Daylight Savings Time

Would someone please tell me about these important events that are going on in the States? I just learned yesterday that the clocks were turned back and that now I am TWO hours behind. I had been suspicious for a couple of days as I kept on seeing sports scores come in earlier than expected but didnt understand why. Yesterday the NCAA brackets were posted on the internet early as well and frankly I was just confused. FINALLY as I was talking to some friends online last night, they asked me what time it was for me and I told them I was one hour behind and then they told me I wasn’t and the mystery was solved!

By the way, Guatemala just cancelled their Daylight Saving’s Time. Haha. The government decided it just wasn’t useful for the country. Really I learned that the government decided they would rather keep it light early in the morning as many, many indigenous women and other workers go to work very early and the sunlight will keep it safer for them. It seems that the public opinion is in favor of this move and some have commented that it is the first smart move the new Guatemalan government has made.

A la Gran…

My life is like a rollercoaster baby, baby. And I am ready for it to stop now. The last few days have been almost tortuous due to my emotional rollercoaster but thankfully at the same time a bit of fun. Early Friday morning, before the sunrise, I awoke in order to catch a bus out to Pologua, a small town about an hour away from Xela, in which my friend Jessica lives. I met Jessica a long time ago while on Lake Atitlan and she is an awesome girl. She is living in Pologua because she is working for the Peace Corps here in Guatemala teaching health education to a few schools. So after another eventful camioneta ride where I was ripped off (a whole entry is coming about this) and where the bus traveled at 3 miles per hour for a good 15 minutes while trying to find more passengers, I finally made it to her site. She greeted me and then we walked a dusty road for a good 15 minutes to one of her schools nearby. I observed throughout the morning while she taught four different grades a lesson on nutrition and the food chart. I have to say I was highly impressed by her teaching ability and Spanish and even though the little rugrats didn’t pay attention the entire time, I think they definitely learned a bit about good healthy food versus bad, unhealthy, and tasty food. Just a side note….why is it that some of the best tasting foods are so bad for you? Is there a reason for this? Or maybe we are just conditioned to think that the bad for you foods are best tasting? Food for thought. Getting back to my visit…I watched Jessica and just thought about how I would handle this situation. Then back at her own house in the town, we just sat and talked and ate guacamole and talked and ate guacamole for hours about Peace Corps, life goals, and Guatemala. The conversation definitely helped me to understand more about what my life would be like and showed me some pros and cons about the job. Leaving her house later that night and finding a bus back to Xela was another adventure and the bus ride gave me a lot of time to really think. I have to say that I felt really good about the Peace Corps after that visit and probably was 80 percent sure I was going to accept. Fast forward.

I woke up late Saturday morning, strolled around Xela eventually making it to a cute little café with wifi and plopped down to check my email. Sitting in my inbox was the reply to my many questions I had emailed the Peace Corps. The reply shocked me. This woman, my placement officer, sent back a harsh, demeaning, and almost unprofessional email basically stating that my questions concerned her greatly and that maybe I was not the proper fit for the Peace Corps. At this point, I was pissed. I started to write her back a equally harsh reply until I realized that I better be careful and give myself some time to think it over. So I read her response her again, read and reread my email multiple times, and realized that my email and my questions were probably not formed the way I intended and that she could have easily mistaken my tone. I was definitely excited and nervous during that first day and was probably a bit overzealous with my question asking and also had not finished reading all the materials given to me. Anyways after her email and a few hours researching Nicaragua on the web, I was not nearly as confident as I was the day before in my decision. By Saturday night I was 50-50 about accepting the post.

And Sunday brought forth another set of emotions, both good and bad. I think I just need to give it a few more days, allow my emotions to even, and see what my gut tells me to do. Honestly I want to do it but I need to make sure that it truly is the right fit for me. Maybe I am just not cut out to be living in an undeveloped country for 2 years. Or maybe it is exactly what I need and what will fulfill me most. Not to mention the part about helping others, serving humanity, being righteous, bla bla bla.   

Decision Time

HUGE news. Around 10:30am this morning I received a call from my mother, semi-knowing what to expect, but by no means knowing how I would react. Yesterday I received an email letting me know that the Peace Corps had updated my application status online and that I should review the change. I have been anxiously awaiting news of my placement for what seems like months now and I thought that maybe I had finally received an invitation. However, being that I lost/misplaced my username and password for this online feature months ago, I just figured I would wait to hear the news by email or mail. When I got the call this morning, I expected to hear that I had received my placement and that in fact was the case. Beyond that, I had no idea how I would react or where I would be placed. Soooo…..I was invited to begin training for my Peace Corps service in……Nicaragua! Next I learned that my program is small business education and my primary responsibilities will be teaching an entrepreneurial and business education class to high school students and helping with the development of local small businesses.

I received this noteworthy call from my mother right in the middle of my Spanish class and I was immediately excited and terrified at the same time. Although I had been expecting this moment to come for some months now, I was not prepared for how I would feel. An influx of emotions and thoughts flooded my mind and spirit. Nicaragua? I don’t know jack shit about Nicaragua? Well it isn’t too far from Florida so I can always visit. I wonder if it’s nice. Teaching high school students? Can I really do that? Do I really want to do that? It could be fun. It could suck. Can I really spend another 27 months outside of the US and in the third world? Do I really want to miss another football season?

