Cosmovision Maya

Greetings everyone!
I am excited that tomorrow we are participating in a Mayan Ceremony. Tomorrow is New Year for the Comovision Mayan calendar of 260 days. There is a very special ceremony planned for us and I am excited to see what it holds. I won´t be posting any pictures of it as it is disrespectful to take photos, but I will tell you all about it later.

Things are going well here. I am soooo glad it is the weekend. I reached a major milestone in my training yesterday as I gave my first 25 minute presentation all in Spanish to the municipal staff and all of my Peace Corps trainers. I feel really good about how it went. There is always room for improvement but I feel my Spanish was good and I feel like I was able to get some key points across.

We will be leaving in a few weeks for Field Based Training and I will be out at another site for a week. It will be pretty rustic, no running water. However, I might be taking my first bucket bath so that is something to look forward to.

Also tomorrow I was invited to one of the other trainee´s host sister´s birthday party. We have gotten to know the family and they have a great and very friendly family. They are always welcoming to us. We study in each other´s houses for a week at a time and we were just there studying. I am trying to think of a good gift for her. I can´t wait to see what my first Guatemalan birthday party will be like.

My first Guatemalan baby shower was interesting and fun. I went to two of those a couple of weeks ago. There are lots of games and laughing. They have fun activities for a mom to be. They blindfold her and make her try to dress a baby and then they make the dad to be do it too. Everyone laughs when they mess up. These baby showers are huge. There are easily 40 to 50 people there. Every household has a stack of bancos, which are basically small plastic stools, that are perfect to bring out for these ocassions. Huge parties here are common and I never quite know when I´ll be walking in to one. I came home the other night to find a fire going in the open area of my house and they were preparing for 100 people like it was no big deal. My host mom was making pollo asada and chocolate caliente. It ended up being for a huge church service in my house. They brought in tons of loudspeakers, enough for a rock band, and we proceeded with the service. My hearing definitely might suffer after living here for awhile. Everything is done here with the maximum volume possible. It is a loud country, but fun!

That is all for now! I´m off to go birthday gift shopping!
Cheers,
Tara