Christmas Tamales Day Two

This morning I returned to help with wrapping up the tamales to steam, less complicated and more labor intensive, while chatting with Dona Reina and Flopi, Lidelia's daughter.  |We wrapped the rice tamales that I helped prepare, then potato tamales that used the same sauce mixed in with mashed potatoes.  

A spoonful of cooked rice, a chunk of chicken, a slice of bell pepper, and raisins are wrapped in banana leaves

Here is the masa for the potato paches

Dona Reina with paches

Potato paches with chicken and a whole chili

Ready for steaming!

And so concludes my adventure in tamale making.  I hope to share the tradition with some of you when I get back!

Christmas Tamales Day One

My host sister's mother in law was gracious enough to let me invade her kitchen, snap lots of photos, and 'help' with tamale-making yesterday and this morning.  Here is an exhaustive photo journal of the process.

Day One involved making the sauce and filling for the paches



Preparing the sauce involved roasting all the ingredients.  Tomatoes



Pumpkin and sesame seeds

White bread, toasted and then moistened

Roasted bell peppers plus two different kinds of dried chiles simmering

Pumpkin and sesame seeds and cinnamon sticks get ground with a coffee grinder,
 then added to the chiles, tomatoes, and onions

And the bread, for thickening

Blend it all together

Me with Dona Reina, my host sister's mother-in-law and master pache chef

Heat up sauce until it simmers, then cook another ten minutes

To make the masa or filling, add ground white rice to boiling water in a ginormous pot

Over a wood fire

Stir constantly!

After the masa of ground rice boils for five minutes, we took it off the fire to cool for the next day. 

Feliz Navidad

It donned on me sunday that Christmas Eve was only six short days away, which meant only six short days of guilt free Christmas music and movies...I started listening to Michael Buble and a Glee Christmas immediately.  I guess it worked because I was shortly thereafter overcome with a desire to bake, a passtime that I had put on the shelf about a year ago after realizing that living alone and baking was hazardous to my health. 

In the spirit of goals 2 and 3 of Peace Corps (Sharing US culture with Guatemalans and vice versa), I arranged to borrow my host mom's stove and invited a friend over to make some Christmas cookies.

Using an old wine bottle as a rolling pin = resourcefulness typical of a Peace Corps Volunteer ;)

We made Sugar Cookies, Chocolate Peppermint Cookies, and Peppermint Biscotti that all turned out yummy.  I'd never made biscotti before but guess what?  Not that difficult!  Now I want to try savory biscotti, like...garlic, cheese, rosemary, etc.  I actually don't have much of a sweet tooth and gave most of the cookies away. 

Last year I was here as well, but never really got into feeling Christmas-y and although I did spend it here with the family, didn't learn much about the holiday.  Here, the tradition is to make and eat tamales called paches, made with rice or potatoes and a chunk of chicken, raisins, and chiles.  My host mom decided not to make paches this year, however, so I got an invitation to go to her older daugher's house and learn from her mother in law. 

I took about a gazillion pictures of the whole process over the course of two days.  I think I'm going to include them in a separate post to follow.  Christmas 2012,authentic Guatemalan paches at my parents' house, anyone?

Anywho.... Oh yes, Guatemalan Christmas traditions.  Along with delicious paches, we will be making ponche, an amped up traditional cider type hot drink with chopped up pineapple, apple, papaya, coconut, and raisins in it.  We eat a late dinner and wait for midnight, when everyone celebrates the birth of Christ with fireworks.  Lots of fireworks. In an attempt to get the whole Navedad experience, I bought a few fireworks to join along in the fun. 

And there you have it.  A little food, a little fireworks, and lots of good company and conversation. I hope you all have a Very Merry Christmas as well.

So feria "ended" but the street vendors, for the most part, are sticking around.  As is the video arcade, and unreasonably loud music, apparently.  I will be going back to work tomorrow, trying to make some headway on my ambitious December list, along with writing an end of the year report on my service. 

