Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Week 21 - Sex and Its Forms

I had a funny thing occur to me a couple of nights ago. I’ve been waking up at around 5am lately for work, and as a result have been going to bed around 8:30 or 9.

A beep twice, I had received a text message. Groggily I checked the time. 11:45pm. Who on earth could be texting me now? I checked it, slightly concerned that something bad had happened to a friend or something. It was from Mary, a woman in my town I met once before for about 15 minutes. "Hey José, I’m standing outside your door. Come outside so I can give you a goodnight hug.” Signed, “The Moon.” Frankly I didn’t believe it, put my phone down without responding, rolled over, and was asleep again in less than 10 seconds. Work comes early, I barely knew this girl, and highly doubted that she would be content with just a goodnight “hug.”

Another double beep signaled the arrival of a new message. It was 11:48pm. “Hey, are you sleeping or what? Come outside.” I briefly debated going outside to tell her to go away and let me sleep, but decided that playing “comatose” was the better course. It was still mostly true, after all.

I don’t bring up this little crumb of an anecdote to illustrate my (nonexistent) sex life, or even to support my earlier, slightly humorous assertion that I am the most eligible bachelor in San Se. Rather, it provides a reasonably-related entrée to my main topic for this week: Sexual identity and practices. There’s a lot here that doesn’t fit the expected mold.

When I first got to Guatemala, the first thing that struck me was the hyper-masculine culture and its chained attack dog, machismo. In the name of machismo, men catcall women to tears, retain mistresses to prove that they’re real men, and expect executive control over the family. Drinking only further exacerbates this, as I’ve never seen a middle ground; drinking in moderation is for wimps and huecos (an ugly epithet for people who are GLBT...and whose English translation I despise too much to include).

If you stay here awhile, you might begin to see the hallmarks of an idealized feminine type too, at least within a chauvinist construct. Women, especially in the areas where I live and work, stay in the traditionally female social spheres—usually limited to the house and the market. When I volunteered for the afternoon with another organization to interview teenage girls about their knowledge of HIV/AIDS and prevention, most professed no knowledge of condoms or birth control. Whether it was true or not is almost arbitrary; what struck me was that this image of ignorance was what they thought I wanted to hear. After all, isn’t the morally-pure woman supposed to know nothing about sexual safety and practices?

With this as a starting place, imagine my surprise then when I was in Xela for the first time and saw a woman dressed in a tight miniskirt, an even tighter tang-top ending well above her navel, heavy makeup, and long, flowing hair. To say “extremely provocative” is an understatement. Was she a prostitute? No.

She was a man; a transsexual to be exact.

One of the few places it seems that the male and female halves intersect is in the castigation of alternative lifestyles. In large cities there are a few, well hidden gay bars, but every so often, not unlike the US, you hear about a hate-crime being committed against its patrons. Strictly speaking, GLBT lifestyles are not illegal, but they do receive less support from the authorities than those who are straight. Shocker, I know.

Peace Corps does a lot of sexual lifestyle-related outreach and, as a result, several of the more outgoing transsexuals are friends with a few of my own. Last week there was a Peace Corps-sponsored gay-pride event, and afterwards several of us, the more daring ones, agreed to go to the after-hours gay bar.

I had been to the area before. Hell, I'd walked past this very club each and every time I went to the expensive-but-luscious Indian restaurant across the street. Still, I had never noticed it. Then again, I’m sure that was the point.

The entrance was on the lower level of a strip mall, under a gym and next to a gun store. It was tucked into the corner, so the stairs leading up to the second level partially hid its comers and goers from street view. When we walked up to the door, I noticed that there was a locked grill—like prison bars—further securing the entry, along with an armed guard to monitor it. My friends were known here, and we had no trouble getting in.

When I entered, it was an interesting sight. I’ve been to a gay bar in the US before, but I really dug that it was so…illicit. There were probably 40 people in the club, of which 15 or so were obviously transsexual. Everyone looked up as the pack of gringos walked in, and then went back to what they were doing as soon as they saw we were not there to cause trouble. My friends knew a few, and they waived us over.

After five minutes, the music stopped, the lights were turned off, and everyone was sternly told to shut the fuck up by the bartender. The cops were rolling past outside. I never found out if this concern with the law was bred from their lifestyle, or simply because the club was operating after hours. In either case, it was made clear to me that if they found this club, bribes would most likely be the solution.

