I´ll get better with this whole blog thing, I promise. But, in the meantime...

Spanish classes have been going well. Went from the Imperitive (comands) to the Subjunctive (indicitive of doubt, a case we don´t have in English) and have actually been using them, sometimes at least. As always, should be studying more, but there are just some many more interesting things to do here.

Started a week of salsa classes and have never gotten so many side cramps in all my life. I think that dance was invented to remind you to eat more potassium and drink more water. Couple it with the heat at a club, and I can make it through maybe two songs without having to take a break. But that doesn´t stop me from trying.

As for work: I´ve gotten really good at taking medical histories in Spanish. Some of the questions we ask are really interesting from an outsiders´ point of view. For example, we ask religious affiliation, which I thought was a bit odd, but which the doctora explained to me was necesary for certian questions that she may later ask. Surprisingly, a large part of Guatemala is Evangelicial, I has assumed the vast majority would be Catholic.

It´s amazing the things you learn from thtse medical histories. Most of the women I´ve talked with who are over forty have had somewhere in the range of 8 to 12 births and sometimes over 16 pregnancies. The average woman, regardless of age, has never had a pap smear and uses no method of birth control, regardles of whether she´s married or single. And, my teachers have told me, machismo prevents men from using condoms, despite them being available at every pharmacy, and a pharmacy being located every two blocks (think Starbucks in New York City). What I think really needs to happen are family planning clinics and sexual health education to kids, starting young. Of course, to do this would be to face a huge taboo, and who knows how you would get the majority of schools (many with some connection to the church) to authorize this. So it turns into a cycle: girls get pregnant very young and, to save their honor, must get married. Sometimes their quincineras and weddings are only weeks apart. They are then regalated, for the most part, to the role of wife and mother and their husband must earn a living. Both are denied the higher education that would really help them make decent livings, so they are stuck at the bottom rungs of society. And the problem is worse in the often rural Mayan communities, which are already the poorest communities and are often discriminated against. Of course, this is not always the case, but it happens far too much for comfort. Throw in the higher rates of spousal beating that are often caused by young, haphazard marriages, and anything over a small ammount of ten births seems like too much.

I´m working at a free clinic that, when it has it, gives away medicines to its patients. It seems to me that the majority of peopel we see are indiginous, as opposed to Ladino, but there is a mix. The most common reasons for comming in seem to be throat infections and bactirial/parasite stomach things. Of course, I´ve seen everything from STI´s to musle problems, but those are less common.

We´ve also continued our work with the middle school, and expanded this work to include a day care center with kids from babies to 7 years of age. We´ve now talked to all the kids in the middle school about brushing their teeth and keeping themselves clean and healthy over all. We still go back to play with them, though, as we´ve become really attached to the kids; it´ll be hard to leave them. At the day care we did some weighing and measuring of the kids to make sure they were normal for their age. We´re going to do hygine stuff with them as well but, because they´re much younger, we´re going to approach it a different way: through song! Remembering how much I loved music time as a kid, I wrote up a bunch of songs about health and hygine. Hopefully they´ll be so catchy that the kids will remember them when it comes time to brush their teeth or take a bath. Here´s one for your reading/singing pleasure:

To the tune of ´three little Indians´
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes tres veces cada día

Translation:
Brush, brush, brush your teeth
Brush, brush, brush your teeth
Brush, brush, brush your teeth three times a day

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun making the songs, and I´ll post a song book of sorts when I have a good ammount. I think this will be an ongoing project.

We´re prepairing to do education on vacines to patients this comming week; last week we did a free blood pressure and blood glucose level clinic. I am proud to say that I am now a master blood glucouse level taker and that, for the most part, our patients were relitively healthy. There was one older woman with off the chart gloucose levels, and it was terribly sad to see her reaction to the news that she was diabetic. The problem here isn´t intent to change lifestyles or stay healthy, it´s money. There´s no way that this woman could afford dialysis or even some of the more costly drugs. So, despite her best efforts, the result of this diagnosis may very well be death, despite technologies that would prevent it. I think a lot of people here are accutely aware of this, so they would just rather not go to a doctor to find out their status on any number of things. Their reasoning being: what will knowlege do other than cause anguish, when there´s no money.

I´ve been able to travel quite a bit with the school, but last week was the first time I traveled with just a friend and no school guide. We hopped a bus to some distant place, changed at a gas station to a pickup truck that mush have held 20 people, 5 baskets of fruit being brought to market and a few chickens. We were headed to San Andres Xecul, a town about an hour away that is famed for a brightly colored, somewhat psychadelic church. The church was OK, although not as crazy as it was made out to be, but the view was what was really worth traveling for. We climbed up the hillside, caught the tail end of a pick up soccer game between local boys, and marvled at how we could see the entierty of the Questzelangelo valley. On the hill we also passed some people separating thread using 50 yard steaks, another very cool sight.

I´ve taken two weekend trips so far. One to the beach town of Monterico, where we did absolutely nothing (and it as wonderful but too hot after having lived in the highland for a month), and one to Panahachel, on Lake Atitlan. Compaired to Atitlan, Monterrico is nothing. The lake is huge and beautiful, and has lots of towns around it that you take a boat to get to. Because of the hurricanes and storms hitting Central America at this time of year, the lake was surrounded with a beautiful fog whcih, on short and maraculous ocassions, let up to reveal sky. The water is warm and inviting, and I saw more than one native to the area bathing in it. The area is a paradise, and I loved it so much that I´m going back this weekend. However, I´ll stay in a different town, Panahachel is too touristy and doesn´t feel real.

We took a trip to a chcolate factory and, hopefully, we´ll be able to get to the beer factrory that we live right next to at some point. The woman working at the chocolate factory, the mother of one fo the teachers at my Spanish school, walked us through the whole chocolate making process and, of course, let us taste, She makes the traditional Mayan chocolate used to make hot chocolate, not to eat. This stuff is so rich that it works fine to make it in just water, as oppose to milk, which works out well because milk is too expensive for anyone here to buy.

Well, I must say that it is sad, but true, that I am no longer a teen. But my 19th year went out with a bang. I started off in the day care center and got spit up on by the most adorable little baby ever. We helped the kids break open two pinatas, and the smiles were inredible. I had clases and ran some erands and then got together with a bunch of friends for a big Indian feast. ¿And who knew there was good Indian food in Xela? It was like a taste of home. Some friends of mine, Inge and Brandon, bought me a delicious cake and, before I could eat it, I was sung happy birthday in a total of 5 languages: English, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Czechk, Dutch and German. It was definately the most multicultural birthday I´ve had. After, we met up with some of the teachers from the Spanish school and danced until the lights at the club came on and the music was turned down. It was a wonderful day, but bittersweet because Inge, a good friend from Holland, headed out to Mexico the next morning. Still, her birthday present to me, sticking around for my birthday, was one of the best I could have asked for (sweet as a shnoopia or papernoten!)

At the end of this week my fellow Rice Humanitarian Medical Outreachers will head out and six new ones will head in. We´ve gotten colse during our time here, despite not knowing eachother before, so It´ll be hard to say goodbye. Still, I have another week left after them, and I´m sure I´ll find something great to do.

Tonight we´re off to a café or, tal vez, a new casino that just opened up. I´ve never been to one, so it should be an interesting and cultural experience.

Hasta pronto mis amores,

Julia