We in Peace Corps Guatemala received some upsetting news on Friday that I have been postponing writing about because it is super disappointing.  I want to preface the news by asking you all to please not worry about me; the admin here has done and continues to do everything possible to keep us Volunteers safe.  Despite their efforts, however, Peace Corps Washington handed down the decision on Friday to suspend arrival of any new Volunteers to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras due to the declining security situation in our countries. 

What does this mean for me, personally?  I think the news most directly affects those of us leaving in March who were expecting to be replaced because, for the time being at least, we will NOT be replaced.  This leaves most of us disappointed and worried about the projects and the work that we have done here.  Not to mention all of people who thought they were leaving to begin their Peace Corps missions in a short two weeks.  It hurts my heart to put myself in their shoes.  I hope Peace Corps will find them new posts in a timely manner.  

In short, I don't know exactly what to think about this news, except to grieve for the wonderful work that Peace Corps does down here and the thought of the loss to both potential Peace Corps Volunteers and potential host communities.  Also the sadness I feel that a new Volunteer won't be replacing me and continuing to support Environmental Conservation and Education work in my community.  It is up to the people of the community to follow through with it.  I hope I've planted seeds that will grow in the absence of another volunteer and fear that it wasn't enough. 

So uncertainty and disappointment abound in the Volunteer community for the time being.  I think that this week we will receive more updates about what this bombshell means for those of us still in country.  Will they evacuate?  Adopt a gradual phase-out that allows those of us here to finish up our service? Or is this a temporary measure that will be repealed in the future?  =/ 

More news to follow

Photo Update

Photographing fireworks is hard-at least with my little camera that didn't have a 'fireworks' mode.. I took about a hundred pictures of the fireworks show last night.  Most of them came out like this:

Luckily, though, a few of them came out like this:

Win.

The Tradition of Feria

Yesterday I woke up to a foggy, grey morning, ruining my plans to pump up the new Kanye/Jay-Z album and do laundry.  So I did the next best thing, and put in some time reading Omnivore's Dilemma.  If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it highly. Michael Pollan puts forth a very compelling case for a cause that I was already behind, although now I'm even more convinced-eating local and sustainable and overall being a responsible consumer.  And it's a good read, although I have to read only a little at a time-there is a lot of information to digest...

Anyways, yesterday was  good day at the feria! I was on the phone with a friend around 3 pm when I was inundated with the echoes of horns and percussion-live music coming from the plaza that I had been warned about.  I grumbled to my friend about the seeming chaos of ranchera music, "They just put as many people on stage as will fit, hand them all drums or horns, and see what happens! How can anyone listen to this by choice??" 

But after about 45 minutes of wall-shaking ranchera music, I felt compelled to go see what was going on out there.  This was what I found:

The culprit guilty of shattering my peaceful afternoon-enough amplification for a stadium of 100,000 people...Because in latino culture, everything sounds better turned up so loud it hurts.  And as predicted, a band with at least 16 people hammering away at drums and wailing on trumpets, trombones, and a tuba. 

Once I was there, however, I could see the merit in it all.  The band was good.  And, in contrast to the distorted assault on my ears that reached my patio three blocks away, the music took on a whole different form en vivo.  The band leaders were charismatic, the melody and rhythm blending together to, at least, make sense and even become dance-able...

I was joined by my counterpart, at which point I begged him to go get some good pictures of the band-I was too embarrassed.. He suggested we go up to the top floor of the market building to get a better view.
 

And, yes, those are more Convite dancers down below.  Chatting with Verney (my counterpart) I got a little more insight on the origins of the feria and convite tradition.  This is what he told me.  The feria, celebrating a town's patron saint, is a tradition introduced by the (Catholic) Spanish conquistadors.  They assigned each town a patron saint and mandated that the town put on a week long festival honoring that saint every year.  And thus began Feria. 

