Hold on please...It's almost August?!

Alright so I know I haven't posted in over a month and a half, so today you are getting an extremely long update on what's been going on in my life, which has kind of been a lot! So in order to make sure I include everything, I went through my calendar and made bullet points of important things that have happened. Here goes nothing...
* Our webpage, www.coffeetourchicoj.com, now has an option where you can change it into English. Thanks again to Counterpart International for all of their help with this project. I translated all of it, but they actually formatted it and updated the website. Also, we have heard from several groups lately that they found out about us by doing a google search and seeing our website. For this I am SOOO excited!! One of my main focuses during my service will be promotion and I think the website, as long as they keep paying the maintenance fees, is pretty sustainable.
* I the activity about throwing inorganic trash in the trash cans with the other half of the students in our local school and it did not go quite as well as the last time. I think this may have had something to do with the fact that they were the younger students. It was quite chaotic and I'm not sure when my next environmental education activity will be, and less sure of when I'll try it with the younger students...
* We finally did our tree day with the older students from our cooperative. I just kinda helped and was there with these students from a forestry school nearby. We met up about 7am on a Saturday and planted tons of trees in the rain. It was a great experience. I have some photos of this day in my picasa album.
* After completing an extensive survey of my monthly expenses and food costs, I was approved for a living allowance adjustment and got a little pay raise. I think it is less than the equivalent of $30 a month, but I figure it will justify buying the expensive internet I use or having my laundry washed and dried.
* We had several meetings recently to make a list of our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT in english or FODA in spanish) of just the tourism operation. This is always a good tool to hear everyone's ideas and get new ideas flowing about what we can do to improve our operation. Our governing board, along with our tourism employees and another person that supports us from Coban, met for a couple of days and brainstormed over these things. From this list, some stuff has already been accomplished and we are planning to tackle our other goals soon.
* So I am finally moved to my new room at the co-op. It is just an old office and is pretty quaint. I will soon take and upload photos once I better organize my stuff and clean up a bit. Of course like everything else, the process to move to the new place was quite complicated and unplanned. I don't want to sound like a spoiled PC volunteer, but all of this moving to the co-op business was the idea of my co-op and not me. They had three months to finalize the last couple of things to the room, like install the ceiling, install the thing in the shower that heats the water instantly, and then make sure we had copies of all the keys. Well, needless to say, none of these things, which became long processes, began until a couple of days before I was supposed to move in. Also, I was leaving for the fourth of July festivities in Antigua and had planned to move before I left. So one night, my counterpart and I are talking about when I will be able to move and she says just move tomorrow. She tells me to have my stuff ready to move and her brother will help me with his truck at 6am, and she tells me this at 9pm. So I packed everything, knocked on the door of my host family and let them know I'd be moving early in the morning, and then got a little bit of sleep. Of course about an hour after the time we had arranged to begin, my counterpart's brother shows up, we pack all my stuff up, get to my new room and the door is locked, the one man who has the keys isn't there, so I end up sitting with everything I own in Guatemala on the porch of my new place for about an hour and a half. Anyway, I get everything moved in, even though the ceiling isn't even finished, and leave immediately for Antigua. Crazy, crazy, crazy planning, or lack there of.
* We had a little meeting and decided we will start having english classes in the community on Saturdays and Sundays. I'm not too keen on the time but I figure give the people what they want. We'll see how this works out because my first class should be August 7th.
* So Antigua for the fourth of July was fun. I had a chance to visit my host family in Alotenango and we were all excited to see each other. They are so fun. Of course they made me dance with my host sister, Siomi, in front of the TV (pics in Picasa album). Also, apparently they tell all kinds of crazy stories about me to other volunteers. Oh well, glad I can be the source of some entertainment. The fourth of July cookout was a lot of fun too. It's an annual PC Guatemala tradition and is a bunch of crazy Americans drinking, cooking, eating, dancing, singing, and having a grand ole celebration.
* So a little story: The first night I spent the night in my new room, upon return from Antigua, I had been in my room for all of an hour maybe. There were strange noises outside from different animals and other things in the distnace, but mostly eerie quiet in the countryside. Then the power goes out. I wait for a bit to see if it comes back on. Finally I decide to call my counterpart because there are usually two men that spend the night at the co-op to guard the place and I thought maybe it was routine to turn off the electricity at 8pm or something and that they didn't know I was sleeping here yet. Well she told me they had been losing electricity frequently the past few days and not to worry. So I turned in quite early my first night, probably about 8:3opm.