Oh and I forgot to mention that the program starts on May 5! May 5! Are you serious?!?!? That is like really soon. They told me that my placement would probably be in June. May 5! Well I have my flight home on March 31 so I will have around a month in the States with my family and friends. Oh yeah….MY FLIGHT HOME IS MARCH 31. I booked it the other day out of San Pedro Sula, Honduras and got a ridiculous deal. 73 dollars including taxes. Just incredible. I also experience a range of emotions when booking my flight but they pale in comparison to how I have felt today. So back to May 5. I guess I may as well start sooner than later if I am going to do it. No need to spend another month in the States although I could have worked and made some actual money. God knows I wont be making or saving any money during the next two years if I accept this job. So am I going to really do this? Am I going to join the Peace Corps?

Within the span of five minutes after receiving the news I was excited, nervous, happy, scared, pensive, terrified, surprised, terrified, thankful, and did I mention terrified. Then I put myself back together and told myself that I would think about later, after finishing my Spanish class. But after another 10 minutes of class, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t focus, and my head was spinning faster than a dreidal during a very intense game on Hanukkah. Thoughts continued to come and go and swirl around my head. May 5. Nicaragua. Teaching. 27 months. Peace Corps. Business. Away from my family and friends and the States and the Jaguars. 27 months.

So I did what the only logical thing that there was to do. I went immediately to the internet, typed in Nicaragua on the computer, and read the Wikipedia article. Since then I have spent a good 5 hours looking up information about Nicaragua, reading and re-reading the 200 or so pages of information that was emailed to me by Peace Corps about my program and Nicaragua, and going crazy. I did take a break for lunch, dinner, and the gym just so you know. So I read and read, and talked to my Spanish teacher and other people about Nicaragua. So far the reviews have been solid. Nice country, relatively safe, really nice people, lots of natural beauty. But I also learned and kinda knew that it is HOT. Well parts of the country can be HOT. Coming from Florida with the heat and humidity, I can deal with hot but I cannot sleep in the heat and my well educated guess is that practically no one has a/c in their house in Nicaragua. Can I handle this? I read my job description again and halfway through began to tear up. Seriously I was and still am terrified. Damn. 27 months to the unknown. What the hell I am thinking? But being terrified also felt somewhat good and normal in a strange way. It is exciting to realize how terrified I am of this opportunity if that makes sense.

So what am I going to do? Honestly I do not know. I did go through the whole ridiculous process of Peace Corps for a reason. That reason is that ideally I wanted and want to do it. But we do not live in an ideal world. Still, I am definitely leaning toward doing it, probably 70-30 right now. But that 30 percent is filled with questions and concerns and I probably emailed most of them to my placement officer today. How bad is the heat? I really do not want to live in a village. I have to live in a city. I really would like nearby internet access. Can you give me a rough idea of the possible sites? Vacation time? Trips home? Safety? Is there any sort of Jewish community that you know of? Can I talk to someone currently in this program or that has already finished?

I may have sounded spoiled with some of my questions but hey, this is a big effing deal and I have a right to ask as many questions as I want. I should mention that Peace Corps just places you in a country and only after pre-service training, which is the first 3 months on the job in Nicaragua, do you get placed in your actual site where you will be working and living for two years. So obviously accepting an invitation to Peace Corps service takes a great deal of faith and flexibility. But nonetheless I have hundreds of questions that need to be answered soon. Tomorrow I am also helping with this decision by going to visit a Peace Corps site in Guatemala, where a girl I met a while ago works, so I should be able to see the real deal.

It is also 11:15pm at night right and I am once again re-reading all the information that Peace Corps sent me and writing this at the same time. My mind is still racing.

My Assignment (if I choose to accept it)

Country: Nicaragua
Program: Small Business Development                                                                                                                                                Job Title: Business Educator and Advisor                                                                                                                                        Dates of Service: July 18, 2008- July 16, 2010                                                                                                                    Orientation: May 5-6, 2008                                                                                                                                                         Pre-Service Training: May 7-July 18, 2008

WILL I ACCEPT OR NOT? STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER INFO AND THOUGHTS FROM THE INSIDE OF AVI’S BRAIN. 

The Return to Quetzaltenango

I caught myself running through the street today, and to be fair, it was more of a trot or a skip than a run. It was one of those “I am so excited right now” runs/trots/skips. It told me how happy I was to have left San Pedro and finally be back in Xela. “Quetzaltenango, Avi has returned (and his Spanish is a lot better).” It felt great to take the chicken bus for the first time in about three months from San Pedro to Xela. It felt great to walk through the streets of Xela back to my host family’s house not seeing another gringo. It FEELS great to be back in a big, bustling city where I can just kind of fit in and not feel so much like a tourist. It FEELS great to be back living and talking in Spanish and not surrounded by other travelers who only speak English. And right now as I am jotting down my thoughts, I feel stupid for not having returned sooner to Xela. I didn’t want to come back because of the cold weather and because I really like my house and the food in Antigua. But now, I realize that I spent two weeks too long in Antigua, maybe even three weeks. As soon as I stopped taking my Spanish classes, I was only speaking Spanish maybe two hours a day and when I was not volunteering, I was only speaking Spanish with my host family. And due to some stomach issues and my dislike for some of the volunteer work, during the last two weeks in Antigua, I was definitely not speaking enough Spanish and was definitely BORED, as I noted previously. Why I stayed, I don’t really know. Maybe it was the comfort of the house, maybe my mind was tired of Spanish all the time…ok it was probably the food.  

