Culture Day, Host Family Appreciation, and Swear in!

Hello! Finally have a day in Georgetown to catch up on things! Here is a wrap up from training in Region 2! On one Saturday we had a Culture Day where you had to come dressed as the culture your host family was, bring traditional food and each group spoke about the history of their specific culture. It was really fun and interesting. The three main groups were Amerindians, Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese. My group was Amerindian so our host moms gave us these costumes to wear, from the Primary School. We made Pepper Pot, a traditional Amerindian dish made of cow face, and Cassava bread, a hard bread made from cassava or a yucca type root. We did a little dance that the kids from the school taught us and it was just a ton of fun! 

 With our moms!

We also had a Host Family Appreciation day where we made a slide show with a bunch of pictures from the past two months, made food for our families and played lots of different games. It was really nice!

 Three of my favorite volunteers, Dorie, Kelsi and Christle!

My "Mom," Sunita Pearson!

 The whole Pearson family!

The next day was our Swear in Ceremony! It was more emotional that I expected and really amazing. It had sort of felt like camp for the past couple months being in Mainstay and going to training every day. Now we were becoming real volunteers and going out into our sites to begin our 2 year service! So scary yet so exciting! The Minister of Education and Minister of Health spoke, the US Ambassador spoke and finally our PC Guyana Director spoke. It was really nice, then we were each called up to receive a pin and certificate for finishing training. 

The other volunteers from Mainstay and I decided we wanted to do something special since we all had such a great and special bond with Mainstay. Since they are known for their "tigers," really jaguars, we decided to have special dresses and a shirt for John made. We were the talk of the ceremony!

 Sam, Rachael, Me, Karin and John rocking our tiger dresses and shirt!

 Host sister Lorianne and Mom Sunita!

 Dorie, Kelsi and Christle

 Loving life!

Mainstay tigers!

Receiving my certificate and pin and becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer!

"It seemed like a long time and also it seemed like my trip had just begun, like I was only now digging into whatever it was I was out here to do." -Wild

One Week in Laluni!

We got to spend a week in our sites to meet our supervisors, counterparts, new host families and schools! My site is called Laluni, it is an Amerindian community in Region 4 about two hours from Georgetown. It is an agricultural community where most families are farmers, with about 300 people. It's very rural and very simple.

Here is my new school, Laluni Primary School! They have a nursery school attached and grades 1-3 downstairs and grades 4-6 upstairs. There is a teacher for a every grade, which is surprising and less than 70 students in the whole school! Very small.

 There are two kids in first grade! This teacher is getting her degree from UG in Georgetown so she is only in class one day a week right now...

 There was a volunteer in this community for two years who left in July, Evan, who started a library project. They have built the library and have some books but now I will be organizing all the books according to level, finishing off the library, teaching about the library, being the librarian and then training a new librarian for when I leave!

1. This is my new house! We have no electricity, no running water and my new bffs are some bats that have moved in. I will be living with an elderly woman named Marcie, who hosted the last volunteer.  We do have a solar panel but the battery is currently broken...thankfully the school has a working solar panel that works so I have been charging my electronics off that. We were literally making dinner by oil lamp and taking it into the wash area to have some light to bucket bathe with...it's definitely going to be an adjustment but I'm excited for the challenge.

 I went on a run one morning and this was the road through the village, very beautiful and quiet.

 I also got to celebrate Phagwah, Holi, with my school while I was there. It is a celebration of good over evil and was pretty fun to throw colors on each other!

The whole school! 

"Let go of expectations so they don't negatively impact your reality," -Peace Corps

Guyana!

Hello from the land of many waters and little to no wifi! I am going to try to keep a blog but i’m not too sure how well that’s going to work, so we’ll see! 

Let me try to catch you up on stuff that’s happened over the last month!

-Yesterday was our one month-aversay in Guyana, crazy how time is flying yet dragging. We are half way through our Pre-Service Training and just learned our 2 year sites last Friday! This week we are in Georgetown for training with our counterparts and then will go visit our site for a week starting on Saturday with them! 

