Yeah!!!! I am so excited - my ticket for a trip home has officially been bought and I get to go home for a little over 2 weeks in December. I literally am counting down the days. I even made one of the paper chains like you make in elementary school to count down the days til Santa Claus comes. Somehow just ripping off one of those paper loops every days helps. I am soooo excited to go home for a visit. In December it will be almost 1 full year since I have seen my family. It has been waaaaayyyy too long!
In the meantime, luckily time has been flying here. I am really busy with this big tourism project, lots of meetings and since travel time takes so long here - one meeting a day basically means my whole day is used up what with all the travel time necessary to get there and back to site. I am not kidding, if I have a meeting out of site, it is at least a 6 hour ordeal and sometimes it involves spending a night out of site as the last car goes up at about 1:00 p.m. so if the meeting is after that, I would need to plan to spend the night somewhere.
Other than the big tourism project, the school term is finishing up tomorrow. I give my final English exam to my primario students tomorrow and then that is it until January when we start in with a new plan for the year, including workshops on environmental education.
Since everything is pretty random, I will write some random notes below of some cool things that have happened since the last blog post...
1. Got to meet a really fascinating archeologist at Takalik Abaj, this amazing pre-classic site near where I am living. The pre-classic period involves the time when the Olmec and the Maya were in this area. He has invited me back to spend more time at the site and I can't wait to go back and learn more from him. It is fascinating and pretty surreal to be able to call this part of my work.
2. The other cool thing - in my tourism project we are putting together so many cool places and activities - things that we have all around us here on the Pacific Slope of Guatemala include:
*Preclassic ruins
*Active volcano (one of the 10 most dangerous in the world)
*Canopy tours
*Beaches and surfing
*Productive coffee, macadamia, banana, and rubber plantations
*Bird watching (parrots, quetzal, painted bunting)
*Waterfalls and pristine subtropical jungle
*Tropical vibe
This place is cool and I can't believe that my job right now is putting all of this cool stuff together and promoting it to tour ops. I can't believe no one else has not done this before me.
3. Tomorrow I am making tamales and ponche.
4. I was recently buzzed by 2 bats - you open the door here and you never know what you will find - bats, tarantulas, beetles, cats...
5. It hasn't rained in 2 whole days - SUN and STARS! I forgot what the moon looked like! My clothes dried on the line in only 1 day - a record! Tomorrow we are heading up to play some soccer for the first time in a loooooonnnnnggg time.
6. Just finished reading the book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - loved it! What a great series! I finally am getting some good reading time in down here - makes me so happy!
Well, that is about it for now! Counting down the days til my visit to the States - can't wait!
Love you!
Tara
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