A minute or two later the door guard blinked his flashlight twice and everything started back up again. People behaved as if nothing had happened; it was just a tiny breather in between dances. This happened six or seven more times before we left, though they never found us.

I don’t know quite were this post is going, or by now where it was supposed to go. It feels a little more rambling than I had hoped. Reading over it, it would appear that my thesis is that “there are all kinds of sexual orientations and norms in Guatemala,” which feels rather obvious for my tastes. I don’t think there’s a huge epiphany coming in the next few sentences while I wrap everything up, but I would like to comment on how interesting everything is when you’re able to see below the surface. Had I just taken a weekend trip here I never would have seen what I have seen, or done what I have done. I never would have been privy to the invisible gay club that I walk past almost every time I’m in Xela, and I certainly never would have been welcomed into it.

It’ thrilling.

I didn’t take pictures of this week’s topic for obvious reasons, so you’ll have to be content with pictures of a few of my schools instead. The two shown here, Tuitzquimac and Chichiná, are applying for funding to build hand washing stations at their schools. Each has only one faucet for 57 and 153 students, respectively. Please forgive the notes on some of them, they’re for Ronald McDonald and his foundation. Find them here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week21?authkey=Gv1sRgCJjy6Jes5NqNzgE#

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Week 20 - On Second Thought, Let's Change That...

“In Sicily,” The Godfather tells us, “the women are more dangerous than shotguns.” Well, I’m not in Sicily (no matter how similar the machismo here may seem), but I could say that same sort of line, replacing “Sicily” with “Guatemala” and “women” with “machine guns.” That has a nice, factual ring to it, doesn’t it? “In Guatemala, the machine guns are more dangerous than shotguns.” Guns are everywhere, from the 12-gauge-wielding guard at every fast food joint, to the guy with the Uzi riding—ironically—shotgun in the occasional pickup. I’d say I’ve grown used to their presence, or at least the way I’ve grown used to the large, oddly flat wall spiders I occasionally see: I know they’re around, and I’m sure they serve at least some beneficial purpose, but for God’s sake, please keep them away from me.

It should come as no surprise then that in order to protect the gun-totin’ public, the police need to have more intimidating, powerful weapons. Every cop carries a pistol of some kind, and many also carry large, futuristic-looking TAR-21 machine guns about the size of my torso. We hear stories about the police, their general level of corruption, and how we should really think long and hard before asking them for help. And that’s where my story begins…

This weekend I went to Xela, the second-largest, and nearest truly cosmopolitan, city to me. It was the Welcome Party for the area, where new volunteers like me could meet and interact with the veterans. As a Huehueteco (male from Huehuetenango) I would be crashing it, but nobody ever minds, and it promised to be a great weekend where I could meet a lot of cool people.

Saturday night the Peace Corps took over a couple of bars in the city center, and as it wound down, I agreed to walk a friend back to her hostel so she didn’t have to do it alone. We got to talking on the way back, and by the time we reached the door a few blocks away two things became clear: First, we were waist deep in a conversation that was both entertaining and illuminating, and secondly, the night guard would not let me in since I wasn’t a registered guest.

We debated it, and decided to sit on the curb and continue. We talked, we laughed. And then the PNC (Policía Nacional Civil) drove by in their big black-and-yellow pickup. We looked up, saw it was passing us, and then went back to conversing.

The truck slowed, stopped, and then reversed towards us.

“Shit,” we both said aloud, sure we weren’t doing anything illegal, but less certain of how much they would request in bribes to not arrest us anyway.* I’ve never bribed anyone, and I wasn’t sure on the protocol. How much money was enough? Would they accept a check?

The truck stopped again, a few feet away from us, and two officers got out. I’d say they looked burly, but few people can truly look burly when they’re five and a half feet tall. They looked menacing, like they were looking for a reason to arrest us. “Shit,” we both said again.

“What are you doing here?” The first officer, apparently the boss, demanded.

“Nothing, sir. We were just talking. It’s getting late though, and we’re going back to our hostel. Thank you.”

The second, the one wielding what looked like a laser gun, took up a solid stance. We weren’t going anywhere until he or his boss said it was alright. Boss-man was doing slow circles around me, I guess looking for a reason to detain me. Not totally sure what I was supposed to do as he played Earth to my Center of the Galaxy, I waiting until he was directly behind me and slowly, non-threateningly, looked back at him.