-I am living on an Amerindian reservation called Mainstay with my mom, Sunita, sister, Lorianne, brother’s girlfriend, Nicole, and their month old baby, Luther! Most of the men in the community work in the interior mining for gold, so my host dad, Jr., and brother, Lorenzo, came for a week to meet the baby and then headed straight back out to keep mining! I also have another sister, Tiffany, who lives and works in Georgetown.

Four other volunteers and I are living with the Pearson family, one of the founding families of Mainstay. We all live really close together and are constantly in and out of each other’s houses, it’s very communal and fun! Just last night as our last night in Mainstay for 2 weeks, my mom had everyone over for duck curry and roti! I made the plantain chips ;-) 

-During the week we head into town to Bacchus Library to train on various things and hang out with each other, there are 38 of us all together, 21 Health and 17 Education Volunteers. 

-Our family has a ton of animals around our property! My family has a warthog (type spiky pig….unclear) that they found as a baby and my sister raised. His name is Austin, of course. My Granny Rita has a toucan named touckie, and two dogs named Flassie and Slow. My Auntie Minerva has two pigs that just had 8 piglets and are not as cute and cuddly as I would like them to be...

-From our homes on the Essequibo Coast to Georgetown we need to take a speedboat or a ferry to cross the Essequibo River. When we went to the Ministry of Education a couple weeks ago we were taking a speed boat back when one of our engines broke and we were only on one, crawlin along. At one point the ferry, which takes twice as long, passed us. Then our other engine died and we were just sitting in the middle of this river. Someone in the back mentioned they were ankle deep in water…this is when we realized we might be in trouble! They got one of the engines going but we were still taking on a lot of water, good thing we were all wearing our Peace Corps issued life jackets! Finally another boat came and we piled onto that one, women and children first, leaving the other one, sinking in the river. Whoops! 

The overwhelming question I keep getting from friends and family back home is, are you glad you joined the Peace Corps. I can definitely say I’m glad I went through that whole stressful process and left for Guyana. It’s already different than I thought it would be and being in the Peace Corps is so much more involved and time consuming that I expected. But I can see how influential they are here and how much work they have already done. I am excited to begin my two year service, integrate into my community, and get to work on helping with whatever is needed! 

Guy 30!

Hiking from Mainstay to neighboring village, Capoey

Mainstay gals, me, Rachael and Sam enjoying a coconut

"Most of us will plant trees, whose shade we won't be able to enjoy" - Ben Franklin (Peace Corps Guyana Motto)

Freezing in Austria.

After Prague, Crystal and I took the train to Vienna! It was waiting for us...(drum hit!) We thought Prague was cold, this picture below was us the whole time we were in Vienna. DYING. It snowed almost every day we were there and when it didn't snow it was slushy and wet and freezing! Anyway, enough complaining, we did have a lot of fun too!

We took the metro over to Schönbrunn Palace, the former summer palace of the Hapsburg monarchs.

It has over 300 years of history, including being the offices for the British during World War 2. We took a tour and got to see the tapestries, paintings and furniture from the Royal families who used to live here, including Marie Antoinette!

After that, we took a tour of the famous Vienna State Opera House! Crystal got pretty dressed up for the occasion!

The Opera House dates back to the mid-19th century and gives over 300 performances per year, with over 50 different productions going on through out the year. This means from week to week they are changing shows, sets and decorations. It's pretty crazy!

Embracing the snow and my frozen feet!

Took a quick day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia! Check those icicles...

We stopped in a cafe to thaw for a second and look what the log in was! "Sputnik Powered." Love it!

We took a tour of the city and went to the Bratislava Castle! 

Views from the Castle; the Danube River and the "UFO Bridge."

