"Ease on Down...Down the Road..."

As I sit and watch the rain from my hammock on the porch of my house/office/artesian store, I realize I haven't updated this blog in about a month. So first, I'm going to pledge to try to better about writing about my experiences and keeping everyone updated with what's going on here in Guatemala. I think one reason I hadn't written too much lately is that not too much had been going on here on the co-op. However, in the last week, things have really picked up and we are moving and shaking...and "easing on down the road."

So what has happened in the month of August? Well, we welcomed a new group of volunteers to the Verapazes, which now means we aren't the newbies, but instead are the veterans. In fact, we've been in site now over 5 months! That's pretty hard to believe. Also, this month, we traveled to one of our fellow PC volunteer's site for the inauguration of a bottle school they constructed. I will post pictures in my Picasa album soon.

Also in August, I got my new dresser and am not living out of suitcases (will put up pics of my place soon). I'm still figuring out how to cook and manage to feed myself healthy meals. You'll see once I put pictures up that my place is part cement block and part wood. There are fairly decent sized gaps in the wood and thus I get to enjoy whatever weather we are experiencing here in Guatemala. So since we have been in the rainy season lately, it has been quite cold at night and lots and lots of rain! With the rain, there have been many landslides and accidents all over the country. Thankfully though, we haven't experienced any disaster like that, just the river overflowing in the road again and not able to pass for a few days. For the most part, I am loving my new place at the co-op and am getting used to the life here.

In regards to work, I have started teaching english to two groups and am going to now divide them more on their learning levels. I also have a friend who is a missionary in a nearby city that has come and taught a group of women at the co-op how to make purses and change purses out of chip bags. We are just getting that started, but we talked with the women about this product and a few others that we can start with and they all seem to be VERY excited. This will be great because we will sell their products in a store we have here for coffee and handmade products. Also I'm excited because today we began reorganizing and rearranging furniture in the office, which will now double as a reception area for tourists, and in the store. We have a new great idea that we are going to make a small museum of old artifacts from the coffee farm behind the store, which is now currently where we store the coffee to be sold. This has gotten me so excited about the possibility to improve drastically the tourists' experience here.

And lastly, I have been working with other Peace Corps volunteers and their community tourism sites in an alliance to produce a catalog advertising each product we offer. We are going to have a launch party for this catalog in October at my site so we are preparing so much in anticipation for that event.

So as you can see, we're just easing on down the road here on the coffee co-op...