He grabbed my shirt and lifted it, checking my waistline for a weapon. Of course I didn’t have one. He began frisking me, working his way down my torso and then up each leg. He felt each of my jean pockets, perhaps for drugs. Nothing, obviously.

“Thank you for your concern, officers,” I began again, “but as I said, we are staying at the hostel that’s less than half a block from here. We know it’s dangerous, and we promise to get off the street immediately.”

Boss-man pretended he didn’t hear me. Number Two seemed slightly bored, but his feet were still wide apart, his hands caressing his weapon. An athletic stance, I decided; this was a man ready for action. I began making a mental inventory of the cash left in my wallet. Were 100 quetzales enough to buy off both of them? 100 each? Did I even have that much on me? I doubted it.

“Show me your papers,” Boss-man demanded. My friend and I looked at each other, bewildered. “Which papers?” we thought. Neither of us had a passport handy. Not knowing what else to do, I gave him my Peace Corps ID.

Perhaps in other Peace Corps countries, the official identification is a little more, well, official. Here however, it’s a piece of laminated paper printed off a low-quality home computer. There are little divots and bulges where the person trimming it faltered. None of the corners make 90 degrees. I didn’t expect it to impress him.

The officer glanced at it, slightly bemused, then looked harder when he saw the seal of the US embassy. Maybe he thought I was affiliated more directlya diplomat perhapsbut his attitude changed quickly. Gone was the all-powerful swagger, the assumption of total compliance. Number Two saw it as well. He shifted uncomfortably, tightening his grip on the gun's stock. The game had changed.

“Where’s your hostel?” Boss-man asked, this time a little more politely.

“Just over there, barely half a block. We’re happy to get off the street, sirs.” I said again, still not daring to press my advantage.

“It’s dangerous out here, especially for gringos such as yourselves. It’s time to go home now.”

“Thank you for your concern, please have a good night.”

They turned back towards their pickup and we towards the hostel. We saw them drive away just as we arrived at her door.

“What in the hell just happened?” we asked each other silently. “How did we get out of that? What could have happened if it had gone differently?”

“Fuuuuuuck” I intoned quietly, drawing the word out. I tried to let my anxiety and stress out with it.

After she went inside, I was alone on the deserted street. I walked to a cab and, in a brilliant feat of prudence outweighing stinginess, I paid the ten quetzales demanded by the driver to take me to my accommodations four blocks away.

When I got in the taxi the driver began to speak. “I should be charging more because of the hour. The only reason I’m doing this for ten is because it’s dangerous out here on the streets at night. You never know if someone’s going to rob you.”

Brother, you have no idea.

* I do not support, condone, or encourage the bribing of anyone, be they public officials or private citizens.

This week’s photos can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week20?authkey=Gv1sRgCIeEjLXNgMr91wE#. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t take two of these. The internet can be a wonderful thing.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Week 19 - In Guatemala, It's a Winter Waterland

Another week has passed, and it’s becoming harder to find interesting things to talk about; not because they’re not interesting, just that I am becoming more and more inured to the exoticism of my life here. It’s normal to wake up without any electricity or water, to make my coffee in an inherited camping percolator, and wait for a jalón (lit. a “pull”; a ride in a pickup) up to my schools as the mist clears in the mountains.

Another strange thing that I’m becoming more accustomed to? The weather. The Guatemalan invierno (“winter”) began a few weeks ago, and now we get rainstorms lasting several hours virtually every afternoon. I’ve started compulsively carrying around my rain jacket wherever I go, but it’s probably for naught. Give or take 20 minutes, you can set your watch to each downpour’s approach. I suppose a clock that’s off by ±20 minutes is really not all that useful, but you get the idea. I suppose you could say that like everything else here, including my scheduled work meetings, the rains operate on Guatemalan time.

The parabola of the weather necessitates a description. When I awake—which, depressingly, is becoming more and more frequently around 5am—you can see the mountain fog backlit by the rising sun. As I finish my cup of much-needed java, it begins to burn away, appearing almost as if it’s falling off the mountain.

