why i'm in need of a vacation

Why im in need of a vacation...

My mom called me yesterday from the airport in San Diego, she and my dad have been down there attending the APA conference. Anyhow she told me that she felt just like me then went on to describe how she hadn’t changed her clothes in several days, she was stuck wearing flip flops because she couldn’t find shoes, she needed a pedicure so badly she was embarrassed to face the Vietnamese girls at For Your Nails and that her hair was so frizzy she looked like she'd gone back to her student days at Berkeley. At first I was kind of insulted, although assaults on my general state of cleanliness are nothing new, she used to tell me I looked like a homeless person when id come home from college with baskets of dirty laundry wearing sweats and old tie-dyed t-shirts. Then I took a look at myself and decided, shes probably right. Most of my clothes smell like mold, I’ve developed a bad case of what we refer to as “country foot” and I can’t find my razor so I haven’t shaved my legs in a month. Heres a good visual comparison…

Hurley from Lost /Me

also, tony just told me a look like a contestant on survivor...not what you want to hear from your boyfriend.

UPDATE:

ok maybe tony had a point...

Scary dude from Survivor/Me

More animal tales.

Ok, so one more animal story.

I woke up this morning and there was a new dog in the yard. Im going to attempt not to get attached to this dog because the last two dogs I liked mysteriously disappeared and the one dog I can't stand won't leave. Anyhow. New dog is barking and barking and barking so I go outside to see what New dog is barking at. Well, apparently he doesn't like that the pig in the yard is tied up to the mango tree and he's decided to let the pig know this by getting really close to him and barking. The pig can't do anything about it because its tied to the mango tree, although I don't think the pig knows it should be annoyed at New dog. Also, New dog kind of looks a lot like this really pathetic cat my brother used to have named Jack.

Sasha, my dog back home would definitely bark if she came across a pig tied to a mango tree. Although unlike New dog I'm sure she would be much more composed even when facing a pig twice her size. She's jewish and all so shes good at avoiding ham. I haven't uploaded a picture of New dog and the pig yet, but heres one of Sasha.

UPDATE:

ok so i uploaded the picture of New dog and the Pig...

Animals

Amusing/Funny/Unusual Things that I’ve Seen Animals Do In Guatemala

1. I was sitting on the bus the other day and I looked out the window and there was a pig, a really big pig, like 20 pounds of bacon worth, chasing a duck across a soccer field.

2. Walking into town one day there was this stray dog passed out on the side of the road and sitting on top of him was a duck.

3. This one never fails to amuse me. Entire truckloads of Guatemalans will erupt into laughter when they see this. So when dogs have doggie sex, sometimes they get stuck together, and when the male dog tries to dismount he usually ends up spinning around so they are stuck together, ass to ass. Then, if they are in the middle of the street and a car is approaching they try to run away but they’re headed in opposite directions so they don’t get anywhere. It may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Travels

So the airport finally opened and Tony was able to make it down safely. We spent most of our time in Chisec so I could finish up some projects before the two week school break. I'm in the middle of a bunch of big construction planning so lots of trying to motivate teachers, parents and masons as well as trying to find money for all these projects. ( US AID where is all this money you promised?) Tony came to school with me one day and the Q'eqchi women had a great time trying to figure out if he was a giant Guatemalan or an American. I wish we could have spent more time traveling around but unfortunately I don't have enough vacation days left to do that (saving them up for my 2 week trip back home in August). We did get to go down to Lanquin and had a wonderful time doing the candle lit cave tour and swimming in the pools up in Semuc Champey.

Nothing better than a man cleaning your room

Parent meeting in Pecajba

Waiting for a the bus in Lanquin

I've got my brother here now and Alex and I are heading off to Flores to go see the Mayan ruins before we head down to Antigua for the all volunteer conference and 4th of July party (which our country director decided to hold on the 3rd not the 4th, who knew she had enough power to move our independence day...)

Rain, rain go away.

Here's whats happening in Guatemala:

A tropical depression, that I will be referring to as "Shit Storm" has hit Guatemala. First the volcano erupted and now we're set to get hit by some nasty tropcal rain for at least the next 10 days. Peace Corps has us on lockdown on our sites and I really need to g

o to Coban to buy some cinnamon toast crunch. The airport is currently closed and if Tony can't make it down next week because of volcanic ash on the runway I'm leaving...when the airport reopens that is.

Maybe the Mayans were right, 2012 is coming. (actually my guatemalan friends were joking about this at lunch yesterday).

UPDATE: Sat afternoon

So it got a little bit too wet and I'm now unofficially on lock down until at least Tuesday in Tactic at my friend Kate's house with Jareau and Kelsey. Scrabble and Trivia Pursuit for the next three days. Also, the airport is scheduled to be closed until at least thursday so they can remove the volcanic ash-turned-cement from all the water from the tropical storm. Tony and I are frantically trying to figure out what to do so that he can still get down here.

UPDATE: Monday evening

So Agatha, the first tropical storm of the season hit Guatemala on Saturday mid-morning and wiped out a huge part of the country. Over a hundred people are confirmed dead with dozens more missing, and over a hundred thousand people are displaced. The President issued a state of emergency but the airports still closed so help is slow to arrive. Bridges are washed out and landslides have cut off some of the major roads leaving people and PCVs in some villages isolated without power or clean water. We didn't get hit too hard up here, but the school is cancelled nation wide for at least a week. More updates to follow.

Tubing

So, a few weeks ago I was walking down the street towards the bus stop to head to work. I saw a bunch of people waiting for the buses and was not anxious to join them for a cramped spot on one of the few buses going towards my school. A bus comes, all the guatemalans get excited because it looks pretty empty, but it doesnt stop. Instead, someone leans out the window and yells my name. Turns out that a group of the tourism volunteers were coming up for a trip to the tubing site near my house. I ditched work, jumped in the van with them and spent the afternoon hanging out in the caves of Candelaria Campo Santo with the new eco vols and a few of our alta veterans.

Seriously?

From the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary:

Main Entry: pla·gia·rize

Pronunciation: \ˈplā-jə-ˌrīz also -jē-ə-\

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): pla·gia·rized; pla·gia·riz·ing

Etymology: plagiary

Date: 1716

transitive verb: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the sourceintransitive verb: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

I thought plagiarism ended once we'd graduated from school. Apparently its been around long enough to have earned its own dictionary entry in 1716, so I stand corrected. After two cases of people stealing my writings and publishing them as their own I've decided that I'm going to password protect my blog. Some say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, I say thats bullshit. Do your own work.

If you want the password to my blog you can email me at RebeccaDreyfuss@gmail.com for it. I'll leave it unprotected for another couple of weeks so people have a chance to read this post. Thanks to all of you who have been keeping up with me, I promise more interesting blog posts are soon to come!