2 stitches

Buenos Dias!

so it has been another leisurely week and a half in baja verapaz! From where i left off last week, Maggie and I hosted a Cinco de Mayo get together on thursday having two of our fellow volunteers come to San Miguel Chicaj and eat nachos, watch movies, and catch up on everything that has been happening. In the process of cooking some homemade pineapple salsa, i cut my thumb, but didn't think anything about it until later that night when Michael (one of the other volunteers) informed me that i should probably get it stitched up- it was a much bigger cut than i thought! So the next morning I called our PC medical office and was told that i needed to get to a hospital asap because cuts cannot be stitched up after 24 hours. This was a little difficult because we were in route to a school in a car borrowed from the muni. I turned to my counterpart and told him about the situation and that we needed to change plans for the day, he felt otherwise because we were already at our first school (Las Minas, a very isolated, but gorgeous school with views of the surrounding mountains), I made our healthy schools presentation and we promptly left so that I could find some sort of health center with a doctor. We ended up at a Puesto de Salud ( these are "health post" in the aldeas of munis) The doctor agreed that i needed two stitches and that he could do it there. This is when the fun began, my counterpart not wanting to leave me alone, decided he should sit in on the whole ordeal and got to witness me getting the numbing shots(the worst pain in my life, i literally screamed) have the stitches sewn in, and then because i hadn't eaten or really drunk anything all morning, faint. Yep. I fainted. only for a second, but it was embarrassing enough. when i finally got my barrings, i start cracking up because this is quite possibly the most ridiculous moment i have had in Guatemala and maybe in my whole life. My laughing only confused my counterpart more! So needless to say, we got a lot closer that morning!

This past weekend was the welcome party for the Verapazes. We got to meet all the volunteers in the area and learn more about the area around Coban (the capital of Alta Verapaz). Our party was at a eco-lodge that had a zipline, indoor and outdoor pool, and a place for a fire. All of the volunteers seemed really nice and I look forward to getting to know them all better. Some of them are COSing by the end of this year which is sad, but its nice to have people to talk to about these first three months and getting started in site! They had a lot of great advise, like looking outside our counterpart for other people in the community that could be resources. I took this advice and made an appointment with our women's group in town. Maggie and I will get to have a proper introduction and do a charla on nutrition by the end of May. The woman in charge seemed super interested and wanted to help us in anyway possible!

We were able to visit 3 more schools this week, which leaves us with only 2 left to visit. The schools we visited were actually in Alta Verapaz and were very remote! All of the teachers go up on mondays and come home on thursdays. Each of the three schools has dormitory like places for the teachers to stay. So it looks like Maggie and I will probably go up every couple of months for a week and either stay in the closest town or find someone in the community to stay with. These schools were in such a beautiful location though! Guatemala is always amazing me! in the west there is ice and snow, in my site it is slowly being transformed from a desert into the tropics as the rainy season is starting, and the location of these schools looked like we were back in north carolina with pine trees and green rolling hills, and if you go one more hour north, you are in the rain forest! absolutely loco! one of the schools in this location will be a perfect school for a bottle project that maggie and i can work on when the kids are on winter vacation (october- jan). which is something that we need to start getting to work on now because we need lots of bottles stuffed with plastic! haha, if you guys are interested in helping us with this project please visit this website: http://www.hugitforward.com/ it is an awesome way to get involved and all you have to do is spread hugs!

Maggie and I were going to start doing our Base Line Surveys this week, but were informed this morning that because of the celebration of mother's day on May 10th, the schools would not be having actual classes, but rather doing games and eating cake all week. So we are going to have to wait until next week, but it seems like we will be able to get these BLS done quickly and can start doing the trainings for the teachers by june (hopefully)! i am really excited to get all this together, i think tomorrow i am going to start making my training posters and visual aids. Friday i get to get my stitches out, which i am very happy about because its hard only having one thumb! haha

More adventures to come!