I leave to catch the 6am jalón with departing teachers, it’s nearly clear, and were I still in Minnesota, every indication would suggest that it was going to be a sunny, puffy-clouded kind of day. If I remained at San Se’s elevation of a little under 6,000 feet, it would be 80 degrees by no later than 10 or 11am. As I currently travel to as many as five mountain schools per day, many of which are over a mile higher, it rarely reaches that temperature. Paradoxically, it becomes chillier for me as the day progresses.

By noon the day starts to become more ominous, with bread-like storm clouds seeming to suddenly find they have too much yeast; swelling and congealing, they become a single baguette of promised precipitation.

If I’m not inside by 2pm, it’s usually too late. I’ll be soaked in a minute, and even my raincoat is not enough to protect me if I have to sit in the back of a pickup as we wind out way down the mountain for the better part of an hour. Truthfully, I look forward to the daily storms. Sitting on one of the family’s outdoor couches, protected by an overhang, makes me feel cozy, especially if I’ve worked up the energy to brew a second cup of coffee. The noise the fat droplets make as they smash against the tin roof is hypnotic in its way. Off in the distance thunder claps, but I rarely see the flash that preceded it.

It would seem that these few hours would make a perfect siesta, which is certainly how I spend them, but it’s not as culturally tolerated as I have found it in other Latin counties like Mexico and Spain. Things may close down for a while, but I still suspect that I’m still seen as huevón (lit. a “big egg”, lazy) for watching a movie or reading a book in the middle of the afternoon.

I’ve heard that the Rainy Season quickly becomes a headache. I expect it too, especially as the prolonged dampness breeds mold on my clothing and wooden cabinetry. The roads will begin to flood in the low spots, and the dustiness of a couple months ago will turn to thick muddy sludge. It’s then, when the soil is barely able to cling to itself, that we have to begin worrying about landslides, the most severe of our natural disasters. I am on the far side of a river from the nearby mountains, high up on the opposing bank, so I am well-protected from both landslides and flooding, but most roads are cut into the sides of slopes, and it will become problematic when the Interamerican Highway gets bisected by several hundred tonnes of moved earth, disconnecting me from Huehue and the Peace Corps beyond that. There are emergency action plans, of course, so don’t worry about me being at risk, but it’s frustrating to think that with a little more foresight, or infrastructure, these annual problems could be prevented rather than repeated. In some areas they’re still clearing the roads from last year’s disasters.

When I leave my dry confines the rain has stopped but its clean, fresh scent still lingers. I love that smell. Like too many things, it’s gone far too quickly, and the spent clouds are burnt away by the sun just before dusk. It’s sunny again, and had the bath towel I had left outside to dry not been forgotten there, all evidence of the day’s deluge would have been erased. In some sense it could seem like time has stood still. The pinks and oranges of the day’s ends streak the sky, my towel is still waterlogged, and it looks for all the world like rain never did—nor will--occur.  Is it dawn or dusk? A single reminder snaps me back to reality: If I just showered, why do I still smell like a dusty skunk?

Don’t answer that.

I only have a few photos this week, but they hopefully show the progression of the day’s weather while also showing more of the terrain and manner in which I live. Enjoy: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week19?authkey=Gv1sRgCJGxocG11KiKEQ#

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Week 18 - The Success of Banality

It’s amazing how your standards change based on linguistic and cultural fluency. In the US it would hardly register to simply talking to someone, understanding them, and then move on. Here, however, it’s far different. As I become more entrenched in my host site, I find myself beaming from even the most banal interactions. Did I recognize that person correctly and casually insert their name into the greeting so they know I know it? Did I understand 90% or more of what they said without having to go “eh?” every other sentence as if I were hard-of-hearing? Did I properly switch from using buenos dias to buenas tardes at noon, or did I just wish that nice woman a good morning at 4pm?

A large part of my contentment these days stems from small exchanges like these. Even though school—and thus work—has officially restarted after the strike, I still find myself with exorbitant amounts of time on my hands. Paseando (strolling) has become a meaningful method by which to work on my secondary objective: Community integration. As trite as it sounds, I actually feel myself swell with pride every time I walk away from a two minute conversation that I navigated correctly and without agenda. My facial muscles contort into a self-satisfied grin. I feel lighter, cooler, sexier.