Anyways, I do find it very interesting that as soon as I decided firmed up my plans for traveling, I met the random British Jew at the bar, which led to me having a great group of guys with whom to travel over the past two weeks. So really, everything happens for a reason, and things usually work out for me whichever option I choose. Maybe I should remember that when deciding between options in the future! But I do know that I should have come back to Xela sooner, for my sake and for my Spanish. Live and learn.

And I would have come back to Xela even sooner had I not been semi-screwed over on Sunday. All week in San Pedro, I was geared for a Sunday departure and asked around about buses, shuttles, etc that went direct to Xela. I found out that the bus companies did not run their normal routes on Sunday so I began to explore other options. But then one travel agency told me there was an 11am departure on Sunday so I paid for the reservation and hoped for the best. When I talked to another travel agency about it (all in Spanish by the way), at the end of the conversation she looked at me, with her doubts and all, and said, in perfect English, “Ok, we will see.” So I woke up Sunday morning and began my walk to the place where the bus was supposed to be. On the way, I was supposed to turn back in a rented book and get back my deposit of 100Q but the book store was closed! Sign number one of bad news to come. Then I arrived at the location where the bus was supposed to be and the guys told me that the bus already passed through and was up in the city center. Sign number two. I KNEW that this was a lie and that the bus was never really coming to that spot but they called over a tuk-tuk (little tiny taxi) and we sped off to the city center. On the way up the giant hill to the center of San Pedro, I heard a clump and saw that my water bottle had fallen from my bag down the hill. Normally I would have asked the guy to stop and then gone to pick it up but we were in a hurry, according to the guy, so we continued on. Sign number three. Then we went to where the bus was supposed to be leaving from in the center and it wasn’t there. Surprise, surprise! After circling for a bit, I was positive that there was no bus and told the driver to bring me back down to the travel agency. When I got back to the agency, I just looked at the guy and let him know that this magical 11am departure bus of his did not exist. He said he would make some calls and figure it out. I knew he wouldn’t but I gave him ten minutes. In the meantime, a few other travelers started arriving at the agency with the same problem as me. Turns out I could have managed to get to Xela another way but I just asked for my money back and decided to wait until this morning. I do believe it was a honest mistake on the travel agency’s behalf but just another example of the unstructured nature of this country.

Back in the Flow (part 2)

I have made aliyah to Guatemala. For the past nine days, I have heard Hebrew more than I have heard Spanish. Phrases like Buenos Dias have been replaced by Boker Tov while words such as Gracias y por favor have not made the cut over todah raba and b’vakasha. While I have been traveling with only two Israelis in my direct group, it seems that the entire nation of Israeli travelers has been with in my close vicinity. And not that I have a big problem with this, except that it is moving the finish line of fluency further away, but on the contrary, I am enjoying it. For some strange reason I have felt the urge to return to Israel and also been toying with the idea of becoming fluent in Hebrew at some point, so these past nine days of remembering some of my Hebrew have been pretty cool.

From last Wednesday to Saturday, I stayed in Lanquin, Guatemala, famous for its proximity to many caves, and near “the most beautiful” destination in Guatemala called Semuc Champey. I stayed at the divinely located and ultimate relaxing hostel, El Retiro, and I, along with the state of Israel, really enjoyed eating yummy organic food and staying in wooden cabins, while reading and enjoying next to the river bordering the hostel. The place was like paradise and I really wish I had visited this place earlier in the trip, because if I had, I would have most certainly spent a few weeks there. The weather was perfect, sunny and refreshing during the day, cool and crisp at night and the scenery in this part of Guatemala was incredible. Rolling hills through a lush forest marked by stone caves, distant mountains, and relatively few villages. During my days in paradise, I tried to read Angela’s Ashes unsuccessfully (really not my style of literature), went tubing down the river with a beer and a few friends, and visited Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey is a series of limestone pools that reflect various colors and is absolutely gorgeous. AND you can go swimming!

So Saturday morning, I made the long trek down to Guatemala City, zone 15, and the Bianchi residence, in order to collect my rolling duffle, eat good food, and move onto Lake Atitlan. To make a long story short, based on various transportation factors, I didn’t actually make it to Lake Atitlan until Monday morning to join back with my traveling buddies. I have since been in San Pedro, a little hippie heaven village with lots of organic food, liberal drug laws, and lots of burnt out hippies. And of course, I am staying at the Israeli hostel/restaurant in the village called Zoola with my fellow Jews. More info and funny stories from traveling to follow in the next entry.