But the costumed dancers shuffling back and forth in the plaza for two hours?.... Apparently, this tradition has its origins in the Spanish custom of the Dance of the Conquistador and Dance of the Moors, where participants don elaborate costumes and re-enact the Conquest of the Americas and the Crusades, respectively.  Over the years, it evolved to include the inexplicable latino enthusiasm for our cartoon characters, in what can only be described as a marathon dance session to popular latino music.  Verney was the first person that was able to make the connection and attempt to explain the origins of a custom that has baffled me since I first saw it during training two years ago. 

So customs and traditions introduced by foreign conquerors evolve to incorporate the local interests and ideas, evolving into something almost unrecognizable.  Even the food offered is a hodgepodge of traditional and foreign influences.

Pizza, hot dogs, french fries, and even burritos (Mexico) and pupusas (El Salvador) alongside the dulce tipico, churrasco, fresh corn tortillas, roscas and roasted peanuts.  In front of me in the plaza I could see so many different cultures, I began to wonder-what, then, is Guatemalan culture?  Not unlike the US, Guatemala has been exposed to and influenced by so many different cultures that identifying authentic traditions and culture in a place like Sija proves difficult.

 I shared my thoughts with Verney, who agreed that his culture has become obscure and lost in the face of conquest, injections of US culture, and the rampant racism between ladinos and indigenous, or Mayan, people.  In some parts of Guatemala, the Mayan culture and tradition continue in a less-altered manner, although still representing a hybrid of Spanish and Guatemalan culture. 

Interesting questions, contemplated as I watch the shuffling costumed dancers take their places again, then start a lively choreographed number to the wailing trumpets and pounding bass.  As we change and are changed by the experiences and cultures that we encounter, our traditions evolve to reflect it.  Maintaining any cultural identity in this rapidly globalizing world is a challenge, so I am impressed by the vibrant culture still alive here.

More thoughts on going home

Okay, so I'll admit it. I've got the Senioritis.  Feria doesn't help.  I've given in to the temptation of checking my calendar and counting down the next mile-marker to me being done-Christmas, then New Year's; our COS (Close of Service) conference; cousin Kerry coming to visit in February (!); meeting the replacement volunteer; then getting on that plane...

In between, stuff like gleaning my possessions and getting rid of accumulated clothes, books, DVD's, which I'm pretty good at.  I would even go so far as to say I'm the opposite of a packrat, whatever that is.  But I think that despite my cold heartedness at throwing out/getting rid of most stuff, I can assure you all I'll be bringing my teddy bear back with me.

I think it's natural that, so close to the end, we start to get the senioritis.  Some friends are looking forward to grad school, others to weddings, new business ventures, travels, reuniting with friends and family back home, or just the simple things of US life like driving, hot water, washing machines, draft beer.  Whatever it is, the looking forward, or anticipation, is sweet and terrifying at the same time.  At least for those of us hoping to find employment upon returning, crossing our fingers that that Peace Corps line on our CV will open some doors or raise some eyebrows. Reading the news reports about the economy and the polarization of the political parties, I feel like we're on the edge of a precipice with nothing holding us back.  *shivers* 

But all I can do is have faith that things will work out.  And meanwhile.... work on that to do list. 

In feria news, nothing too special happened yesterday.  I cleaned house and washed clothes.  I had lunch with my host family. Watched Sex and the City in the afternoon (does she really break Aiden's heart TWICE?? i could just kill her every time I watch that...)  then basketball games for a short while in the evening.  Got to Skype with my folks, and my boyfriend, then fell asleep watching Empire Strikes Back.  It was a pretty good Sunday. 

Childhood Memories of Disneyland Revisited

Friday was the much-anticipated "Convite."  My host brother was participating so I dutifully accompanied my host sister and aunt to the parade and debut in the plaza.  What, you ask, is a Convite?  It is the time-honored Guatemalan tradition of donning elaborate costumes of everything from Disney characters to blatantly racist charicatures of Mexicans.... (?????)  I have, as yet, found no answer as to why, where, or when this 'tradition' began. But it sure is fun to watch.