The really unexpected thing is that while the positive sensation is still felt during chats with a purpose—discussing vegetable prices at the market, introducing myself to teachers and principals at my schools, etc.—it’s greatly diminished. You’d think that the positive feelings from doing my job competently would supersede the more extraneous stuff. I suppose in a way it does; I feel like an idiot when I screw up a presentation to parents or teachers, where it’s more a hope of not failing than it is of succeeding, but it’s almost as if the banality of a dialogue is what makes it so successful. Anyone can walk up to the woman in the San Se post office and say “do you have a package for me?” It’s only when she says “of course not, this is San Se” and we continue to talk about the people sending me things from home that I start to get that rich, warm, slightly bloated sense of self-competence.

Community integration, and its much-loved offspring, confianza (roughly, “mutual trust”), are terms that Peace Corps tossed around daily during training. Despite the slightly magnanimous way it was always presented to us, it really is an important goal, especially in a country that runs on back scratching and backroom agreements between friends. As almost every volunteer has told me who’s been in country long enough to know, “everything is a whole lot easier when you have confianza.” Need a person to give you a lift back from one of your more distant schools? Need a reservation for the community conference room on short notice? Need a fair quote for those new hand washing stations you’re building?

Confianza, confianza, confianza.

Of course, not all of this is hypothetical. The confianza I built with the principal of one of the schools that will almost surely be mine when Lauren and I split them got us invited to their Mother’s Day celebration last week. I ran into her at the market, where we exchanged pleasantries and gabbed over the price of onions (two quetzales per pound. That’s highway robbery!) After a few minutes she suggested that we head over on Friday morning and see what one of the many major school celebrations is like. Of course I accepted, and Friday morning I hopped on a bus and found her in one of the school’s three classrooms.

“Hey Beatrice, how’s it going?” The standard introduction to some fantastically ordinary conversation.

For most of the celebration I was sitting in a corner, simply watching what the 40 or so mothers and their toddler-aged children were doing. I was mildly surprised—though perhaps I shouldn’t have been—when Beatrice asked me to stand up and say a few words about me, the Peace Corps, and Healthy Schools.

“I, um, am Joe. From the US. I’m from the state Minnesota, which is way to the north, so it’s always cold.” Not succeeding, trying not to fail too badly.

Despite my bumbling, Lauren and I were able to get across the majority of what we needed to say, and then it was back again to watching the celebrations, laughing with the teachers, and smiling at the shy children hiding behind their mothers’ corte (traditional skirt).

When it was over, a grandfatherly old man offered to give the two of us a ride back into town so we wouldn’t have to wait and pay for a bus. His stooped stature and the way his overly-large pants were cinched around his bellybutton endeared him to me immediately. Truthfully, I’m not sure quite how that confianza was forged, but it may have had something to do with the fact that we were the only two men in the room over three years of age. I’ll take it where I can find it. I had seen him, slightly embarrassed, trying to explain to the group why he was there at Mother’s Day and not a female figure, but there was nothing embarrassing about the love he showered upon his tiny charge.

“So you’re José, huh?” He asked me as we were walking to his pickup. “I’m also José. We’re José and José!”

I assume it won’t always be like this. I can’t always be so easily satisfied with myself, right? Eventually, my standards will have to rise. Until then, however, I’m going to keep plodding forward; each word becoming a sentence, each sentence a conversation, each conversation a brick by which to build confianza.

I look over at him and smile. “Hey José, how’s it going?”

There are a few pictures from the Mother’s Day celebration, but the majority are from my school visits that are continuing to occur. It can be pretty thrilling to roll over the spines of a mountain range in a pickup bed with an unencumbered view for what feels like thousands of miles. Enjoy! https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week18?authkey=Gv1sRgCPiiltf_ue2CRw#

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Week 17 - The Most Eligible Bachelor in San Se

Work has started finally. There are no more teacher strikes to contend with, no more Holy Weeks to navigate, and no more excuses from our CTA (Coordinador Téchnica Administrativa, the superintendent of our schools). Well, sort of…

We were originally assigned 34 schools in which to implement the Healthy Schools program. Of that list, two have been struck. The CTA tells us that they are simply too far to walk to, and no reliable transportation exists to those sites. Ergo, we have 32 schools in total. I still feel more than a little bit guilty that those students are to be deprived our program solely on the virtue of living where they do. I tried to explain to the CTA that I signed up for a certain amount of hardship, and that hiking for a few hours to get to a school was part of that. I even told him about the marathon hike completed in Week 11. No dice. Either for my own safety or his, he’s vetoed those two schools.

