Update

Here I am again with another long overdue update. I have now been in Guatemala for 15 months and have lived here in Santa Lucia Lachua for exactly a year. Don’t know about you, but it has flown by for me.

Summer has started here, which means it will be brutally hot for the next 2 months or so. My boss from Peace Corps made a visit here the other day to check up on us and see how work is progressing. He came up in his nice jeep with one of those fancy digital thermometers inside and air conditioning. I couldn’t believe it when I switched the thermometer reading to the US system and realized 40 degrees Celsius means 103 Fahrenheit. We took some guys that I have been working with along for the ride, and they laughed in amazement when the vents started spewing out cold air. We took my boss to see the compost-making latrine and signs we made to prepare us for Guatemala’s biggest week of tourism, Semana Santa. It’s the whole week leading up to Easter. It was during that week that after a year of planning, teaching locals, waiting for some money, building some basic infrastructure, and promoting that Salinas Nueve Cerros had its first paying customer. It still has a long way to go to become the successful community-run ecotourism destination that I know it can develop into, but we are all pumped and proud of the work we have done to get this thing rollin’.

In other news, one of my long-time best buds Seiya made the trek down here to see what life is like in the jungle. Luckily, his trip down here coincided with some trips I needed to make to the City for work. That cut down on taking more 10-hour trips to Guatemala City. I had to give some warning before he got here because I wasn’t sure how everyone would react to seeing a longhaired Japanese dude with a couple tattoos. Turns out mostly everyone just looked at him nervously, but approved of his presence. The few that were courageous enough to talk with him of course loved him. They were amazed by his abilities to write in Japanese and play music, and were dumbfounded by the gadgets he had i.e. video camera and iphone. Here are some memorable quotes by my fellow villagers during Seiya’s visit:

· “B’ex, what is she doing here.”
· (with a very confused look) “So he’s Japanese, but he lives in the US?”
· “He’s studying music in college? That’s beautiful!”
· “How well does he speak Q’eqchi?”

Needless to say, it was great having him here. Due to his long hair, scruffy face, and funky hat, he even got to leave with his very own nickname in Spanish. Its too bad El Chino Che Guevara could only stay a couple days.

Take care, I’ll update this again some time.