, and they achieved nothing. If anything, the students were so tired afterwards that the students were winding down in exhaustion at the same time that the teachers sped up to recoup the lost time. If the teachers had followed the quick and relevant opening activity in the book, the students would have the rush of something fun, and they would also have an experience upon which to base a thoughtful discussion.

The second downfall of the classes was the discussion section. Lecturing is the default setting here, and yet it universally alienates Guatemalan adults and children. Instead of asking the students the questions in the lesson plan, several teachers began moralizing about the topic of the day. I scanned the faces of the students, and not a single one of them was paying attention. Yikes.

During my teacher training courses at Harvard, I learned that “if you the teacher are talking, the students aren’t learning.” Meaning that students only construe understanding when they are thinking about, applying, or manipulating an idea. The discussion questions are supposed to guide the students through this process, and lecturing stymies this crucial reflection. Unfortunately, by middle school the students are so conditioned to listening and not speaking that when I ask their opinion they have none. Students do not participate in class because that is not what schooling is to them, and so teachers lecture even more to fill the silence. How do you break this vicious circle?

In my feedback to the teachers (all of whom have more experience teaching than I do), I complimented them on what they did well. I didn’t offer any constructive criticism because in this context I do not know how. We have a meeting in the Peace Corps office this week, and I’m going to ask other volunteers how they go about critiquing their teachers.

For the record, I do not invent the classes. The volunteers who preceded me chose their favorite classes from five different books and compiled them into the Youth Development Guatemala curriculum. Similarly, I am chairing a committee to write teacher training workshops that will be compiled and passed onto the volunteers who follow me.

Writer’s Block

2011-02-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

It is 8pm and a very cold 40°F here, and I just crawled under the covers of my bed to write a blog entry. Paloma joined me.

Now she’s sleeping beside me, her ears twitching at each tap of the keyboard. If I can overcome the distraction of her silly poses, I will write this week’s blog entry.

Japan in Guatemala

2011-02-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

Little did I imagine that I would learn so much about Japan while in Guatemala!

By choice Sachiko and I have lived next to each other for almost a year-and-a-half. There’s not much to do here, so in the evenings we sit around drinking tea and talking in Spanish. We discuss the differences between JICA (the Japanese International Cooperation Agency) and Peace Corps. We compare our countries to Guatemala, which is interesting in that Guatemala aspires to be like the US, but currently it is more like conservative and traditional Japan. We talk about the news, like last night when we compared the current sumo wrestling scandal in Japan to the all-too-common sports scandals in the US (Sachiko thought Brett Farve and Tiger Woods were particularly funny/tragic).

For better or for worse, I have introduced Sachiko to American culture: the Twilight movies (we had a marathon one day), Modern Family (her new favorite show), Pixar, smores, Rice Krispy Treats, the Super Bowl, and Halloween, among other things.

I have also learned more about Japan than I ever thought I would. We talk about the Japanese imperial family (and their poor Harvard-educated princess who crumpled under the pressure to produce a male heir). We discuss the very different business models of the US and Japan, and how that affects young workers. We watched Lost in Translation together, along with a thematically similar German movie about a old German man in Toyko. After watching Toy Story 3, we watched the 1988 Japanese anime movie Totoro, whose title character had a cameo in Toy Story 3. Totoro is one of my favorite films ever, with some truly memorable images—I recommend it!

Most significantly, Sachiko has taught us Japanese for the last few months. Every Sunday my host siblings, Rebecca, Rebecca’s counterpart, and I gather for Japanese class. I can now write the entire Hiragana alphabet and read Japanese lettering (even though I have no idea what the words mean).

One of the goals of agencies like JICA and Peace Corps is to raise intercultural understanding, and Sachiko is an excellent ambassador of Japan. Rebecca and I are both interested in visiting Japan someday, and if I go Sachiko has promised to take me to McDonalds and Dominoes so that I don’t starve on sushi.

The Leaning Tower of Pajilla (straw)

2011-02-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

The past two weeks my students learned about teamwork and leadership, and this week they had to put their new skills to the test. I challenged them to build the tallest and most stable tower using only straws and pins. It had to be able to stand on its own, and I was going to huff and puff to see if I could blow the house down.

There are some budding engineers (and leaders) among my students, but many of the unrealistic but ambitious towers fell spectacularly. A challenge universal to seventh graders entering adolescence was working together with people of the other gender (cooties!), and the groups that could not muster the maturity to include all of their teammates did not win.

After completing the activity, the students and I analyzed the ingredients of a successful team (clear communication, a defined plan, achievable goals, spirit of cooperation, respect for your classmates). I asked them when in real-life we have to use teamwork. And finally, I said that by knowing the ingredients of a successful team, they can identify what is missing in their future group experiences and proactively work to add the missing elements.

In another school we continued discussing self-esteem with a focus on gender. In groups of boys and girls, they identified 10 reasons they are content with their gender. Then they had to wear the other gender’s shoes (or heeled sandals, in the case of Guatemalan women) and answer the question, “if I were a man/woman…”

The comparisons between what each gender identified as their strengths and how the other group imagined themselves as man/woman was interesting. There was consensus about the roles of women, with both girls and boys identifying a woman’s strengths as being a mother, cooking, ironing, and being caring and responsible.

However, what the boys identified as their strengths, and how the girls imagined themselves as men was very different. The boys were content to be men for very physical reasons: they are stronger, they work, they are taller, and they can urinate more easily (of course, there had to be a phallic mention). But when the girls answered the question “if I were a boy,” their answers were all emotional: they would be compassionate, sympathetic, kind, caring, and they would care for their children. In sum, the boys saw themselves as physically macho, and the girls wanted men with emotions.

The teachers and I asked the students why there was this contradiction of a culture in which men cannot access their emotional side even when their women want them to be emotional. For all that the girls said that they did not recognize “machismo” and that they wanted an emotional man, the teachers noted that those kind of men are seen as weak push-overs and that they have trouble finding women. The teachers and I argued that it is a disservice to the development of boys that they are not allowed to access their emotions as openly as women, and we talked about where this comes from and how to change it. Gender is a tricky subject here, partly because the roles are so strictly defined and not at all interchangeable (a man will never wash a dish in Guatemala, and a buffet restaurant is unthinkable because no man would bring his own food to the table). This week is was a first conversation, and we’ll see where it continues next week.