In my time here, I have seen various Convite performances and I have to say that this year's performance took the cake.  I thought the costumes and dances were better (and actually choreographed!) and the performers were enthusiastic and well rehearsed.  Call me crazy, but feria is turning out to be more enjoyable all around this year.  I may even get up the gumption to go to Ranchera Night tonight (gah...) Maybe I'll put a bandana on Bella and drag her along-a girl needs a Partner in Crime, after all. 

Ah, so anyways-a group of young guys from town get together and perform this Convite thing-the kicker is that you don't know who is behind the masks and costumes-we have to wait until the 15th, "El Descubrimiento" or "The Discovery" when they take off their masks at the end of their encore performance. Ooooh, the anticipation! 

And now, if you're having trouble picturing it, the photos from this year's Convite

My host brother was the chipmunk!

Here they are, all manner of characters in no particular order-the Red Queen and Mad Hatter were my favorites

Cesy and I showing off our merch-they sold cute t-shirts as a fundraiser

The Main Event in the Plaza

Breakin it Down..

All Bundled Up

There you have it, another weird but true tradition of Feria in Guatemala-stay tuned for the exciting Descubrimiento on Thursday.

And I have a confession to make. Yesterday there were no big events going on so I skipped town and therefore have no photos for Saturday's Feria :(  Even worse, I skipped town to go see Breaking Dawn. Again.  And it was just as good the second time. 

Day 2 of Feria Fun

Overnight, my blog reached 2,000 page views (total)...not very impressive in the wide world of blogging, but I'm still psyched. Thank YOU for reading =)

At any rate, my cold came back with a vengeance yesterday =( in the form of an awful, brain rattling cough.   I was hoping it would go away by nighttime and therefore didn't buy ANY cold medicine during the day.  Also went to see my host brother and sister play basketball-they both killed it, btw.  Since nothing cures the cold (or at least makes it bearable) like great movies.  Therefore I watched A New Hope (again), a movie that never gets old and leaves me happy and in awe every time.  I also watched that episode of The Walking Dead where (spoiler alert) Shane shoots the fat guy in the foot so he can escape the zombies.... oh man, he's so hard core.

This morning I headed to the pharmacy and picked up an assortment of nyquil and other cold and flu medicines-including Tabcin, an effervescing tablet that Guatemalans swear by for the common cold.  And I was skeptical until I tried it-I'm not sure if its helping my symptoms or not, but dropping the tablet in my hot lemon water and watching it fizz is pretty fun!  Also, super exciting, I got a little tin of Vicks VapoRub for only Q5-thats like 60 cents!  Silver linings to my trip to the pharmacy.

Since all the feria hoopla has brought work to a bit of a standstill, I've had (more) time to daydream about coming home.  Coming Home, for Peace Corps Volunteers that have made it through their service, surprisingly fills us with the same heebie jeebies (or maybe worse) that we had two years ago, preparing to get on a plane and having no idea what awaited us on the other side.  Now, I could not be happier to be reunited with my boyfriend, friends and family, my beloved Central Coast, driving, going out after dark. I have finally felt 'at home' here in my town, but there's no place like home, as they say.  And despite the doubts that I've been trying to articulate now for a few weeks, I recognize them now for the feeling you get whenever confronted with a major transition in life.  And although uncomfortable, I love it-the not knowing, the endless possibilities, the anticipation.  I'll be riding this high until it comes time to step foot on that plane. 

That being said, ready for Day 2 of Feria?!  All I managed to to do was drag my butt to the basketball games but I think I got some cute ones of my host family.  Enjoy...

At the basketball game with Lidelia and her granddaughter Rachel (Why am I sticking out my tongue??)

Found out that my camera sucks at taking action/sport shots but i got this one with both my host sisters in it
-and they're even smiling!

At the licuado stand-basically a smoothie, but since the fruit is fresh, they are Delicious, beating the pants off of any pineapple blended drink you could hope to get in the States.

