Yeah. Yeah! It's getting ready to be Christmas in Guatemala. I mean of course it's weird because there's no snow and there hasn't been, so it doesn't really feel quite like Christmas yet, BUT. but. I'm already packed for Spain (since Sunday, no shame), so you know it's about to be Christmas for real.

Christmas is very different here, culturally. Of course there's ads and things  announcing it's Christmas season, and there are sales. But the sales are principally on things like appliances.

Traditional Christmas giving here doesn't really exist. The tradition is to give the abrazo de Navidad (the Christmas hug) at midnight on the 24th. Families celebrate by eating paches, mashed potatoes with lard and  a small piece of pork to give them flavor covered in a sauce of tomato, pumpkin seed, and chiles, all wrapped in the leaves from a banana tree and steamed. And of course, despite the fact that they're principally potato, they're served with white bread on the side. Mmmmmm.

In the Puesto, we spent basically a whole week making Christmas decorations for our feria de salud nutricional, where the women from the community with children under two came to play games, get prizes, and weigh and measure their children. (Pictures to come. Probably tomorrow. I promise this time.)

I, of course, taught everyone how to make paper snowflakes---which they all thought were flowers and wondered why they weren't made from colored paper, but nevermind.... 

It's weird too because there are Christmas songs on the radio--both in Spanish and English--but not many. And a lot of the ones that do come on are parts of advertisements. With such a very religiously Christian nation, I was expecting more emphasis on Navidad (there is some, but a lot of it occurs in husbands drinking their wages). 

And here, you can say Merry Christmas before the mero dia, but only if you're not going to see the person until Christmas. The season is much more the day of and after. 

I'm going to spend the day tomorrow writing some blog entries I've been meaning to write for a while and sending in some photos, so stay tuned.

This is a really silly post and mostly a rant about how things don't make sense here sometimes but here goes.

Okay, so there's a rule that all municipalities have to be geografically contiguous in Guatemala. Makes sense, right? Same in the US, right? Well here,  municipalities might be geographically contiguous but they're by no means contiguous by roads. This means that in order to get to one of my aldeas, I have to pass through not one but TWO other municipalities, both of which are in another department entirely.

So. I've been in training for the last month. I finally got back to site and basically went straight to work. Surprise, surprise.