Out of the Dust

2011-02-11T17:06:00.000-08:00

With months to go until the rainy season, dust is everywhere. The wind blows dirt into my room everyday, and the daily ritual of wiping down the same surfaces is getting old (although props to my mom for gifting me Clorox wipes for Christmas).

Still, amidst the panorama of brown, nature displayed some spectacular color this week.

Happy Birthday, Becca!

2011-02-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

Today Becca turns 24! We celebrated yesterday with my host family. Sachiko prepared gourmet cheeseburgers, accompanied by a whole wheat bun and salad. Dessert was brownies and fruit salad.

For cheeseburger condiments, of course I served Heinz ketchup and Best Foods real mayonnaise (no Maloney would be caught with off-brand mayonnaise). Guatemalan ketchup is too sweet, and the local mayonnaise is too runny for my taste. My host mom even commented on how much she liked the mayonnaise, to which I replied, “No Maloney would have it any other way.”

Guatemala’s Sputnik Moment

2011-01-30T19:20:00.000-08:00

This week I taught self-esteem to a group of ninth graders. We explored where it comes from, why it is important, and how to build it. The teens wrote lists about themselves and assessed whether their self-image was mainly positive or mainly negative, and how to change their negatives into positives.

Then, as a first step to building healthy self-esteem, we played the “Pat on the Back” game. Each student had a paper taped to his or her back, and their classmates went around writing compliments on their backs anonymously. Later the students read out loud what people wrote about them. It affirmed the students to hear that their classmates thought highly of them.

With another group of ninth graders, we talked about professions. Using materials I had translated from the English-language book “Do What You Are,” the students assessed their Myers-Briggs personality type, and they read about professions matched well with their personality.

14-year-old Lucía (who happens to have the same personality type as me) asked me, “I want to be an astronaut. What do I have to do?” She was serious about her dream, so I invited her and a friend over to my house today to research space careers. First, we went to the NASA website. NASA plans to send a rover to Mars this fall, and you can enter your name and country on their website, and your information will be carried on a computer chip to Mars! We entered their names, and now rural Guatemala will be represented on Mars.

Then we researched the requirements to become an astronaut. It seems like a reach for them: a college degree in math or science, three years professional experience, and sponsorship by a foreign government. But, in fact, the biggest obstacle may be the 5’2’’ height minimum, which is literally a stretch for the typical indigenous woman.

Finally, we researched the career of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. When I was 10, I wrote to Ride, and she wrote me back with an autographed photo! That picture hung in my room for years, and I thought we might get lucky again. So the girls dictated a letter to Sally Ride, and I translated it into English. I’m also attaching a photograph of them, and I’m writing a letter that explains how their interest in exploring professions came about through my Peace Corps classes. We’re going to mail the letter and see what happens!

Fashion Show, Fashion Show, Fashion Show at Lunch!

2011-01-30T19:06:00.000-08:00

Rebecca went shopping at the paca last week. A paca is a store (or sometimes just a huge pile) of used clothes from the US that are cheap. A volunteer once found a $300 pair of gently used Diesel jeans for 50 cents!

Rebecca found some gems, which she modeled for Sachiko and me. She also went to the local artisan market (which she helped to create and publicize) and bought indigenous traje. Qué bonita!

First Days of School

2011-01-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

Classes started this week, and on Monday I went to two of the four school inauguration ceremonies that were happening simultaneously. I asked the director of the first school what time the ceremony would begin. He said 2:00. I asked for clarification, “Everything in Guatemala starts late, so what time will it really begin?” He replied that with rural parents you never know. So I showed up at 2:30, which is early for most events (here things start an hour late).

I walked into the auditorium to see all of the students already lined up, a handful of parents seated, and the director and teachers on the stage speaking into the microphone. I tried to sneak in without drawing attention to my tardiness, but one teacher announced, “And here we have Seño Katalina! Please come on stage so that the parents can see you and applaud your work.” So much for disappearing into the floor. At that school I felt a bit like a show pony being trotted out in front of the masses (“Look! We have an American from Harvard!”). That school is not invested in Life Skills classes, but a gringa looks good on paper and impresses the parents.

But at the next school inauguration, where I feel like a part of the staff, the teachers passed the microphone to me so that I could give advice to the parents and students. I gave the same two recommendations that the principal of the Community Charter School of Cambridge always reiterated to parents: turn of the TV and do your homework, and READ. The director of the school latched onto my “¡Hay que leer!” mantra and reiterated the same advice to the parents later in the ceremony.

Next followed the chaotic first days of school. Everything happens late in this country (except, somehow, that first inauguration), and so parents were still enrolling their kids on the first and second days of schools. The teachers didn’t have their teaching schedules, but the students did, so the teachers went classroom to classroom asking the students, “Am I with you guys? No? OK, I’ll check the next class.” Even yesterday, five days into the school year, the teachers still had not figured out their schedules.

Predicting chaos, my lesson plans for those days were flexible. For the students entering middle school, I asked, “Today is your first day of seventh grade. Is it too early to talk about high school scholarships?” The message of the lesson was that their grades matter starting NOW if they want a scholarship. Too many of my ninth graders last year were counting on the proverbial scholarship to pay for high school, only to realize that three years of mediocre or failing grades disqualified them. With the incoming students who have a clean slate, we set three study goals for the quarter, and I’ll check back in with each section at the end of the quarter to see how they are progressing.

With the eighth and ninth graders who had me last year, we started a unit on teamwork and leadership. In groups the students tied themselves into a human knot, and then they had to work together to straighten themselves out again. Then we meta-analyzed the process of how they worked together. In the upcoming weeks we will continue to look at what makes a good team member, and how to be effective leaders.

Criminal Cat

2011-01-21T14:05:00.000-08:00

Paloma is obsessed with my hair ties, and she raids my room every night to find the ones that are not pinned down. I finally found a hiding place that was fool-proof: underneath the fruit bowl on top of the water filter on top of the fridge. How could she ever reach such a height and move the fruit bowl?

Paloma had the last laugh. Here is the anatomy of a theft.

Maybe, like Tony Soprano, Paloma has turned to crime because she feels unloved. Duque the dog is the host family’s new favorite pet, and he gets all the cuddles previously reserved for Paloma.

But, of course, I still love my kitty the most.

It’s All in the Name

2011-01-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

In a clear case of calling it like it is, these two Latin American companies phonetically named their products after the English word.

