Mid-service

Well, it is true. I just got done last week with my midservice conference. That means I have completed 1 year of my 2 years down here. I don´t really have any reflections on it right now, but they might be written soon.

Besides my midservice conference, we also had All Saint's Day festivities as I already told you about. Below are some pictures of it as well as of Liam´s goodbye party (warning-don't look if you don't want to see a pig being killed).

Nov 2 people bring their decorations to mass to have them blessed. The decorations, which will be used in the cemetary, include paper machet flags, paper or fabric flowers (some are dipped in wax making them last long and look almost real), real flowers, and other plastic and paper things.

Here, people are leaving mass with their decorations in their typical baskets.

Here is part of the cemetary where I live. Some parts, as this picture shows, basically consist of a mound of dirt representing where the person was buried with a wooden but sometimes metal cross. You can see marigolds in the right-hand lower corner. They are the traditional live flower used for this day.

Other parts of the cemetary include cement structures. As I mentioned last year, it seems weird to see people standing on top of graves or playing in the cemetary. I played frisbee this year, but off to the side a bit where it was open. I had fun because there were so many little kids that whenever the frisbee went down the side of the mountain (the cementary is on top of a small mountain or big hill), the kids would run and get it. I also made an attempt at making a kite out of paper machet, a small one mind you. One worked great and proved too light and not strong enough for the wind higher in the sky. I probably had it up 100 yds when the wind snapped it in half. The other one was, well, a failure. I tried to make it out of aluminum and plastic. I basically did it because they said it could not be done. I still think it can be done, but they were right that day.

Here I wondered why the graves were not decorated very much. Well it turns out these 8 gravestones are of a family who were all killed at the same time. I was told it was a massacre of some sort, but the person telling me this did not know why it happened. I guess that explains why there is no close kin to decorate the graves.



As I think I wrote about, for Liam's goodbye party, we killed a pig. Here is the first picture of us early in the morning preparing the boiling water to skin the pig.

Hog tie.

I helped with the skinning. Of course it was already dead before this.






I was really impressed how they carved the pig. The stomach was huge (you can see the big white balloon just under the brown liver in the picture) yet we did not spill a thing from the intestines or stomach. For those of you wondering, the organ setup in the pig was quite the same as you would find it in a person.

From pig to pork chops with a special tangy sauce in 2 hours.

This is the vat of fat. We threw all the fat pieces in there as well as various organs. Eventually as the fat melted, it turned into a giant deep-frier, which we then used to deep fry everything, including some shrimp.










It's that time of year again... corn harvest time that is. This corn is being laid out to dry.

One of the gardens we planted earlier on. The bed that looks sparse already had its vegetables harvested.

Pictures, Finally!

This post will mainly just be pictures. I figured you have been missing out since I have not been able to post them for some time. Enjoy.

This picture and the following 3 below are of the Independence Day parade in my town.

These girls are in typical indigenous dress that was once worn where I live but is no longer used. Unlike other parts of Guatemala where large populations speak an indigenous language, I have been told that there are only a handful of people that speak the indigenous language that was once spoken here.


I am not sure why it said pain, but I am sure it is not supposed to mean pain. I dont know how those little girls could impose any pain anyway.

This dancing gymnastics competition, as it was called here, is related to the independence day celebration because this was the qualifying competition in my town. The winner got to go to Jalapa for the Independence Day celebrations. The two photos are actually of the students where I work (my aldea) and I have been teaching English to these students. (On a side note, they will be finishing the school year next week and I will be administering a final exam... how weird is that). The students actually won and got to go to Jalapa where they placed second in the whole department.

Here is a pictue of corn. Wow. Actually it is a success of the work that I am and my NGO have done. If you look at the picture, you can see corn that is bigger to the right and corn to the left which is smaller, yet they were both planted at the same time. The corn to the right only uses organic fertilizers including animal poop and the corn on the right uses chemical fertilizers. Obviously it took more time to plant and fertilize the corn on the left, but the farmer saved some money and has healthier corn. Here is an example of a person who is starting to incorporate this organic method. In the past, he bought 5 bags of chemical fertilizer for his land. This year, he only bought 2 bags and bought 10 bags of chicken poop. Chemical fertilizer is costing about Q300. The chicken poop cost only 20-25Q. (1500-600-250) He saved Q650 this year which is about $85. To me, that is amazing. Now the next goal will get them to produce all of their own ogarnic materials so that they wont have to buy the chicken poop.

These 2 pictures are of the women in the group who have been going around to member's houses making vegetable and medicinal gardens. As you can see, the women are tough and get dirty. In the picture above, they are using pick-axes to loosen the soil.