Thursday, March 27, 2008

Life with the fat cut off

At the end of February, I headed home for 10 days. At my connection in Ft. Lauderdale, people were freaking out about the 30 minute delay to head up to DC. None of these people have spent time in the developing world. As you can imagine, life went on. Seeing family and friends was fun, and I was surprised how little everything had changed. This also has to do with the email updates people sent me over the course of the six months down here. I never once felt lost in a conversation or needed to be filled in about something. That was nice. But, being home still felt a little strange. It was kind of like I was visiting family and friends in a foreign country I had visited before. Hard to explain i guess. One of the biggest things I noticed about being at home was that I felt cooped up inside. Here, I'm outside all day long. If its cold outside, its cold inside. You never escape the outdoors. 

 Things I liked about being home:
  1. Family and Friends minutes away
  2. Hot showers with ridiculous preasure.
  3. Throwing TP in the toilet.
  4. An unendless beer selection
  5. Options in general.
Transitioning back into Guate life was pretty easy. No freak outs like when I first got here. 

Work-wise: The coop received an Eco-Tourism volunteer to develop the tea tour. So, I have a new sitemate. He gets up here next week. Its tough getting back into work once you've been gone for a while. So, with my trip home, semana santa, and a PC conference at the begining of April, it'll be tough getting things done this month. However, I did order shirts for the coop, and film and edit a promo movie, which is below.

Semana santa (holy week) was last week. Across guatemala, people carry floats of Jesus and Mary through their towns. PC gave us vacation days from Thursday-Sunday, so I took advantage of the time to visit volunteers in Alta Verapaz.  One of the towns I visited, Salaquim, was a town two hours off off the paved road to Chisec. The town was pretty basic. We played basketball on hoops that reminded me of the Kevin Bacon movie, The Air Up There. 

In general, things are awesome down here. Life is pretty relaxing most of the time, its simple. Life with the fat cut off. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I just saw your video. It's awesome! Can I put a link to it on the (horrible) techirrepeco website? Later gator.