I just quizzed my host mom and sister on the meaning of these brands, and they had no idea. When I told them that what they were pronouncing was “food” and “juice,” they thought it was hilarious, and the names finally made sense.

Patron Saint Procession

2011-01-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

Last week my town celebrated its patron saint day with five days of processions, fireworks, and really loud music. Each night until midnight the church’s speakers blasted the mass. It literally was the sermon on the mount: the incredible volume ricocheted off the mountains of my site so that the whole thing was heard in stereo.

When the celebrations finally ended, I asked people who the patron saint of January 15 is, but nobody knew!

Here is a video of the procession as it passed by my house. Watch until the end to get the full effect of the firecrackers. Turn up the volume on your computer, and know that I was partially deaf for an hour after filming this.

Back to School

2011-01-14T21:07:00.000-08:00

This week I held meetings with school directors and teachers to establish a curriculum plan for the year. Whereas last year I planned and taught most of the “Life Skills” classes, this year the schools have to take ownership of the course so that it becomes sustainable. I will teach half of the classes, and a local teacher will give the other half. I will be present during all of the classes to support the teachers and give feedback, but the lesson plan selection and evaluations are the responsibility of the local teachers. When I leave in July, the expectation is that the teachers and the schools are trained in and comfortable with the curriculum, and that they will continue giving the classes. The volunteer who replaces me will not teach students, and instead she will organize youth-themed workshops for teachers and parents.

Even though I called ahead and scheduled meetings, getting the directors to show up was tough. Only one of the four meetings started on time, and in anticipation of their tardiness I brought a book and a camera (thus, the random pictures of goats and school bathrooms on this post).

One school was especially aggravating. On Monday morning I called school A to confirm our Monday afternoon meeting, only to hear that not all of the teachers would be present. I rescheduled for Tuesday. I had to leave the Tuesday meeting with school A early to bike (uphill!) to school B for a meeting, but the director of school B showed up an hour late (time I could have used to continue the meeting at school A). I returned to school A to reschedule again. I came at the appointed time on Thursday for our third meeting, but the director asked if I could come back later because they were behind in their agenda. I said that I had a different meeting with school C at that time, and could we please just sit down and plan the logistics of the year. I know that time is flexible here, but the inefficiencies wear you down—especially when your primary mode of transportation is a bike.

In cultures where communication is indirect (like Guatemala), the background music of a conversation is just as important as what is actually being said. At one school the director again asked if I could teach theater and English, even though I have reiterated for the last year and a half that my job is to implement the Life Skills curriculum. He agreed to co-teach the Life Skills class, but the background music said that he preferred a handout and that he was not thrilled at the amount of work the class entailed for him.

To better deal with unmotivated directors, at a meeting next week the school superintendent will make the directors sign a contract in which they agree to implement the Life Skills curriculum. The superintendent believes that getting the directors’ commitment on paper will help to enforce accountability. Here’s hoping.

The Allgire Family

2011-01-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

Rebecca’s parents, brother, and aunt are visiting Guatemala! Last night they invited Sachiko and me to have dinner with them in Xela. They are very kind and generous people, and it was a lot of fun to talk with them! They are very interested in the work that Rebecca and I do here, and through my blog they are completely caught up on all my happenings! As occurred many times while I was home for Christmas, the people who read my blog are on a first-name basis with the people (and animals) in my life here, even though they have never met them. It’s funny and a little strange.

Of course, I ate my favorite grilled cheese sandwich, but there was no “risking life and limb” to be melodramatic like my brother when he described the Maloney family trip to the same restaurant.

Back in Guatemala

2011-01-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

I returned to Guatemala, energized and motivated to do my best work for my six remaining months of service. However, no one was happier than Paloma, who made her opinion of my vacation very clear.

Paloma was also very happy with her new presents!

The Christmas holiday was not all good news for Paloma. The host family got a German Sheppard puppy over the holiday. He is a cute, well-fed dog…for now. My host mom tells me that she wants to train it to be “bravo” (“mean”) so that it can guard the backyard. When I asked how you train a dog to be mean, she said leaving it alone for long stretches of time usually makes it angry and suspicious of people. For now he has dog food, but my host mom lamented the cost of feeding him.

The View from Here

2010-12-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

The sunset in San Francisco, 5 minutes ago. Amazing!

and previously:

Theater Camp Video

2010-12-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

For people who are interested and who understand a bit of Spanish, here is the video of our performance of “Peter Pan.” It is broken up by scenes. The entire show is about 30 minutes long.

¡Feliz navidad!

2010-12-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

After 20 months in Guatemala, I am home in the US for the holidays! It’s not as strange as I thought it would be. The biggest shock, which my sitemate Rebecca and I have discussed, is how we idealize the utopia of the US while we’re abroad. We spout glamorized visions of our country like, “Transportation is better, people are educated, and everything is clean.” Just an hour in the Dallas airport was enough to dash that mirage of American perfection. But now that I’ve gotten over that initial let-down of my country, I am happy to be home for two weeks!

I’ll be back in Guatemala for another six months of teaching starting in early January! ¡Prospero año nuevo, y hasta entonces!

Off to Neverland!

2010-12-20T06:43:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we presented our play “Peter Pan” to the community, and it was a huge hit! Over 60 people attended the performance (that’s a good turnout for Guatemala). The actors rose to the occasion, putting forward their best performances. Technology, sets, the weather, and sometimes-temperamental adolescents all cooperated to make it a success!

After the performance, we gave the participants official Peace Corps certificates recognizing their actuación animada (animated acting). Certificates are a big deal in Guatemala, and it is generous of Peace Corps staff to print these certificates for us to recognize our actors.

As a reward for a job well-done, we provided a Tinkerbell piñata for the kids. I filled her with 7 pounds of candy and some plastic toys, which the kids devoured like lions on a zebra carcass (piñatas are violent!). The kids were already on a theater high after finishing their performance, and the sugar just augmented their craziness. Rebecca played some games with them outside (adapting “Captain’s Coming” to a Peter Pan theme), and then we said good-bye with big hugs and congratulations to the kids we got to know well the past three weeks.

Our fame doesn’t end there: a guy from the municipality’s TV channel came and recorded the production, and it will be broadcast on local TV over the next few weeks. We are all so proud of what we accomplished, and we are excited to share it with more people!