Guatemalan version of churros.  You can even get them doused in chocolate or caramel sauce.  This is one of the things I fall prey to-thinking they are going to magically taste like Mexican churros suddenly (they never do)...



It got COLD-luckily I brought my trusty Cal Poly mug to keep our cider warm



7 Days of Feria

I realize that I may have poo-pooed the rich tradition of the feria here, and now I'd like to repent.  I was talking with a friend on the phone last night and she urged me to try to enjoy it-it is, after all, my last feria here.  And while in the future I'll surely happen upon another feria, I will never again live a block away from the action. 

In an attempt to deliver to you the culture of the feria, I now give you the Seven Days of Feria.  Last night, I was cozy in my room, skyping with my boyfriend, surfing the internet, and surely would have let my laziness and the freezing cold winds keep me inside-except for my self assigned homework to report to you, readers ;)  Feel good to rescue me from my homebody self? 

Without further ado, I give you Day 1 of Feria...

Tail end of a parade showcasing the newly elected reinas, or queens, of the Feria

Bird's eye view of the shantytown constructed by street vendors

View of the historic clock tower and new muni building-and yes, that does say Palacio, or 'palace'.....



Beautiful sunset last night over the plaza



So, in short, Feria is a lot cooler this year-I know way more people...making it much more enjoyable to wander through the stalls, watch the basketball game a little, sample the street fare.  I told Tony that this may be the most famous I'll ever be-to which he responded "I doubt it." Such a sweetheart.  But I guess that living somewhere for two years and being the only white girl, it'd be hard not to wind up 'famous' or at least 'recognized.'

And maybe that's part of the secret to enjoying feria-in a place with few social gatherings, and even fewer (ok none) after dark, feria gives the people here an excuse to leave the house at night, run into acquaintances, friends, and family, and reconnect over a hot pupusa. 

Attack of the pollen..

Pollen City...

After laying low this weekend with the cold, I woke up yesterday feeling good enough to caffeinate and put on my running shoes... Being a total beginner, and trying to start running, well, missing five days isn't good. Especially when the last time I went out, I ran for 8 minutes straight.....!  Those of you who would consider yourself runners probably find this laughable, but consider: I haven't run for 8 minutes straight like...ever.  Or at least since sophomore year of high school.

So anyways, yesterday I put my running shoes on, leashed up my dog, and set out to sweat a little bit.  All was going alright, although I definitely felt the days of bedrest with a cold.  They just cut the cornstalks down, and it was a pretty windy day, both of which I think contributed to what happened next.  I was overcome by a violent sneezing fit, with the kind of sneeze that almost knocks you over.  Still about 15 minutes from my house, I tried to recover and (somewhat) gracefully return home-but the sneezes continued!  And continues....

It feels like someone shoved a tiny nail up my left nostril, and no amount of nose blowing, or hot saltwater snorting, or itching or sniffeling will get rid of it =/  I guess some pollen got up there and is trying to procreate inside my nostril and its just painful/annoying enough to make me want to cry.  Instead, I'm continuing to blow my nose, sniffel, flush it out with water-all of which is starting to hurt too.  Argh...

Just hoping it will go away sooner than later, but it is maddening for sure.

It continues to be Cold up here, Volcano hike is Postponed until next week.  I am making headway on a Bird Guide for the park =)  and daydreaming about coming home more often than not.  I've been gone for two years, long enough for my friends to start careers, move across the country, fall in love, make babies-gah, but time has flown by.  When I was saying goodbye, it felt like I would be gone forever.  And while it has gone by fast, it seems it has also been long enough for everything to change...

Update: Killed it at P90X Yoga, which I decided to do instead of running due to high wind and freezing cold...Also knocked loose whatever was stuck in my nose. Musta been all that deep breathing. 

Feria!...

It's that time of year again-feria.  Each Guatemalan town has a different patron saint, which they celebrate with a week long festival called Feria each year.  Vendors come to town and build a shanty town out of 2x4's and corrugated tin roofing, selling roscas (like pretzels), dulce tipicos (an assortment of sweets), really terrible pizza, hot dogs, churros that are nothing like mexican churros, and also clothes, kitchen items, etc etc.

