The Urban Poncho

My job has changed quite a bit in the last few days...While I´m still playing around with numbers in spreadsheets on occasion, the majority of my day is spent realizing my true potential. Basically I´m the Peterman of Peru. (Seinfeld reference) Keep an eye out for me in the latest Vogue, Vanity Fair or Cosmo...I´m pretty sure I´m going to be a pretty big deal in my new career as a designer. I´m working with a group of woman knitters to design modern shawls, gloves, hats, scarves - and anything that can be made out of Alpaca. My first piece is called the urban poncho. The whole idea behind this is to create designs that have a bit of Peruvian style, but that will sell abroard. A few days ago I found myself under a tin shelter in the pouring rain explaining to a group of 8 woman why someone may actually want to buy a skirt that only covers their ass. It took awhile, but I think they see the point now - I, however, can not remember said point. Regardless the skirts will be short and alpaca, which I can only hope is the perfect combination of Peruvian and slutty that I was going for.

While I spend most of my days in the office I also venture out into the markets to look for internesting buttons, fabrics, lace etc. This may seem a lot more ´libral arts´ than my usual work, but today during my latest market adventure my finance skills came in very handy. Here´s how the scene went down:
Me: Excuse me, can you tell me how much for these buttons?
Lady: 5 for $.50
Me: Hmm, would you give a discount if I bought a large quantity?
Lady: 12?
Me: sure
Lady 12 for $1.50
...this is where she lost me. So I asked again to reconfirm, and she did in fact mean what she said.---I opted for 5 buttons and told her I´d be back for more tomorrow. So my years of finance have come in handy bargaining in third world countries. Also studying geometry for the GRE has come in handy as I´m sketching designs with measurements and needing to recall the area of a triangle. It´s all coming full circle.

In all seriousness this is a very cool project which brings together artesan woman to help organize production and keep costs low. The company is going to be a spin off of FINCAPeru called FINCAPeru exports...which we hope to get finalized in the next few months. Everything is still very new and there are just me and 2 other volunteers running the show and figuring out the whole export business. It´s always different and getting to work so closely with the local woman is a real treat. If anyone knows of local stores in the US that might be interested in carrying Alpaca products, or custom orders for individuals - let me know and i´ll send off some more information about the project Perhaps things could be ready in time for christmas or perhaps not. Deadlines aren´t really our strong point yet. By next week I should have some pictures that I can send off if anyone is interested!

Ok, well there´s a pair of fingerless gloves that are dying to be sketched out, so off I go.

comments: amandajudge@yahoo.com

Around town

Here´s a few pictures of the town plaza and one of the main streets, which is only for pedestrians. They were having some sort of parade to promote a candidate for county president this morning when i took these. All very peaceful, but all the same, very loud.

I´ve spend the last week and a half working, finding my way around and trying to figure out what I´m eating that is causing me stomach pains. They seem to have subsided, although the source I wasn´t able to distinguish. It´s just to difficult to be extremely careful about what you eat, so I´ve decided that I´m just going to have to get acustomed to it rather than be nuerotic about it. Civiche is a very popular dish here, which is delicious. However, eating raw fish I try to do only in the nicest of restaurants. I think the nicest restaurant in town may be equivalent to TGIFridays...or maybe a step up, but not too much higher. Most of the restaurants are small rooms in the front of peoples houses where you can eat for a couple dollars or less, but since i´ve been working so much i often make my own food or have the 86 year old lady that i live with make me a meal for $1.70.

Work is going well. Starting a new job is always challenging, and starting a new job speaking a new language is not any easier. But this week my communcation skills have started to pick up and I think I´m figuring out what projects they want me to do. It´s a great place to learn about microfinance and the people who work there are so sweet. It´s a bit exausting because you kiss everyone on the cheek hello AND goodbye - Even if you just had a 30 second conversation. I get a kick out of imaging that sort of interaction at a company in the US.