Reflecting on it all, Rebecca and I are proud of how we applied what we learned from theater last year to make this year’s production better. We had better publicity for sign-ups and for the final performance. I wrote a script with lots of action (which Guatemalans like) and no long scenes of just dialogue (which even Guatemalan adults cannot tolerate). We incorporated music and dance to elevate the scenes. We had longer and better rehearsals, and we knew what acting exercises would go over well. We found a more suitable space to perform it, and we used large-scale sets to fill the whole stage. Like our actors, we were at the top of our game, and all of our preparation coalesced into a memorable performance! We could not have done it without each other.

Theater Camp: Dress Rehearsal

2010-12-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

For our final week of theater camp, we did a dress rehearsal of the play. The kids took the rehearsal seriously, and the play was genuinely entertaining. There were still a few rough spots, so today we drilled our shakiest scene with the pirates for over 45 minutes to get it right. Be thinking of us tomorrow when we present it to the community! In the meantime, here are pictures from rehearsals this week.

‘Tis the Season

2010-12-16T20:35:00.000-08:00

While unwinding from theater rehearsals and mustering the resolve for graduate school applications, I did a small cross-stitch project. Using a design from Katie Krotz and a towel gifted to me from Diane Dooley (the college roommate of the mother of my sitemate Rebecca), I made this little reindeer. Thanks to you both!

Theater Camp: Week 2

2010-12-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

This week brought seven packed days of theater camp and preparations. I’m exhausted, but I am also confident that the play will be legitimately good. There were flashes of brilliance this week that showed me it could work—when the Darlings sisters “flew”, when Peter tried to stick his shadow, and when the pirates gruffly marched the Lost Children onto their ship. Now we just need to hit that level of energy and inspiration in the rest of the scenes.

Monday began with a table read of the script. As Rebecca noted, these kids do not read—ever. So it was special to see them pour over the 23-page script in their hands. I wrote our script from scratch, basing the story on the book and the movies. Rebecca wrote a cheer for the Lost Children, and I wrote Spanish lyrics to the Pirates of the Caribbean song “Yo Ho! (a pirate’s life for me)”. It’s action-packed and funny, and we include musical cues from the Peter Pan movies (especially “Never Smile at a Crocodile”), Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter.

Tuesday was the 5.5 hour set design day. The participants transferred their drawings to a HUGE painted cloth. The finished products turned out great! When the kids rehearse, it gives them a sense of ownership and a sense of place to be enveloped in their own designs.

Rehearsals are going well. It definitely helps to have both Rebecca and me working on the same play (unlike last year where we directed separate plays). While I guide the kids through the kiss/thimble/I’m flying scene, Rebecca works with our reluctant pirates to be FIERCE! Our pirates do not know how to do evil laughs (“Muhahaha!”), and instead they sound like they’re laughing at a joke. Har har. Ay…

We showed the 2003 live action version of “Peter Pan” on Thursday, and even though the kids had to read subtitles they really got into it. Unfortunately, the power went out right as Hook was poisoning the medicine. This is Guatemala—what can you do?

Today the kids and I publicized the performance at the market. Last year we had a low turnout (even some parents didn’t show up!), so this year I designed flyers that we plastered all over the main strip of town. We handed out 500 little flyers, so maybe 50 people will show up?

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

2010-12-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

Here at 8,200 ft, it gets really cold when the sun goes down! Guatemalans call this time of year “summer” because it is dry, but in fact it is colder than ever! It freezes overnight, and we wake up to frost on the grass and ice in the washboard.

The greatest difference between cold here and cold in the US is that here you cannot escape it. Heaters are either not available or too costly in electricity, and the windows provide little insulation. It gets so frigid inside that some nights I can see my breath in my room. To escape the cold when the sun goes down at 6pm, I am either in my sleeping bag working at my desk, or under the covers of my bed to stay warm. Late-night trips to the bathroom (which I access by walking outside) are like frigid treks through Antarctica.

On the upside, Paloma the cat is excellent at snuggling to share body heat.

Theater Camp: Week 1

2010-12-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

Teacher Camp flew into action this week! This year Rebecca and I have 20 kids ages 9 to 15, half of whom participated last year. It’s incredible to think that in two short weeks we will present “Peter Pan” to the community!

Monday’s class focused on teamwork and get-to-know-you activities. Last year the kids were really shy performing in front of each other, so this year we began by bringing the group together through the “Pirate Olympics.”

Tuesday we showed the 1953 Disney version of “Peter Pan” at the library. Half-way through the movie, Rebecca and I remembered the politically incorrect Indian scenes. Uh oh. We are working with indigenous children, and the song “What Makes the Red Man Red” is a cringe-worthy stereotype. Luckily, dubbed in Spanish the song mostly asked “Why does the Indian say OW?” Rebecca and I seemed to be more pained during those scenes than the kids, and one girl even asked to be Tiger Lilly. Fortunately, cartoon red people in teepees who have big noses but no eyes (their hair covers them) did not resonate with the reality of Mayan kids watching.

On Wednesday we launched into acting with a day of theater games under the theme “acting with your whole body.” The group engaged 100% in the activities, showing creativity and confidence that surpassed what they could do last year. For two hours we fed them theater games, and they maintained their focus and participation.

Friday we held auditions for parts, and then Rebecca and I had the nerve-wracking task of casting the play. In addition to leading classes, Rebecca and I are buying props, figuring out sets, and finalizing the script. We’re busy, but piece by piece it is coming together!

Thanks again to everyone who supported theater camp last year. Your generosity was so great that the extra money is paying for more theater this year!

Happy December!

2010-12-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

While watching all five seasons of The Wire (so good!), I cross-stitched this pillow.

It feels appropriate to the season and the setting. True, there is no snow in Guatemala, but there are many, many flaky people. Here I have reached new levels of tardiness and non-commitment, so I include myself in this category.

Nemo: FOUND

2010-11-21T17:00:00.000-08:00

This week we screened Finding Nemo at the library, and we used the film as a basis to discuss teamwork and friendship. To warm the kids up to the idea of teamwork, we started with group activities.

First, in groups they pantomimed blowing up a human balloon. One child stood in the middle of the circle and “blew.” His companions holding hands around him were the balloon that grew, and grew, and grew until—BOOM!—the human balloon explodes!

Then they played with real balloons. In groups of three, they had to keep a balloon in the air without letting go of the hands of the other people in their group. Groups shuffled all around the room using their heads, hands, and feet to keep the balloons aloft.