* If you look through my recently posted pictures, there are some from Evan's bday and Kelsey's goodbye party. We celebrated these together at our favorite restaurant in Coban, "the cuban place". Fun Night! Also in the pics are some from our World Cup Final party at a missonary's house nearby. That was a fun day as well, spent with several fellow PC volunteers.
* One of my newest goals is to get a group of women from my community together and start an artesian group. The idea is that they will learn to make all kinds of different products and then sell them in our store we have here. Currently we just sale a few products from a nearby town, our coffee, and then some tshirts and hats and stuff with our logo. Tourists love handmade stuff so I'm really hoping we get this project underway and provide a new source of income for women of my community.
* My site was recently featured in a Guatemalan newspaper, Nuestro Diario. You can check it out in their archives on their website. Go to page 21 of the July 12th edition. Here is the link: http://digital.nuestrodiario.com/Olive/ODE/nuestrodiario/. There's a picture of me with two other PC volunteers, Evan and Kelsey.
* There have been several bombings and increased violence on buses in my region of the country. Remember this is a developing country and security is always a risk. I just ask you pray for me and think of me in this regard.
* So I wentt to Antigua again later in the month for some training with my counterpart. Who knew when we left what this trip would entail. Long story short, the first day of the meeting, I was violently ill and spent the entire day in the nurses office trying to control my high fever and keep from throwing up more. I ate nothing all day, tried to eat at night and it failed. The next day I didn't eat until lunch but could tell by then I was feeling significantly better. So during that said lunch, I got a phone call from Dad and found out Nannie, his mom, had died. Nannie and I had been so close my whole life and I believe much of my dedication to service is learned from her life of service to her community, family, and church. So all day the second day of the meeting, I spent arranging a form of transportation for my passport to the part of the country where I was and then arranging a flight and plans to make it home for the funeral. I was supposed to participate in Reconnect, a week of meetings for volunteers after their first three months in site. I got permission to miss these said meetings. Thanks to so many Peace Corps staff members and friends from my site and Peace Corps, I got a plane ticket, got to Guatemala City, made it to the airport, changed in the car on the way to the church, and made it to Nannie's funeral (which was held up for 15mins because I was en route). It was by far one of the craziest adventures of my life, but I was so glad I made the trek home and got to be there to celebrate the life of my grandmother. So after five days in the states of enjoying food, friends, family, driving, and other nice things I have missed, I made it back to Guatemala. Upon arrival, I found out one of our friends who serves near me had decided to end his service and that I got appointed to some advisory council for my program (still not sure about this). We are all pretty bummed about him leavin but hope he finds a better fit for himself somewhere else. After spending a day in Antigua at a pretty nice hotel with friends, I finally made it back to site. There have been so many changes. First, our two buses that go from my site to Coban have changed. One company didn't pay its taxes and the other was driving drunkenly. I had to experience this change in transportation the hard way by being stranded in Coban, but I think they have two new buses that will be a better fit for our community. Also while I was gone, they worked on the trails and trimmed the coffee plants. That was one thing on the to-do list because taller visitors, like myself, had a hard time passing through the overgrown plants. Also they built a new section at the start of the tour to show the process of planting the coffee. Before, we didn't really have an example of this and now the tour is a better chronological example of the process of coffee cultivation. Another huge change has been I bought a hammock. I have been spending the last few days enjoying lying in it and taking in the nature (sun, an earthquake, a lot of rain, etc.). And my last story for today will be about my new room. Last night I was talking on the phone with a friend while lying in my bed, which is protected by a mosquito net. I swear I heard something move in my bed, but I just dismissed it and pretended I didn't hear it. Then this morning, there was no water in the tanks to use in the shower so I was waiting till someone got there show me how to fill the tanks. I was sitting at a table in my room and heard something moving in my backpack that was on the table. I punched it a couple of times, waited, but still heard movement from something. So I finally looked in it and there staring back at me was Stuart Little, in other words a mouse. Well I fumbled with the backpack, finally throwing it outside. However I couldn't be sure it was in the backpack when I put it outside, but I was 90% sure it was. Then 15 minutes later, I hear something moving again. I pick up this plastic box and the mouse goes scurrying into my bedroom. Oh great, I think....So all the stuff I had been thinking was mouse poop was in fact mouse poop. I have had my door open all day in hopes Stuart will venture outside and let me live in peace in my room. Only time will tell if he is still hiding in there or not.

So this coming week is a big holiday/celebration in Coban. I'm hoping to spend lot's of time there since we don't really have "ferias" in my community. All is going well here. I am so glad to be back and have lots of organizing and work to be done this coming month!