And punctuation doesnt work on Spanish computers, so forgive the lack of apostrophes, hyphens and question marks.

Ive done the following things since I last blabbered at you

• Found out my site!!! Totonicapan, wuddup!!!
• Met the ambassador of the US to Guatemala
• Officially swore the next two years of my life to Guatemala
• Packed my life into tiny boxes and moved them across the country. Again.
• Rode across the country with complete strangers to my new home for two years which I will be sharing with complete strangers, some of whom I dont even share a common language with.
• On that note, I said goodbye to my training host family, wept when I left my friends and met my new host family, such nice people. More on them later.
• Successfully had a conversation in Spanish on the phone. With a stranger.
• Started learning Quiche.
• Rode in the bed of a pickup truck.
• Puked. A lot.
• Dressed up as an injection in a town parade.
• Met the mayor.
• Bought a stove. Cooked my first meal in my new host family!!

I promise, promise promise to write more and with more feeling in the coming weeks. Its just been a long haul for the last few, and Id kind of like to get a bed before I try to distill my feelings into words.

This entry is more to make you think of riding in camionetas as “an interesting experience I’m having.” I feel incredibly safe both on the camionetas I ride and with the safety measures Peace Corps has taken to keep us safe.

There are plenty of ways to get around in Guate. Many of you, I’m sure have heard of the famed ‘chicken buses’ or camionetas that serve as the public transportation here. They have a reputation for being llenísima, so full you couldn’t shove on another human being with the will of God on your side. They’re a place for falling asleep on a stranger, petty theft, and mild groping if you’re unlucky.

They’re a place for street vendors to climb aboard and offer everything from fried plátanos to crafts artesenales and from the Diario newspaper to homemade ice creams.

But the camioneta is a much more fascinating creature than just that. It’s basically the world’s hand-me-down. The Allegheny Public School district apparently had quite a few spare school buses in about 1997 because they’ve all ended up down here.

And they don’t seem to have had a tune up since. The grey smoke that puffs out of some of these tailpipes wouldn’t come close to passing the eco-friendly tests of most major US cities, let alone the black fumes that pour out of most. (Try running up a mountain through that. Not to mention, listen to the horns blaring and harassing yells as if from drunk frat boys at the gringas out for a run. Needless to say, the camioneta isn’t my favorite site at about 6 am.) I’m pretty sure my carbon footprint has actually increased here just from riding in these diesel-sucking monstrosities.

And they’re dangerous. So dangerous that we’re not allowed to ride them in certain parts of the country at all on pain of expulsion from Peace Corps.

The most terrifying part of the camioneta isn’t that the buses sometimes flip or that being corralled so closely presents a security threat for pasajeros. It isn’t that people climb up the back while it’s moving or that drivers sometimes manejan a little under the influence of alcohol.

The scariest part is the extorción. The pandilleros (gang-bangers, more or less) and narcotraficantes in many ways run this country. And one of the ways they take control is through demanding that certain camioneta drivers pay a proportion of their income. The pandilleros threaten that if the driver doesn’t pay, the gang will kill him.

And then they do.

A driver was killed just last Thursday in Jocotenango, which is about 5 minutes outside of Antigua for this very reason. Luckily for us, the pandilleros seem to target only the bus drivers. Passengers aren’t at risk.

I guess what I want you to take away from this is that, yes, Guatemala is a dangerous country. And yes, violence is occurring here and even close by. This violence is something that the government and people of Guatemala are actively fighting. It’s a tragedy here, and we all want to see its end.

As for our security, Peace Corps guards us like the world’s cutest puppies.  Besides, I’m further geographically from this gun violence than I was in Chicago. It’s just the seeming randomness makes it feel more terrifying.

We’ve been here for 7 weeks already. Which is crazy enough to think about. Even crazier is that they still haven’t told us where we’re going to be for two years. Part of the Peace Corps model is that you go into training not knowing your site of service and at the end of training, your Project Manager will assign you to the site whose needs best fit your skills and experiences.

This process, probably needless to say, is generating a bit of stress among the trainees. Even though we only work in 5 departments in Guatemala, the mountainous terrain makes each site very different from the others—in terms of climate, culture, and transportation. Even though two sites might be 15 miles away from one another, they might have 30-40 degrees difference in temperature daily. Likewise, a Volunteer placed in Quiché might be a twelve hour bus ride from another Volunteer in Totonicapán, even though the two departments share a border.

Makes it kind of hard to plan. Hard to buy clothes. Hard to know even which trainees I should be getting close to. My best friends might end up 10 hours away from me.

Nonetheless, I feel like my Dad on the days before Christmas. With the tiny red present and the little gold bow—and if I shake it up enough, maybe I’ll just be able to guess what’s inside. I’ve gotten some clues from my bosses about the site I could potentially be going to. If they put me in the site they’ve been hinting at, I won’t have a site mate or a market in town to buy vegetables. But if all goes well, I could potentially have the most spectacular health center staff of all. And I could be learning a Mayan language.

Although…they could also just be messing with me.

And even with the clues I really have no idea where I could be going. All I know is I can’t wait until Christmas.

I’m not sure really whether it’s a phenomenon or just a concept basically everyone around here understands, but the phenomenon of the charla is something like a talk or a lecture, except it’s usually about 15-30 minutes long and discusses a relatively basic topic.

It’s basically all I’m going to be doing for the next two years. Or at least a big part of it. Topics range from how to wash your hands (and why it’s important) to nutrition, sexual health, and many other topics besides. Despite the fact that it’s information you already know, you have to present it in Spanish to an audience of strangers with a completely different cultural and educational background—not to mention an insanely incomparable sense of humor. Giving a charla is more or less terrifying.

But actually really fun.

I gave my first one on Friday with a second year agriculture volunteer. We taught my cohort of Maternal and Child Health (MCH) volunteers, the staff of my health center, and some local volunteer health promotoras to make tire gardens.

With the support of this really experienced, very knowledgeable, amazingly outgoing volunteer, the activity turned out spectacularly—despite my own overactive nerves, accelerated by the presence of our training director and the Country Director (the head honcho of the entire Peace Corps Guatemala program).

There will be many more charlas to come (including one tomorrow), but this first one definitely marks the beginning. I already look like a legit PCV with my glasses and my plaid, don’t you think? (Look at the pics.)