The message of the activities was clear:

“Could you have blown up your human balloon, or kept a real balloon in the air by yourself?”

“NO!”

“Could Nemo have escaped the dentist’s office alone?”

“NO!”

“What did you need?”

“FRIENDS!”

Finding Nemo

2010-11-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

This month my sitemate Rebecca and I are collaborating with the library to host movie mornings for the local children. We chose the theme “friendship,” and we’re showing a different Pixar movie every week to talk about what it means to be a good friend.

Last week we showed the original Toy Story and discussed what helps a friendSHIP float (it’s not as catchy in Spanish, but it still worked). I also showed pictures of Pixar studios to give the kids a sense of where these movies come from.

The kids had fun, but only 13 came. To increase turnout, I designed another poster with Nemo on it to catch people’s attention. To make the signs pop, I spent hours coloring 35 Nemos. I stapled them all over town…and by the time I returned to the first telephone post, the Nemo was gone! It gave new meaning to “Finding Nemo.”

Apparently, the posters were too attention-grabbing. People took them for a variety of possible reasons: because they were pretty, because they wanted to color them, because they enjoy destruction, because they couldn’t remember the information, and because they needed toilet paper. The Nemo-kidnappings were rampant—3 hours after posting, 8 Nemos were gone!

In the afternoon, I replaced the Nemos, but this time I put a staple in Nemo’s eye. That way, if someone took it down, Nemo would rip in half (vengeance will be MINE!). Still, the following morning, only 11 of the 35 Nemos remained! People even stole the flyer off of the door of the library!

Michelle, a Peace Corps volunteer, visited me that day to watch the film. She recommended that I staple AND tape the posters.

As frustrating as it was to see my hours of Nemo-coloring ripped down, the campaign worked! 30 kids arrived this week to watch Ratatouille! On the theme of friendship, we discussed why it is important to tell your friends that you appreciate them. Just like Linguini (the human) tells Remy (the rat) how much he means to him, the kids wrote and drew cards for their friends to share how they feel about them.

Next week: Finding Nemo!

Horsing Around on All Saint’s Day

2010-11-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

For Catholics and Evangelicals alike, All Saint’s Day (Todos Santos) on November 1 is a day to remember and visit the graves of deceased relatives. For the people of the town Todos Santos in the middle-of-nowhere-Central-America, it is a patron saint’s day full of bizarre traditions. I day-tripped to the far reaches of Huehuetenango to observe the feria first hand, and the event did not disappoint.

Todos Santos is two-and-a-half hours away from the nearest city, and over ten hours away from Guatemala City. Its isolation meant that most of the fair attendees were from Todos Santos. Thus, rather than being a spectacle put-on for outsiders (like Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro or Easter in Antigua), the event was authentically by and for the locals.

The events and the people were crazy, but totally worth the 6+ hours we traveled in a van. These people don't just get drunk, they get awesome. Giddy up!

Here are two videos from the day:

Happy Guatemalan Halloween!

2010-11-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Halloween is my favorite day of the year, and last week I shared the candy, costumes, and pumpkin with the Guatemalans of my community.

It started on October 28 in Rebecca’s English class, where she taught the Guatemalans about the origins of the holiday. We brought theater camp costumes for the Guatemalans to wear, and we simulated trick-or-treating. Most of all, we tried to correct the misconception that the tradition is satanic, which was the diatribe of the aggravating Guatemalan pastors on the radio all week. Unfortunately, the legalism in this community is strong. Even after Rebecca’s lesson, the students still believed the pastors besmirching my beloved holiday, rather than two Americans.

On the actual day, I carved pumpkins with my host family. Like the Celts who originally carved turnips and adapted to pumpkins when they immigrated to the US, I found a creative Guatemalan substitute. We carved watermelons. I completely endorse watermelons, which have a tasty inside and which illuminate entirely because of their thin skin.

After mastering watermelon carving and reveling in their newfound art, my host siblings felt the universal let-down when the activity concluded. Luckily, I whipped out an ayote (the ugly stepsister of the pumpkin), and they tackled the challenge of carving through its super-thick skin.

We placed our “pumpkins” on the street and spied on the passers-by from the roof. Most people (and especially children) paused and reflected, “¡Qué bonito!” Halloween is a beautiful, quirky tradition, and I was happy to share that with the community.

Two of my students interpreted the jack-o-lanterns as an invitation, and they brought their younger siblings to trick-or-treat at our house! My host brother Luis answered the door, and the unfamiliar greeting “truco o dulce” (“tick or treat”) momentarily paralyzed him with surprise. Sachiko and I immediately rushed to the door and gave the kids Halloween cupcakes. Even though we only had two knocks, the family definitely felt the excitement of trick-or-treaters and their adorable costumes.

I also prepared Halloween treats for my host family: pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie (with whipped cream), and chocolate cake with Halloween sprinkles. Of course, we ate in costume, and the image of Luis in a pirate hat brought Josefa to giggles every time she looked in his direction.

We got our tricks and our treats that night, and we finished the celebration with a slight sugar buzz, which is exactly the way to conclude a successful Halloween.

The View from Here

2010-10-30T12:44:00.001-07:00

Thursday rewarded us with a spectacular sunset, which I share with you here. I even captured lightening!

(HINT: the lightening is in the upper-left corner. You can click on the image to enlarge it.)

Live from Guatemala, It’s Thursday Afternoon!

2010-10-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

My students and I took our Life Skills classes to the air yesterday! We were special guests on Sachiko’s health-themed radio show, and they performed their radio dramas and discussed abstinence, HIV transmission and protection, and family planning.

In a culture where sexuality is taboo, it was a thrill to see 14- to 16-year-olds go on-air and speak frankly and knowledgably about these topics. Their dramas were great, especially the catch phrases that they read in a chorus at the end. “When we make a decision about sex, know the facts!” Or “When we make a decision about sexual relationships, think twice because you may get an infection!”

I ended the show by mentioning that the topic of sexuality is now part of the education standards for middle school in Guatemala. I noted that my classes about sexuality emphasized abstinence, and it focused on the consequences of their actions so that the youths can think through the decisions for themselves. I hope that my teens’ performance on the radio showed the community that sex education empowers teenagers to make the right decisions.

RIP Tigre

2010-10-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

Tigre the beloved host cat passed away last Friday. He tried to jump over a wall while he was tied up…and he accidentally hung himself. He was three-years-old.

