tostadas y smoothies de fruta

Hola everyone,
Today I am having a great day in Comi and a lot has happened since my birthday. The gringo birthday celebration was a lot of fun-Charlie, who hosted it, even let me cook a stir fry for everyone. I had been itching to cook for a while, so it was a real treat for the birthday girl. My stir fry was the básic Laura Ebetino stir fry, with garlic, basil, onions and peppers, but Charlie encouraged me to cook with beets and carrots, two veggies I would never think to cook with. It was very very good. I even sprinkled some lime on top.
The day after my birthday we had to get up very early. 5 30 am breakfast with Dona Hilda, and a 7 am bus ride to La Reforma, a Comitancillo town, with Charlie. Today was our first ETHOS Project day and we went to help build a wáter catchment system at a house. The family we were helping was so hospitable, which is pretty common for families when volunteers are building for them, but they served us breakfast, a drink, and lunch and we were only there for about 4 hours. We even told them that we had all already eaten breakfast, but they wanted to cook for us anyways. I learned a lot about the catchment system and it was neat to help. The hole had been dug, and what we did was put up the Maya chicken wire and did the first layer of cement. I learned how to use pliers, so I was very pumped about that, jajaja. Our goal is to make about 10 of these catchment systems, so this should take 2 to 3 weeks.
We came back and went to the market for a Little bit, then I took a nap and read a lot of my book. I was so tired because I slept very Little the night before, and it was good to relax and enjoy the sunshine of the day. Our bunk house has a second floor patio, so I read up there with an incredible view of the countryside. I wish I could add pictures, but this internet café cannot read my camera. Before dinner, we also played cards with Jorgina and taught her a new game.
I had been talking to Dona Hilda in the kitchen, and I was really enjoying myself. Then, I asked her if she needed help with dinner, and she said YES. I got to make guacamole and, man, was it good. It was fun to bond with her through cooking and I was excited to cook more. I might also help her sell her vegetables at the market on Sunday, and I really hope I can because I think that would be a great experience for me. Here is the guacamole récipe that is delicious with refried black beans and tortilla
5 avocados
7 cherry tomatoes, or the equivalent in amount of tomato
1 small onion
About 10 twigs of both fresh basil and fresh oregano
Half a big spoon full of salt
Juice of two baby limes, or probably about half of a normal sized lime
If I was to make it again, I would also add feta cheese, maybe about 0.75 of a tub
The family and us ETHOS personas were all very giggly at dinner, and it was fun to bond with our host family in a less serious way. We got to bed early which I really needed.
Today has been a cool day. What we just left was our first AMMID monthly meeting. They have one of these meetings every month and its really just a time for everyone in the organization to get together and update on what they have been doing. Us ETHOS kids introduced ourselves and talked about the projects we were thinking about working on. I also stressed that we really want to do what they need us to do, and another Project we will help with is gray wáter filters. This is really cool because it will take the wáter used to wash clothes, vegetables, etc. And feed into this new filter to be purified and used to wáter the garden. So basically all the wáter a house will use will be used twice. Yay for conservation. It was great to be able to talk a lot in Spanish and finally meet everyone involved in AMMID, our NGO we are working with. After we presented on our work, they gave us the Go-To to leave the drawn out meeting. But, then they invited us to stay for a snack…and THEN they invited us to leave and come back for lunch. SCORE-FREE FOOD. And the food was great, too. Our snack was a fruit smoothie, do not worry there was no ice in it, and tostada which is something I had in my first trip to Guate. Its a giant Tostito chip topped with cream, onion, feta cheese and some ground beef-YUMMO. Now, at the internet café waiting to go back for lunch. Hey, if they are offering us food, ¿how can we say no?
One other cool thing…after leaving the meeting we went to a colegio, school, and asked about potentially having Spanish lessons while we are down here. Because we come from 3 different backgrounds in Spanish, our ideal plan is to have individual tutoring in the language. The office seemed interested in assisting us, since they have helped Peace Corps workers in the past, but we have to check back in later this afternoon since the people we needed to talk to were at lunch.
Signing off for now. OCHO DIAS HASTA LA COPA MUNDIAL
Wave your flag,
Lowra