Hello, Goodbye

Last week was filled with farewell/welcome parties. The time has come for my sitemate Audrey to complete her service and begin a new adventure in her life. She has definitely left some big shoes to fill and I will do my best to take care of Sija the way that she has. So just when i was getting used to having someone around to brainstorm with, bounce ideas off of, and generally be there to commiserate with, she's gone!
I guess I wouldn't want to get too comfortable here, yea? I am looking forward to taking over her awesome cute little house-on my own for the first time ! Although parting with my host family is bittersweet-I am ready to have my own space again, but sleeping in that big house all alone sort of makes me want to break into tears.... maybe i'll wait until tomorrow night......
And I'm only moving about two blocks away. It'll be fine...right?
Ok, so, here's some pics: Audrey, former =( sitemate, and I at the farewell lunch the teachers at the bottle school we are building made for us. Notice the bottles in the background.

Mmmmmm a little bit of home-meat grilling on a weber. They even made spring onions on the grill the way i like! And, check it out, teacher Rosi manning the BBQ !

The awesome kids of Agua Caliente pitching in on a mural that a Guatemalan artist came and designed. You can see her painting the yellow tree. I got to meet her and she is an awesome artist who likes to help out in communities, doing art workshops with children and murals. It was a great experience for everyone involved. You can see a bit of the wall of the pool in the lower corner. This used to be an ugly block wall the closed in a part of the hot spring-fed pools that the community operates.

Here is the sanitary landfill, all ready for trash! The idea of the sanitary landfill is that only non-recyclable, inorganic trash goes in it, thus eliminating the problems of disease vectors and bad smell. If the community of Agua Caliente separates their trash and uses this landfill responsibly, it should last them a long time. Here you can see some leaders of the community admiring their work. On the left is the new Volunteer who just arrived after 2 years in paraguay to do her 3rd year in Agua Caliente. I won't lie, i'm a little jealous =)

And our first load of trash. Notice the picture taken from the outside of the fence. Yes, in Agua Caliente the community members won't really let us get out hands dirty with the actual work-we're just there as technical advisers and moral support-which is actually the way it is supposed to work.

Audrey, Emily (new volunteer for Agua Caliente!) and I facilitated a workshop in the local elementary school for environmental education with its teachers. The teachers at this school are wonderful, and I look forward to working with them a lot during my service. Here they are making gardens out of used tires.

Rachel, Dona Lidelia's grandaughter, making flour tortilla quesadillas. The flour is whole wheat and is ground locally, the cheese is made locally, and the tortillas made from scratch. There I am rolling out the tortillas. We spent a Sunday afternoon making a huge batch of these flour quesadillas, which are the delicious traditional treat in sija. Yummmmm!

I helped out the fourth grade class organize activities for Environment Day. The kids all wrote down suggestions to help the earth and we hung them on a big tree in the courtyard. The next day my (former) sitemate and I took the entire school up the mountain to play games and enjoy
nature!

Thats it for now. I'll be sure to keep u posted on my progress flying solo down here.