I had my first day of visiting clients on Friday, which was very eye-opening. The day started by riding off on the back of a motorcycle to the outskirts of town. Once you get out of the town center all of the streets are dirt and you are constanting dodging pigs, cows, sheep, goats, small children and what I can only assume are rabid dogs. We were visiting clients who were requesting large loans (over $500) or clients who were requesting individual loans (from $100-500), in order to make sure that they lived where they said, and ask questions about how the were planning to pay the loan back and what collateral they could put up for the individual loans. It´s was amazing to see how some people lived...houses built right into the hillside, dirt floors, children of 5 left home alone when the parents go off to work. All the while we were surrounded by very dramatic mountains, cliffs and valleys - next time I´ll take my camera.

day 1 - Ayacucho

After a winding bus ride up many many meters, I have arrived. The 9 hour bus ride was surprisingly comfortable...and very cool because I had a seat in the first row of a double decker, so I had a great view. Slightly scary at times as well, as the drivers are well...bus drivers. It seems like we pretty much just drove through the country side and passed the occasional pueblo...which is called something else in Peru. Aldade maybe? Already I´ve learned that my Guatemalan spanish is useless here. At least for the food...everything is different! I´ve learned that salsa picante is salsa aji...avocados are something very very different... cafe comes in two parts and you put it together depending on how strong you like it...and everything else will come with time.

I´m suprised at how much it´s like Antigua. I guess it makes sense since they are both colonial cities. Ayacuhco has smoother streets, is a bit dustier, at a higher altitude, less touristy, and not as colorful. But the central parks of the two cities are amazingly similiar with all the sidewalks bordering the park made of arches.

So tomorrow I´ll go find the FINCA Peru office and see when I can get started. I´m really excited about starting to work again. Spanish studying has been great, but I need something with a little more depth to keep me interested.

Right now I think it´s time for the second nap of the day. Adios!

Lima is...

...well, Lima is not like Antigua. It´s kinda dirty, but it´s got a cool ´lived in´ feel, which gets lost in Antigua´s bohemian ¨aora¨ (i have no idea how to spell that...) I got in this afternoon and navigated my way to one of the bus stations. All the bus companies have their own terminals and they don´t have schedules at the airport or anything convenient like that - Speaking spanish definetely came in handy today. After spending the day here, I´m wondering how I traveled around so many other countries without speaking the language. Definitely no english around these parts. It´s fun to be able to speak to the locals and somehow sketchy men don´t seem as sketchy once they see that you can speak their language. but and i´m definetely ready to ramp up my conversation skills. I´m sure I sound like a real @-hole most of the time. It took me a while to realize that instead of saying ´can i pay you now?´ I had been saying ´can i poke you now´. people figured it out, but still...those are the kind of mistakes that, since i´m traveling alone, i´d rather not continue making.

Tonight I´ll be snoozing on a night bus. Hopefully they´ll play a jean claude van dam movie...if Peru´s anything like Guatemala, my chances are pretty good they will. More from Ayacucho later this week. Hasta luego.

Roatan Pics

I was really bad about taking pictures in Roatan, so I don´t have that many...but here´s a couple to give you the feel of the place. They just don´t do it justice though!

Antigua Character

Here´s a picture of me with one of my favorite Antigua characters...The French midget chef who works in the cafe down the street from me.

Mishaps in Roatan

My savy travel skills have really been put to the test this weekend. My Korean friend, Miok, and I traveled to Roatan, but we had to stay a night in La Ceiba, Honduras because our bus got in after the last ferry. So I went to withdraw money and left my ATM visa card in the machine. I realized this within the hour, but of course it was no where to be found. Thank goodness for I always have 2 cards on me...

After that mishap we proceed to Roatan the next day and pass the weekend lounging on beautiful beaches, and realizing how good life can be in the Carribean.

On our way back we needed to spend one more day in La Ceiba...the armpit of the bay islands. But we were recommended a great hotel and it all feels very comfortable. 5am we hop in a taxi and at 5:05 we hope out. but i forgot my purse. damndamndamndandmadnandma. i dragged my sorry self back to the hotel as i ponder how to get out of this damned country without a passport, while my friend is comfortably on her way to Antigua. All my smart rules about different types of money to carry don´t work so well when they´re all in your purse and it´s lost.

But the hotel I was staying at was great. The little man who works in the hotel lobby, miraculously enough, remembered the number of the taxi. I now have a new rule and I advise you all to use it...When traveling in taxis, always remember the number of the taxi. This is my new montra. However, just the number of the taxi isn´t enough to actually DO anything. 3 people from the hotel and myself went to the main taxi office to find out the name and number of the taxi driver. but one phone call to the driver wasn´t enough to convince him to give my backpack back. he argued his point, that if something is left in his taxi then it´s his. I see where´s he´s coming from, but just didn´t agree with the sentiment. So the wonderful chica from the hotel had to get quite upfront with him, explaining that we knew all of his information and if he didn´t bring the backpack back we´d call the police and they´d come find it. I´m pretty sure this invoked a laugh as the thought of the police actually doing something was funny even to me. (we´d been calling them all morning, but they just weren´t answering) However, once I explained that there was no money in the backpack and that you needed a code to use my credit card...but that´d i could pay him once he brought it to me...he suddenly had a change of heart and decided to return my ´maleta´ to me in one piece.

