Tourism??? For Real?!?

The STD class and learning how to use condoms








At Las Lajas beach, at the german's place

Chichica flower, the namesake of my community

Me and my ever-present chacos at the beach

Puppy, Erin's dog

Crazy Eyigo (Erin) as we're eating burgers and wienerschitzel at the German's place on the beach

After a series of tourism group meetings where several people actually showed up showing intentions to work, it is beginning to look like we may actually have a project going here finally! It will be a challenge, but we can do it! Working with the government's tourism ministry, ATP, hopefully won't be as much of a pain as it has been so far. We had a meeting scheduled to meet with Hector from ATP and Pedro from PNB on Wednesday, but as I was on my way to the meeting one of my neighbors told me that the meeting had been changed because they were all in another town far away and weren't going to make it. I was pissed off, because we had all been reserving this day even though we all have things to do and it had been planned for a month, but they just blow us off like it doesn't matter. So they came the next day, which I shall describe shortly.

Meanwhile, Klaus called me and told me that the people from the water agriculture ministry were taking him to Chichica to see the spot where they are going to put in some fish tanks (ponds for raising tilapia) at the school's farm. So now that I had the morning free as my compromiso was quitared (pardon my spanglish, I can't help it-- you should hear all us volunteers over here), I went with them to see the farm. I hadn't been up there yet and didn't even know where it was located, but now I do. They have a bunch of huge giant very large pigs and even more baby piggies that were cute!

Then I talked Klaus into helping me out with my Elige Tu Vida lesson for the week that was scheduled for that afternoon, which was sexually transmitted diseases. It is always nice to have backup for these lessons! So we explained about what STDs are, how you get them, and how to prevent them. This included a lesson on how to use condoms, which the kids got a huge kick out of. Actually some of them had signed up for the course just for this very thing! The boys were having a blast but the four remaining girls refused to put the condom on the stick that another volunteer Eli had carved for this very purpose. Oh well, even if they don't participate at least they are still showing up, right?

English class was after that. I made a page of the lyrics from the songs "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" and "Keep on the Sunny Side" to compare the lyrics and listen to the different accents. We had a discussion on the diversity of accents in English, and how sometimes it makes it hard to understand even for native speakers. We then ragged on Mile for not showing up to work this week and I taught them what flakey means using my own boyfriend as an example! I did miss having him around though.

Well, the next day was the next big three ring circus of a tourism meeting. I went down to Lajitas where we had originally discussed having it, but nobody at all showed up for over an hour so I decided to walk back on up to see what was going on. So I found a bunch of the group waiting in Cuatros Pinos and we called to see where Hector and Pedro were but they didn't answer their phone. So we called the office to see if they were even coming, and they said that they had left an hour and a half ago, which meant that they should have been there. So we walked on down the road to the junta comunal to see if they were over there, and they were! We stayed at the other meeting that was already in progress, and kind of had a joint agency meeting that was way too unfocused to even be productive. Hector came up to me and apolgized for not being there the day before and promised me that it would never happen again, and that furthermore he wanted to participate in all our weekly meetings that we will be having from now on. I kind of got the feeling that he likes me in a non-professional manner, hopefully this will not be an issue. I get tired of talking to agency people to establish professional contacts and they just get all mooney-eyed when they look at me! Well, it started to rain hard as we were finishing up the meeting, and I had forgotten my umbrella so I ran up to the store to buy some sugar and ask for a bag to put my hat in, and walked back home in the rain. I have done a lot of walking in the rain lately, three times this week to be exact.

I had not had the chance to wash any of my clothes over the past three weeks. The dirty clothes were no longer fitting in my large chakara, which holds a ton, and I had run out of underwear and most everything else, but there isn't even enough clothesline to hang up all that I have to dry so I had to wash them in batches, and it takes two or three days for them to dry anyway, as long as it isn't raining all the time. Then they never dry at all.

Erin came to Chichica to do some site development work for a neighboring town called Porto Rica that I had recommended as a future Peace Corps site, which work consists of visiting and talking with the people without saying exactly what you are doing, all while observing if it would be a good site or not. So I went over with her, and it happened to start raining early that day so we were wandering around in the rain, two gringas in nagwas being a spectacle! We decided that it would be a good site and will recommend it for further meetings. We visited a lady to talk about the town and I helped her daughter that goes to high school in Chichica with her English homework, so she gave us two pounds of new rice to make for our dinner, although I only cooked about half a pound and it was still twice as much as we could eat! We also made chocolate pudding and hot chocolate, which was awesome! Meredith called while we were eating the pudding and we got to rub it in that we were hanging out eating chocolate pudding while she was busy being the "safety warden" and had to call everyone to make sure they recieved a text message about high wind warnings or some ridiculousness like that, which I had recieved but had no idea about who I was supposed to reply to.

My neighbor Orlando, who is the director of MIDA, the agriculture agency for the comarca, came over to talk to Erin because she is an ag volunteer. He never talks to me, but he'll talk to her!! *Angry face* Then after talking with her about some projects that she wants to solicit funds for from MIDA, I asked about getting a personeria juridica for the tourism group through MIDA and pretty much all he did was tell me what agrotourism was, which of course I already know. I hate how he talks down to me!!!

And now Erin and I are at the beach at Las Lajas because tomorrow we are having the farewell party for the people in group 62 that are leaving, and I won't be able to stay because I have a tourism meeting at 2:00 pm so I will have to leave by at least 10:00 am in order to get there on time. But maybe I will at least be able to see them before they go. Once 62 is gone, that means we people of 63 are the old kids on the block! It seems kind of strange to think about that.

The other day my camera screen stopped working. The camera still seemed to be taking pictures, but you couldn't see what was being taken or look at what had already been taken. I was pretty bummed out. However, as I have been messing around on the computer and the camera ran out of battery, I replaced the battery with the backup battery and suddenly the screen works again!!!! Hallelujah! I am so excited because I can now see if my pictures are in focus and have good composition again!

Well, that is my week in short. More later!

Love, Me