I couldn't write anything nice about feria-all it translates to for me is annoyingly loud music, annoyingly drunk men stumbling through the streets of my town, and events that people expect me to get excited about but I can't (like beauty pageants and grown men dancing in cartoon character costumes), most of which happen in the late afternoon and night time-you know, when it falls below 40 degrees out. 

I also got a sore throat and runny nose yesterday so I had a rather sedentary weekend.  Tried to lay low to get over it quickly.  I watched half a season of Grey's Anatomy yesterday. 

Back to Feria, it isn't officially starting until Wednesday so maybe more thrilling updates as the week progresses =0 

I hate you Tigo, so much...

So my mother thinks my list for December is a little ambitious...perhaps she's right.  But it's good to push yourself every now and then-otherwise you'll never know what you might be capable of. ....right?  (love ya, mom)

My counterpart Verney and I got started on one of my goals -trail work and improvement- yesterday with a grueling 5 hours of trail maintenance-re cutting in trail edges, cleaning off the leaf litter, putting signs back in their appropriate places, re-leveling picnic areas after the rainy season.  Wow, it was just really difficult to think of those words in English, since all the trail stuff is conducted in Spanish generally.

I returned to find that my internet service provider, Tigo, is completely incompetent at figuring out one minor issue I had with billing 2 months ago.  They gave me the wrong acct number to pay my account in September, and I have talked to at least 6 or 7 different customer service reps on the phone and in person who have assured me they would fix the problem.  When my internet modem was disactivated again yesterday, I almost lost it.

I realize this seems unreasonable but i use the internet to stay in touch with friends and family on skype, read the news (ok i'm joking, i don't really read the news), work, ... ok i've become admittedly attached to my internet connection to pass the long lonely nights (sob).  So when Tigo hasn't been able to fix the problem and keeps toying with my emotions by temporarily re-activating my modem and then turning it off unexpectedly in the middle of the week, it makes me a little upset. 

Ok, enough ranting about that.  The good news is that I had to come into the office to use the internet here, and got to show and tell the CUTEST salamanders that we found yesterday in the park.  Also took measurements and lots of photos with the muni's high res camera hoping to ID it (or not, they find new species here all the time).  I also took one of them around to the different offices doing a little informal education about amphibians-everyone is afraid of creepy crawly type creatures here so every opportunity for them to see and touch them is a step in the right direction.

Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen??

Today the Swiss NGO Helvetas ProBosque, who helped start our park project and ended their involvement last December, came to see how the project is progressing.  They were pleased by the follow through by the local community, as well as the growing enthusiasm and support in the town for the trail and outdoor recreation opportunity.  They had the same concerns that I do about a lack of local guides and personnel in the park and suggested we look harder for funds to pay a few more people to be dedicated full time to the educational programming, guest services, and vigilance of the park and its installations.  My counterpart and I are advocating and looking for funding for additional personnel, hoping for a change with the change of government in January. 

In other news..... Planning to hike Tajumulco one day next week, ran 3 kilometers without stopping on Wednesday, saw Breaking Dawn (no spoilers but it was pretty awesome) with my host sister, and thought of another thing to add to my personal goals list-drink 2 liters of water a day.  I'm reading Omnivore's Dilemma and it is super depressing, at the same time making me not want to return to the proximity of processed foods and high fructose corn syrup in the US and appreciating the availability and affordability of 'whole foods' here in Guatemala.  It makes me want to boycott food altogether-but is motivating me to be more adamant about buying at farmers markets, etc. once I get back to the States. 

This has been sort of a random mishmash of thoughts and updates today but I realized that even though it felt like I blogged a lot in November I only had 8 or 9 posts..... I am working harder to bring you the news and the weather (or something) in the life of this Peace Corps Volunteer. 

Ciao