Funnily enough, i couldn´t give him any money when he arrived...i had lost my visa, my mastercard wasn´t working because i use it just for purchases and i don´t even know the pin, and all my cash was with my friend who was comfortably sleeping in a bus on her way to Antigua. The man was angry. He yelled, he flailed his arms...and I hid behind the large security man from the hotel and pretended I couldn´t speak spanish. (not that big of a lie really)

So I had my bag back, but still no money...What was i to do without cash in Honduras? I pondered this as I ate a combo meal at wendy´s thanks to my trusty credit card. When you´re down and out it´s nice to know you can still get a frosty.

My fast food infusion reminded me of my secret travelers check stashed away! only after I had spent a good 4 hours waiting in different lines at different banks to no avail..but nonetheless, i regained confidence in my savy travelingness. So i was able to tip the hotel, leave some for the scary man so he doesn´t harass the hotel staff tomorrow, and travel safely back to antigua.

So all in all things have ended well. For the part of my family that worries...remember that despite all my misfortunes this weekend, things ended up just fine and I will now be more careful than ever when traveling around.

I leave for Peru on Tuesday and until then I will be just enjoying my last days in Antigua. Out for now...

ps- i know I should spell check this as i may be the worlds worst speller, but I just can´t figure out how to get the spell check language to english.

More Pictures

Here we have my friend Michelle and I with the Guatemalan ambassodor to Portugal. Interesting man...he likes his Tequila as well.

Also there´s a view of Antigua from this small hike up a little bit out of town...and another view from the rooftop restaurant across the street from my house.

antigua continues...

I haven´t written much lately...sorry about that. Things have been great here though. Since Lake Atilan I´ve just stayed around the Antigua area and concentrated on studying spanish. I´m packing up now as I head out to Roatan tomorrow. I´m going with my Korean friend who doesn´t speak english, so it will be great practice for my spanish! I´ll still have a few more days in aAntigua when i get back, but I´ll have to find a place to stay as my month is up at my luxurious house. I wish I had more time in Antigua as I feel like I´m just getting used the place and really enjoying the company of the people from all over the globe I´ve met here. I´ll add some pictures since I have no outrageous adventures to write about...it´s a gorgeous place. More to come when I return from Roatan mid next week. I also doubt that I´ll be checking email on Roatan as it´s pretty expensive...so don´t worry if you don´t hear anything from me till next wednesday or so (mom:-)).

one more from Atilan

Last weekend my roomate and I took off to Lake Atilan. We stayed in one of the villages on the lake thats known for still having the men dress in traditional indigious dress. usually we just see the woman dressed like that. Of course I didnt get a picture of the men though...
The indigenous people don{t like you to take their pictures because they think its stealing their soul...although they will happily sell you a piece of their souls for $0.40.

I paid the little girl for her soul in the previous entry, but stole this old womans.

Pictures from Lake Atilan...again

This lake is surrounded by volcanos and is quite an impressive sight. Theres a couple pictures of the view from the lakeside jacuzzi of our Inn we stayed aty for the high price of $9 a night. actually that is quite hight here, but we figured we were on vacation! theres also a pciture of the local woman doing their laudry in the morning in Santiago, where Britt and I stayed. (Shes my roomate from Denmark - a very cool girl, but unfortunantly she{s leaving to go to the galapogos islands shortly)

Thoughts on here...

As I'm starting to have a very small amount of confidence in my spanish, i've been getting to know more of the locals, who all have their own ideas of what is the route of the problems in Guatemala. It's interesting to hear things from their point of view. Many people say is the machismo culture, (I've even had some of the more educated men tell me this). For example, my spanish teacher wanted to get her tubes tied so she wouldn't have any more kids (because her husband refused to use condoms). So she saved up money to go to the hospital, but once she got there they told her she needed her husbands permission to get the operation (which, of course, he would not give). She tells me this isn't the policy anymore -woman can get operations without their husbands concent now, but that attitude is still prevelant in many rural areas. However, there was recently a study about societal views on woman by one of the Guatemalan Universities, and reading it was like going back in time 30-50 years (I would assume, as I don't remember much from my pre-nascent years).