The family misses him dearly. He was more than a pet, and my host mom affectionately called him “nene” and “mi hijo,” meaning “baby” and “my son.” He didn’t have to die. Not like that. All because he had a penchant for chicken slaughter.

Tigre’s death compounded the tragedy of two weeks ago when the host dog, Lilo, died giving birth. She was largely neglected in the back yard, and she was severely malnourished. The family gave her a few corn tamales each day, but she was so thin that none of us noticed that she was actually pregnant with the other dog’s puppies. The poor, weak creature ran out of strength while giving birth to a second puppy, and the first one born died alongside his mother. Perhaps correctly, my host mom felt guilty for the death of Lilo.

In an area where children are undernourished, life is even tougher for a Guatemalan animal. Not everyone can be a Cinderella story like Paloma. Rest in peace, Tigre and Lilo.

Ay, Ay, Ay!

2010-10-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

The decals that the chicken bus owners slap all over their buses are ugly and dangerous (they seriously obstruct the driver’s view from the windshield). But they are also funny, such as the malapropism below.

This chicken bus from my site forgot the silent “h” in “hay.” The decal’s intended message is “There is power in Jesus Christ” (“Hay poder en Jesus Cristo”). However, it actually says “What a shame, power in Jesus Christ” (“Ay, poder en Jesus Cristo”).

I pointed out the orthographic oops to the bus attendant, and the heads of the surrounding passengers swiveled around to observe this spellbinding pedant. What can I say? I get it from my grandmother.

“Good-bye!”

2010-10-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

Rebecca hosted a graduation for her 26 English students who have studied in her English class for months. During the graduation ceremony, the kids showcased their learning by singing songs like “Hello, Good-bye” by the Beatles (the Glee cover version) and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” Props to Rebecca for sticking with these energetic kids and teaching them real English (most rural Guatemalan English teachers don’t actually speak the language). I attended as official photographer, and I share the photos below:

Becca’s mom (hi, Jan!) donated money to buy four delicious cakes to celebrate the occasion. The marshmallow frosting was an attractive pink, green, blue, and yellow. However, the frosting’s dye stained teeth, hands, and lips (it’s been hours and my hands are still pink!). So as the students and teacher said good-bye, they exchanged goofy rainbow smiles.

3…2…1…ACTION!

2010-10-08T14:13:00.001-07:00

Rebecca and I publicized theater camp this week by visiting three schools and over 500 students to invite them to participate in our December production. To hype the event, we wore costumes.

Most of my students could not look at me with a straight face. Others exclaimed, “Seño, what happened to your eye?” To which I replied, “I dueled with a student who didn’t turn in his homework!”

This year we will perform Peter Pan and A Christmas Carol.

Closing Time

2010-10-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

The school year ended this week, and I said good-bye to the ninth graders, only a handful of whom are continuing onto high school. For their final projects in the sexuality unit, I made my students write radio dialogues about abstinence. Not only was this assignment a chance for them to show me what they’ve learned, but it was also an “authentic assessment” with real-world relevance. The winning projects from each class will perform their 2-minute dialogues live on Sachiko’s weekly health-themed radio show, and thus my students will share what they learned with the community.

My students impressed me to no end with their radio spots. The dialogue was supposed to be about an adolescent who confronts a dilemma about sex. One friend offers a fact about sexuality that helps the character make the correct decision, and another friend suggests a way to show love towards the boyfriend/girlfriend without having sex. Each group of students created unique scenarios, offered good advice to the fictional characters, and suggested creative ways to love a boyfriend/girlfriend (for example, being together during difficult moments).

My students didn’t know the words “STDs” or “abstinence” a few months ago, but in their presentations they dropped all the sound bites I’ve reiterated during the last few months. For example, a group of boys wrote a script in which a teen considered sleeping with his girlfriend, who may have HIV. One friend suggested that they use a condom, but the third friend said, “Condoms aren’t 100% affective. Abstinence is the only method 100% effective to prevent the transmission of HIV.” The principal character decided to take his girlfriend to a movie instead of having sex.

My two favorite dialogues are uploaded as videos below. In the first one, Carolina, Rosa and Ivan (yes, Ivan—the only person who has protested my classes) discuss Carolina’s dilemma: her boyfriend wants her to prove her love by sleeping with him. She claims she cannot get pregnant the first time she has sex, but Rosa clarifies that she could get pregnant or get an STD from her womanizing boyfriend. Ivan suggests that she go on an excursion with him instead. The final message is unintentionally humorous: “When we have to make a decision, we think about it because we could get an infection without realizing it.”

In the second video starring Luis, Oliver and José, a friend invites one of the characters to a brothel, and he is unsure what to do. The friends remind him that “95% of the cases of HIV in Guatemala occur through sexual transmission. Treatment is difficult to get, and in the end you die.” The youth decides to spend his free time playing soccer instead, and they finish saying, “Better that we abstain and live!” For the record, the students devised their own scenarios and dilemmas entirely on their own.

The Parable of the Wet Cat

2010-10-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

Paloma came home last night from her evening adventures soaking wet—and it wasn’t even raining! “Mi amor, how did you get so wet?” I asked bemused. I didn’t want wet cat stink on my bed, and I also didn’t want to have to hand wash my one dish towel. So, I left her outside to dry. Between Tigre crying perpetually on the back patio and Paloma crying outside my window, I had whining cat in stereo last night.

Miss October

2010-10-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

It’s October 1, which means I can break out my home-made decorations for my favorite day of the year: HALLOWEEN! I am so perennially excited for Halloween that I cross-stitched these two pillows in June and August.

Thanks to Diana and Katie Kotz for the magazine with the patterns for the pumpkin and the harvest vegetables.

Come On, Condoms!

2010-09-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

This week Sachiko and I taught the Contraceptives/Condom class nine times. Both the boys and the girls engaged in the class, and even the teachers took notes. I think the students appreciate receiving and applying the information in a relevant manner. Conversely, in the fourth graders who use the classroom in the morning do reproductive projects like these:

Meanwhile, in the class of Seño Katalina and Seño Sachiko…

Only one more week of classes! I can't believe it!

It rained really hard and really long this week, which caused problems at one of my schools. It was like teaching in a swamp.

Puss in Sweater

2010-09-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

First Rebecca gifted Paloma a Santa’s Elf hat. Then Lisa gave Paloma a sun bonnet. When World Cup allegiances called, Paloma donned a Brazil jersey.