We headed back to Vienna and went back to the Opera! When we went to try to buy tickets that morning, the ticket man asked us if we were students, of course we are! (We are here on a student Visa!) So he told us to just come back about half an hour before the show starts and get in a specific line for students. They sell the leftover tickets that they usually sell for 108 Euro to students for 18 Euro! What?! Awesome! We thought we would try it and if not we would buy the 30 Euro nosebleeds the next day because we really wanted to go to one show. Crystal and I ended up getting 9th row seats! We saw a ballet, Verklungene Fest and Josephs Legende. It was awesome and we felt so lucky!

This is St. Stephen's Cathedral, the main Roman Catholic Church in Vienna.

We decided to go to the Sigmund Freud Museum one day and it was so interesting. It was in his real old apartment and offices, which added a personal element to it. 

We learned about his teaching and research and even more about his daughter, Anna, who did even more for psychotherapy than her father!

Dessert time! We had to go to the famous Cafe Sacher! 

We tried the famous Sacher Torte and enjoyed the luxury of the famous hotel!

This is when Crystal left to go back to Madrid because she had to work on that Friday, while I didn't have to work until Monday. So I decided to take a solo trip to Salzburg! When in Austria...

This is where the Trapp Family is from and better known, where the "Sound of Music" filmed scenes about the Von Trapp Family! The stories are similar but not completely the same. Hollywood glamorized and dramatized a lot of their story but, eh who cares!? Turns out though, that Austrians really don't care about "The Sound of Music" and don't really like the movie. So, I thought they would exploit the hell out of it and there really was barely any mention of it. Big mistake! 

There was only one tour surrounding the movie and of course I HAD to do it! Some of my earliest memories are of my mom singing (or trying to sing, sorry ma) along to the songs, especially the Nun's songs, and her telling me stories about her Grandma singing along to them. It's always meant a lot to me but after a couple weeks of traveling and now being by myself it felt even more important. 

Anyway, this is the mountain that they supposedly crossed and that Maria twirls on in the beginning, the Untersberg. Treacherous!

This is the back of the house used for the Captain and the lake they used when canoeing! 

The Gazebo! I'm 16 going on 17! So exciting! They had it all closed up because people used to dance around in it a la Leisl and Rolf but then an old lady fell and broke her hip...

The subtle bus we were on! Our guide was also amazing! He was pretty flamboyant and so INTO everything! It was awesome. He kept putting on different songs from the movie and dancing in the aisles of our bus and telling us different "secrets" from the set. So cute! Especially since there were only families and older people on the tour I felt more comfortable.

This is the front of the Captain's house, now being used as a music school! 

The red roofed building is Nonnberg Abbey, where the real Maria lived and where they filmed all the Abbey scenes. I went to it later and went to the church but they don't let non-nuns (is that a word?) into the Abbey no matter how big of a fan you are :-/

This is Hohensalzburg Castle, they did exterior shots there, but it's just cool looking too!

On top of that mountain to the left is where they filmed the "Do-Re-Mi" scenes! This is actually the town of Werfen and we are now about 20 minutes outside of Salzburg.

This is Mondsee Abbey where they filmed the wedding scenes in  the town of Mondsee about 30 minutes from Salzburg!

Can you picture the long train and choir??

We stopped here for a coffee and some famous Apple Strudel with vanilla topping! mmmmmm

Next it was back to Salzburg for the Mirabell Gardens! "Do-Re-Mi" anyone?

This bridge was also in the movie for that song, they were all over the place, let me tell you! 

A view of the city and the Salzach River.

I had such a great time on this trip and loved learning about Austria! It was freaking cold in Vienna, to the point where sometimes Crystal and I were just over it. But Salzburg was way more manageable! I'm really glad I ended up going to Salzburg on my own and exploring this little but amazing city! I hope one day my family can come back with me and go on this tour cuz I know they will love it! I flew home that Sunday and had school that Monday...I just can't do anything half assed! All my roommates had gotten back 4 days earlier to rest up. Oh well, I can sleep when I'm dead!  On to the next!

"Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, till you find your dream." - The Sound of Music