A po' ta' bien: mid December update

I think saying that November was a very busy month just isn’t strong enough to talk about how all over the place I was during that month. I’ve spent half of December recovering and am now in a place where I can write a blog entry. Let’s just say my Peace Corps is far from me just sitting around being isolated, which I’m very grateful for. November was full of celebrating my one year in country with all those that swore in with me, my 1 year in service-training, a youth environmental camp, having a few tour events, thanksgiving dinner (and helping to cook the stuffing, gravy, and brownies for about 180 Peace Corps volunteers and staff that attended the event), presenting to the Peace Corps staff about my service (I was volunteer of the month, go me!), artisan fairs, and ended the month with a guide interpretation conference. I get exhausted just writing all of that out. Was really glad I could participate in all these events, I just wish they were more spread out, as did my community. My community is really good at laying on the guilty when I’m gone for too long, and will often come at with “Alanna, pero tu si estás perdida!” (direct translation would be Alanna, but you have been lost!) whenever they don’t see me for even just a few days. So, after this crazy month at the next meetings I attended and walking around my community I got this campo guilt to an extreme, telling me they thought I had abandoned them and gone back to the states, that they were planning to send out a search party, and that they were going to tie me up to my house so that I couldn’t leave them again. You know, nice to be missed. So the past week I just stayed in my site and went to all my meetings and just walked around and visited everyone so that they would know I’m still here. It’s been like a vacation being back in my site, just relaxing and talking to everyone, playing lots of dominoes, it’s great.

And now it’s back to work with my community projects. Mid December through mid January almost everything goes on break here. All the community groups close, family comes into town, and it’s hard to get a lot done. So I’m taking the time to just sit and schedule and start to prep for the activities in January. One of the most important aspects that the tour is still lacking is promotion, we are having a group from Canada come out in January to film the tour for their program which will hopefully help out in getting groups to come visit. So January will also be super busy, but I'm looking forward to it!

The two girls I took to the environment conference (Brigada Verde) we went to a lagoon as an afternoon outing