But the latest trend in feline fashion is the couture sweater (it must have belonged to a host sibling back in the day).

I cannot take credit as Tigre’s stylist. Angela dressed him. Sacrificing a sweater is quite avant-garde given that Tigre craps on everything.

Thirsty for Knowledge

2010-09-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday this week Sachiko and I led another class on contraceptives with some eighth graders. Three months ago, these students gave me a round of applause when I promised that we would do condoms. With school cancellations, patron saint days, independence days, band competitions, and vocational days, it has taken me three months to get through an 8-class unit. Finally, on Tuesday the wait was over. The big moment came…and we ran out of time. “Next week!” I promised them.

“¡Por favor, Seño!” they begged. “Just show us what a condom looks like!” Curiosity ate at their insides.

I figured I could finagle five minutes of classtime from the next teacher, and so I said, “Here we go! A quickie!” (pun intended). I walked them through the steps of putting a condom on a broom. As I prepared to throw it away, they begged to touch it. Thus, the broom and its little latex hat were passed around the room as the students gaped at this mystery finally revealed.

Next week they actually get to practice putting condoms on brooms. They can’t wait!

Guatemalan Independence Day

2010-09-18T14:32:00.003-07:00

On September 14, the day before Guatemalan Independence Day, the schools in my town put on a short parade in celebration of the event. I enjoyed waving at my students, and when they saw me many of them beamed, “There’s the Seño!” Some little kids even recognized me from reading activities at the library.

K’iche Class

2010-09-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today I went with my Guatemalan friend Eusebia to watch her teach second grade at an elementary school in Zunil. During the K’iche portion of the class, they reviewed body parts.

One second grade girl said, “There’s a word in K’iche for a woman’s nipples, but no word for a man’s. Do boys even have nipples?”

To which little Francisco responded by pulling up his shirt, showing off his chest, and declaring proudly: “Yep! We have nipples!”

Busting Balls

2010-09-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

Tigre was neutered last week. The family hoped that the operation would calm him down and curb his appetite for chickens. Since he’s still tied up, it’s too soon to say about the chickens, but he is definitely more mellow than he was a week ago. He cries less and at a lower volume (thank heavens, given that my window is the closest to his prison). Also, the veterinarian gave Tigre some anti-parasite medicine, and for the first time in months he is free of diarrhea. Tigre may be on his way to being a free man!

In Paloma news, my cat likes tennis almost as much as the World Cup. We both sat transfixed during the Federer and Nadal matches last weekend. Rather than being a deterrent, a rain delay to her is an excuse to sleep in front of the TV a bit longer.

I got so excited about the quality tennis that it caught the attention of my host family. Tennis has not made headways in rural Guatemala, but my host dad and host brother were interested in learning. I explained score-keeping and strategy (forehand/backhand, playing at the baseline or at the net) . But mostly the talents of Nadal and Djokovic were compelling enough, and we all sat at the edge of our seats for match point.

Contraceptives Class

2010-09-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

This week Sachiko (the Japanese JICA volunteer and a registered nurse) was the guest speaker in my classes. After weeks of classes on dating, sexuality, puberty, reproductive anatomy, HIV and other STDs, family planning, and abstinence, this week we rounded out the classes with contraceptives.

First, we emphasized abstinence as the best contraceptive option for our students, most of whom are between 15- and 18-years-old. Then Sachiko presented the most common contraceptive methods for teens that are available for free at the local health post. She brought in vials of Depo-Provera (the shot), the pill, and even the IUD (and its 20-inch long applicator, which scared most of the students).

Finally, we ended the class with a condom demonstration, which engrossed my students like never before. After watching us model the steps on a broom handle, it was their turn to practice. They were so eager to try it that brooms, dustpans, and mops (all with handles) materialized from nowhere. They were really into it, even the girls!

I was proud of my students’ maturity and interest in the class, and I felt like it was a truly successful culmination of weeks of sexuality classes. When we started this unit a few weeks ago, many of them didn’t know the words “pubic hair” (calling it “public hair” or confusing the word for “hair” for “beautiful”, which are close in Spanish: vello/bello). And in this class they were absorbing the information they would need to practice safer sex in the future. Even Ivan—the kid who said my classes were fornication—had his shining moment. I handed out the condoms with which the kids were going to practice on the brooms, and by chance I forgot to pass one to Ivan. With his head tucked in his neck and in a barely audible whisper, he approached me to ask, “Seño, can I have a condom?” Victory!

Like a Chicken with its Head Cut Off

2010-09-09T15:05:00.001-07:00

My host mother Josefa bought a live chicken and dropped it off on the back patio while I was in the shower. When I stumbled upon it later, it surprised me to no end. “Where did this chicken come from?” I thought maybe it had fallen from the second-storey chicken coop right above the patio, so I put the chicken in a box a safe distance away from Tigre and fed it corn meal, as if it were a pet.

Turns out, the chicken was for Luis’s special birthday lunch. Later that day I watched my host dad saw its head off (the cleaver wasn’t sharp enough to detach it in one whack), and blood spurted everywhere like a clipped mobster on “The Sopranos.” I can confirm from first-hand experience: a chicken does have muscle spasms that keep its wings flapping for about two minutes after its head is cut off. Sachiko came over mid-slaughter to wash her clothes, and was unpleasantly surprised to see blood all over the washboard.

A few days later Sachiko and I made a pizza lunch for the family as our birthday gift to Luis.

Rain, Rain, PLEASE Go Away

2010-09-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

The landslides in Guatemala are making headlines in the US, but luckily my site had weathered the storm well. Many of the landslides are on the major highway that connects Xela to Guatemala City, and my town is not situated on that route. With good reason, for a few days Peace Corps forbade us from leaving our sites due to the dangers of the landslides.

Although the landslides do not impact me, the rainstorms certainly do. There was some flooding around my site last weekend, and I stayed in the house that day. But more typically, it rains HARD every afternoon between 3pm and 6pm—right when I leave school and bike home on the dirt/mud roads. I own a rain jacket and rain pants (thanks, Mom!), but with all the posters, markers, books, tape, and other teaching supplies that I have to haul, the rain gear does not fit in my backpack. So most days I face a 20-minute bike ride in the cold rain. Monday was especially bad: I was literally wringing out my ponytail and my fleece when I arrived home after 30 minutes in horizontal rain. As could be expected, I woke up sick on Tuesday and couldn’t teach.

