Ha'an Awi...

I can't believe it is already July! I am not really sure what happened to the month of June... I am going to try and figure it out right now, though.

The beginning of the month started off with a wonderful birthday I already told you about, and a little too much bus riding for my taste. After that I got a few weeks to hang out in the village.

School came to a close in June and with it came a lot of last minute finishing of projects. We finished purchasing everything for our school feeding program and the kitchen looks amazing now! Looks amazing may not be the right words, but it functions very well now that we have pots, pans and a stove! We were able to cook a few meals for the kids the last week, and I am looking forward to seeing how things develop next year as more women get involved in the cooking. I appreciated my dear friend Emily coming to visit and helping me out cooking with the ladies and doing some organizing and planning in the library!

I did some talking with different village leaders and we have come up with some ideas for projects that I have been researching this month in terms of planning and figuring out who to approach for assistance. I have no idea where any of them will lead, if anywhere, but it is exciting to be working on some projects that are more related to my field and would be great for the community. I will talk more about them maybe as things start to progress a bit.

I am really thankful to have made some good friends in my village. It helps keep me going. Sometimes the work is really slow (well always) and sometimes it can be really frustrating, but to have people that I know genuinely care about me, people I can laugh with and joke with it makes life so much more enjoyable. There would really be no point to do things like this without the relationships. I love seeing that people are trusting me more, and used to having me around, they comment and give me a hard time when I leave them for a few days, and it is neat to feel at home here. I know the stronger the relationships get, the more work we will accomplish eventually. Plus it is helping out a bit with language learning. I feel pretty confident in my ability to understand what people are saying in Q'eqchi now. I am not always the best at speaking to them in return, but at least I can understand a lot of what they say. I got some help with verb conjugation and tense and whatnot so hopefully with some practice I will manage to say the right things eventually.

Alright a lot of rambling, but more to come still...

So we had a practice hurricane consolidation. As a lot of you know I don't actually have any way to be reached when I am in my village. My phone doesn't get service, the satellite phone they gave me a long time ago got taken away because it was broken, and we don't have a community phone or any vehicles. So I may be right on the highway but I never know what is going on. I knew sometime in June we would be having a hurricane consolidation drill and it got to the last week of June and I was just kind of wondering which day it would be. I ran into town with a friend because we were planning to go to the beach for a day, but when we arrived all these texts came in saying "you are on alert, you are on standfast please do not leave your site and prepare your emergency bucket for consolidation". So we sadly went back home and I got all my emergency supplies that I felt like packing for the non-hurricane packed up in my five gallon bucket and we went to town the next morning. Normally they would have come to get me because I wouldn't have known, but when I arrived they said alright we will be consolidating tomorrow so please just head into town. Drills are always a bit weird to me, but the day of it was pouring down rain so I guess at least it felt appropriate. When I arrived to the PC office in Belmopan and met up with the 100 or so other volunteers things felt a bit chaotic and weird. They gave me the satellite phone and made me feel rather disaster ready with my giant phone, plastic emergency bucket and my somewhat chewed up (by a rat) solar charger for the phone.



Before I even made it back to my site after the consolidation drill I got a call that Tropical Storm Alex was on its way. We didn't end up getting consolidated and it didn't get too bad, but definitely has 6+ inches of rain fall on Sat/Sun.

Alright I think I am done with some rambling for now, maybe next time my thoughts will get a bit more organized :) Miss you all!

addendum:

I realized I forgot to explain "Ha'an awi" . It is Q'eqchi and it means "the same thing". For some reason it is the new favorite saying of the kids in my village. They will say "Megan" and wait until I look or say what and then they will just say "Ha'an awi". It seems to be turning into a battle of who can say it first. I have no idea why it is so funny, but they do it to everyone. Drives their parents crazy too. I am pretty sure it is the only Q'eqchi Emily learned during her visit. Makes sense, though, with as much as they say it... :)