In the meantime, Lauren and I visited seven schools last week, and our stated goal is to visit each school three times by the end of September when the year ends. I know that sounds like a pretty weak goal—to me too—but the number of fíjese que’s and holidays promote it from a slacker’s goal to a realist’s.

Lauren, the CTA, and I visited those seven schools in just two days. While my partner and I had the desire to visit many more, the rate-determining factor was, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, the CTA. The difficulty arises from the fact that we have been strongly advised to get our CTA’s personal introduction to each school. It gives us legitimacy and, even more pragmatically, a guide who actually knows where we’re supposed to go.

After waiting a week to get a response to the numerous phone and in-person messages left with his secretary, I thought that our CTA was somewhat lazy, or at least did not view us with as much seriousness as we were expecting to receive. However, I’m starting to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s just really busy. It still is a little annoying that he can only commit two or three half-days per week to our visits, but it’s better than nothing. Once we get properly introduced to each school, Lauren and I are planning on dividing them by size, proximity, and expected reception by the teachers. Having only 16 schools to go to on my schedule will be a lot quicker, but I will still not be able to go to more than one or two schools per day given the baseline surveying I will have to do in each, and the spotty modes of transportation between each site.

Of our school visits, one particularly stands out: Tuitzín, our school on top of a mountain. We had a car, but I foresee having to walk all the way up once I’m on my own. It’s at least 12,000 feet of elevation, more than a mile straight up from where I live, and it shows. When the students play soccer on their makeshift field, they’re extremely careful with their shots; if they’re even a little off-target they risk having to run essentially to the mountain’s base to get the ball back.

Our visits themselves are pretty generic right now. We call all the teachers into the principal’s office, where the CTA describes a little bit about Healthy Schools and how we’re from the US and to be respected. Then I get up and—in Spanish, of course—describe what we’re here to do and, more importantly, what we’re not here to do.

I explain that our phase of Healthy Schools is a program aimed at the adults of the school. We will give trainings to teachers, directors, and the PTA on how to teach their students to live more healthily and practice good hygiene; in general we will not be teaching the kids themselves. We expect to see what we’ve taught the teachers to be reproduced in the classroom at least twice per week.

I also explain that Lauren and I personally do not have any money. We are of course happy to help schools find funding for health-related development projects like water faucets, toilets, and subsidized snack time, but simply asking us for 10,000Q will get you nowhere. Even the Peace Corps as an organization does not give out grants in this fashion, and the sooner people stop assuming that I’m a rich gringo with money to burn the better.

Finally, Lauren and I explain the rough requirements of becoming a Healthy School:
  1. Conduct health lessons at least twice per week in the classroom.
  2. Each classroom has a “health nook” where students can store their toothbrush, paste, and other hygiene tools.
  3. At least 75% of students practice healthy habits on any given day (washing hands before using the bathroom, washing hands before snack and brushing teeth after, having  a reasonably clean body and clothing.
  4. The school has water at least 5 days per week for the 5 hours that class is in session, has at least one water faucet per teacher for students to practice their habits, and the school is free of trash and other refuse.
  5. The teachers and PTA are trained in the design and management of small school-improvement projects.
  6. The teachers, school board, and PTA have a nutritious snack program for the students.
They seem like pretty simple things, especially in the timeframe of two years that we have to implement it. However, behavior change is hard, and a realistic goal is about 25-30% of our schools becoming certified as a Healthy School by the time we leave.

So far the teachers seem pretty receptive, but it’s hard to tell when we’re only spending about an hour at each school, lecturing at people who are usually older than me. I automatically have prestige since I am, unlike the teachers or principals, college educated and viewed (despite my protests) as a rich American. However, the only real conclusion that I can draw is that to the younger female teachers I’ve suddenly become the most eligible bachelor in San Se. I really can’t tell what working with them will be like for the next 23 months, but am firmly convinced, in this case at least, dating someone I work with is a very bad idea.

I was stupid and forgot to bring my camera both days we visited schools. Therefore, the only picture I’m leaving you guys with is of my “About Me” poster that I present at every school. Most teachers are shocked by the pictures of snow—something they have heard of but most have never seen—and that I only have one sibling. https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week17?authkey=Gv1sRgCKKayOHZkbTmfg#