You heard right folks, this time I'm off to Guatemala! So I'm bringing back the blog.
I can't believe it's been over a year since I left for Ghana. I miss everything about it, and I miss it every day. Especially now, since it's winter. Every time I trudge along in the snow or scrape the ice off of my car before work, I just miss the beach and the sun and even the times where I would be covered in sweat in a crowded trotro because I think I'd prefer that any day to the cold and barren tundra of Minnesota/Wisconsin winters. I mean, I do like the seasons of Minnesota, but it's March and it's still snowing outside and I didn't really have to deal with winter at all last year so I'm a little bit impatient for it to end.
So it's time for me once again to head south, towards the equator. I'll be working in Panajachel, Guatemala for an organization called Mercado Global. It's a non-profit that helps Guatemalan artisan women escape the cycle of poverty by offering education, training, loans, and access to markets. It's main focus is empowering women and as a result, it works to alleviate poverty, malnutrition, and other such things.
Here's the website. I'm extremely excited to be working with this group. Not entirely sure on the specifics of my position yet, but I know it will possibly involve some outreach, as well as some work doing evaluations of training programs and things like that.
One thing I've been struggling with wrapping my head around though, is the language barrier I'm going to run into. Obviously, they speak Spanish down there, and while I've taken a few years of it in high school, I feel like my skills aren't nearly where they need to be right now. I've had a friend helping me practice my speaking quite a bit, and I'm hoping that I know enough at this point to get around by myself. I'm pretty nervous, but my hope is that through immersion, I'll pick up a ton while I'm there. I'm pretty excited about improving my spanish skills, actually. As much as I love German, it's not quite as useful to me in the long run as Spanish will be.
I am so glad I had the experience I had in Ghana because I feel like I'm a little more mentally prepared this time for culture shock. It'll be a different kind of culture shock, but at least I've dealt with it before. And I'll be there for roughly the same amount of time as I was in Ghana, too. It might still be pretty hard this time because I'll be going alone instead of with a group of peers. I will be working with people all the time, but when I go home at night, I'm hoping I won't get too lonely. I have to find my own housing, so I'll most likely be living alone. Which both sounds exciting and a little scary. But I'll be just fine.
Anyway, so things are starting to wrap up here in Eden Prairie before I go. I just told Walgreens--for what will hopefully be the last time--that I'm leaving, I've gotten all of my appointments and meds out of the way and checked off my list, and all that's left to do is work for a few more weeks, pack my suitcase, and say my goodbyes. So I just wanted to throw this post out there to let everyone know that I will be leaving on April 8th and that you should follow me here for updates and stories and general musings about my life in another new place!