I’ve had flu-symptoms for a week now, and every ride in the rain prolongs my illness. Luckily, next week is Central America’s independence day (September 15, 1821), which means no classes (Monday is rehearsal for the big civic event on Tuesday, Wednesday is the actual holiday, and schools take Thursday off for good measure). Finally, a few days to stay high and dry!

Family Planning

2010-09-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

This week I taught “family planning” to my eighth graders. The goal was for them to see the benefits of having fewer children and—most especially—the benefits of waiting until their 20s to have kids. In a community where the average family has 5 children and where Sachiko sees pregnant 15-year-olds at the health post every day, the theme is relevant.

The class began with a game. I divided the students into three “families.” Each family had two parents, and they had either two, five or nine kids. One parent was the breadwinner: using a spoon to bring Coco Puffs from the bowl to their families. The other parent distributed the Coco Puffs to her children. They had two minutes to collect as many Coco Puffs as possible.

In the end, the students counted their Coco Puffs, and predictably the children in the small family had the most food. I asked the class, “Were the parents in the bigger families lazy? Why do the children in the small family have more food?” The answer was clear: the children in the small family had more because it did not have to be divided so many times.

Next the students worked in groups to analyze the benefits of family planning for the mother, the father, the children, the family as a whole, and the community/country. Especially for the girls in the class, I wanted them to focus on the benefits to the mother. “How much free time would your mother have if she only had to wash the clothes and cook the food of four people?” The unanimous answer was, “She would have the whole afternoon free.” Then I probed, “What could she do with all that free time?” I pointed out to the girls, all of whom dream of being professional women, that it could be easier to balance work and family life if they had fewer children.

I also pushed them to analyze how life would be different for children in smaller families. In my adolescent psychology class at Harvard, we learned about “adultification,” where children and adolescents are forced to take on the responsibilities of adults at an early age. In rural Guatemala, many parents are stretched thin with lots of work and lots of children, and so 5-year-old girls have to help their mothers with cleaning, cooking, and taking care of their younger siblings. In an extreme case, Sachiko told me that a 9-year-old girl showed up to elementary school with her four-month-old baby brother strapped to her back. Where are the parents in this scenario? Meanwhile, from an early age the boys work sewing indigenous clothes to earn money to feed the family and to pay for their studies. Many of my students are shouldering the responsibilities that their parents cannot manage alone.

I prompted my students to think about how much time they spend helping in the house or working to support their families. What would they do if their father earned enough that they didn’t have to work and if their mother could manage the chores of a smaller household? The girls said they would study more, and the boys said they would work but save the money to pay for high school instead of the next meal.

At this point, a student asked me a rather specific question, “Is it right if the father is healthy and able to work, but he stays home and makes his son work?” I don’t want to tell my students what to think, but rather I want to lead them to think for themselves. So I answered with a question, “Is it part of a father’s responsibility to work to provide for his family?” The student answered “yes,” and there he had his answer.

I worried that this class might offend my students, all of whom come from families of at least four kids (and a few of my students have eight siblings, and one even has nine). However, they saw the class as a way to think about their future family life, not as a negative reflection on their parents. Unfortunately for some, the class came too late. This week a teacher told me that a seventh and an eighth grader at the school are pregnant. *sigh*

Land of the Eternal Spring

2010-08-31T13:41:00.001-07:00

My host mother Josefa asked me to take and share pictures from the garden with Enrique, the son who is studying in Canada (Enrique—¡éstas son para ti!). The pictures turned out so well that I post them here for you to enjoy, too!

Shades of Blue

2010-08-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

The New York Times had an interesting article this week about how people’s native languages affect the way they see the world. As someone trying to function in a Mayan/Spanish speaking world, I am acutely aware of these breakdowns of linguistic logic, when the way I would phrase something in my English thought clashes with the way a rural Guatemalan would say it. The linguistic changes that I have to make in these circumstances are the hardest for me because what I’m saying doesn’t even make sense to myself, but I know the people around me get it. Two examples:

The color blue. Language is a crucial lens through which we see color.

According to the NY Times article, “There are radical variations in the way languages carve up the spectrum of visible light…It turns out that the colors that our language routinely obliges us to treat as distinct can refine our purely visual sensitivity to certain color differences in reality, so that our brains are trained to exaggerate the distance between shades of color if these have different names in our language.”

In a case that my sitemate Rebecca and I have resisted for months, in Spanish “blue” (azul) and “light blue” (celeste) are distinct colors. If I’m looking for my skyblue fleece, I cannot say I’m hunting for my “chompa azul.” To Guatemalans, I do not own an “azul” fleece, I own a “celeste” fleece.

Because the two colors are so distinct to them (perhaps because there are two distinct words to describe it, unlike the modifying adjective “light” in English), no Guatemalan has resisted correcting me when I make this error.

Rebecca and I see one blue that has different shades: baby, normal, royal, and navy. But to the Guatemalans, each shade is a different color. Thus, my overgeneralization of the blue spectrum is as if I said to them, “My hair is green” instead of “my hair is brown.” If we’re voting on this, Sachiko says that in Japanese there is just “blue”, without the need to see any particular shade of it as a distinct color.

Another conceptualization that I truly do not understand is the way in which Guatemalans count weeks. Today is Saturday; if I’m going food shopping next Saturday, I would say, “I’m going a week from today.” A Guatemalan would say, “I’m going in eight days.” At first I took this literally, calculating that eight days would be next Sunday, but I guess Guatemalans consider today (or whatever quantity of time is left of it) to be a full day. When something is going to happen “in two weeks” (in English time), it’s going to happen in “15 days” in Guatemalan time.

But then when it comes to three weeks, I feel like the Guatemalans’ logic lost count. If something is going to happen “three weeks from today” (English), a Guatemalan will say that it will happen in “20 days.” They over-counted weeks one and two, but suddenly week three is shorter? Or is three weeks so far away that the precision isn’t really necessary?

To these questions, a Guatemalan would probably answer with another linguistic twist that took me a while to get used to: “Saber.” The word literally means “to know,” but in context here it represents, “Who knows?”

More Tigre Tied Up

2010-08-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

Speaking of crime, an update:

My host dad claims that Tigre’s incarceration has rehabilitated him. Supposedly, Tigre will be bathed and released sometime soon, but don’t count your chickens just yet. Actually——do count your chickens, because at least you’ll know whether or not Tigre nabbed them.