I've been told that policies are modernizing and education is increasing regarding birthcontrol and the economic benefits of smaller families. However, it seems that the price of everything is increasing so fast that any improvements in the economies of the smaller families are completely negated by the upward pressure on prices that the tourist industry brings in. (here I'm talking purly Antigua, not Guatemala as a whole - although the same very well may be tru) Now, I'm no economist and I dont' know if the benefits of tourism are outweighing the drawbacks in aggregate...but I can see that with such poor education here, many locals dont' have the knowledge to take advantage of the money that's being brought in by tourists so it's mostly gringos with the successful restaurants, hotels, etc.

The terrible quality of education in public schools really smacks me in the face. I've heard it's not uncommon for someone to graduate and still be illiterate. i think they're more like a place for parents to drop off the kids for the day than a place to get educated. i can see very clearly that there is no middle class. so far, the people i've met who are my age, dressed in nice clothes and can speak english, have also been quite well educated. As soon as the conversations turn to family life, i've found that their parents work for a large corporation and are often only half guatemalan.

On the other hand, in the families that have both parents working in a local business as well as any adult children working, still live in a cement block with a tin roof that makes up a house here. In the US a family like this would be fairly middle class - but it's easy to see that the possibility of upward economic mobility doesn't exist in real tangible terms.

This is in no way an official study on the Guatemalan micro-economic situation...purely how the situation seems on the surface.

Mi casa nueva

So i changed houses this weekend. My guatemalan family was very nice, but it was too constricting of an environment for me. By chance, I happened upon a great place because it began to downpour and i jumped into the nearest cafe for a brief respite from the rain. There I met this guy, Victor, who's housemate just jumped town without notice. Since the house doesn't have any mildew - a rarity in Guatemala!, I jumped at the chance to move in. I now live with Victor, who owns an adventure sports company (given how hardcore I am, you can imagine my delight!) and Britt, a great girl from Denmark. The 'smallest world' part of the move is that Victor's girlfriend, Michelle, not only works in small business development, but one of her best friends from home (Prosser, WA) is one of my good friends in Seattle - Chad O'Brien. Of course I couldn't go long remaining annoymous in my new world...

Pictures around Antigua

constant state of confusion

Yesterday is a prime example of how I have no idea whats going on here. I thought I was participating in the parade with my school down in the center of Antigua. Imagine my surprise when I was shuffled onto a bus and driven an hour outside of Antigua to Lago de Amatilan. I figured it out pretty quickly, but it just makes me wonder - what else am i missing in these conversations with the locals? But we were still in a parade of sorts, so i had that part right. I had the honor of lighting and carrying the first torch for our group. This also means I had to speak into a microphone is spanish in front a huge crowd of locals. - but with the glory of being the torch holder as came the responsibility of running with the torch through the streets. This is tricky because 1. the torch is heavy. 2. the torch is very much so on fire. 3. i had to run (in and of itself would have been difficult enough). The main danger I saw of this activity was catching my hair on fire, or giving second degree burns to the person behind me - both l very real possibilities in my mind. But alas I think i won the hearts of my fellow students and teachers with my realistic, vive Guatemal!s The festivals continue through the weekend, but my days of being a torch holder are done. Im off to study mas español. hasta luego.

Vive Guatemala

It seems I´ve arrived at quite a festive time in Antigua, although I get the impression that they are big festival people here in general. This weekend is La Independecia! and I´ve wasted no time prentending I´m a Guatemalan...I´m running in the parade this afternoon holding torches and chanting Guatemala!, Guatemala! I just hope when they say ´run´they mean meander through the streets at a relaxed pace.

I´ve been here for two day and things are going great. The family I live with is awesome...I was a bit worried that the situation would be more like a hotel, but I think i´m getting quite an authentic experience. The house itself is muy interestante. It´s more like a few rooms connected by a pathway..or like the halls of the house have no ceilings. kindof a commune of sorts. I have my own room and a bathroom which is quite luxurious. I´m positive I´ve kicked someone out of their room, but for the price I´m paying ($80, which is more than a hostel would be) they seem more than willing to give it up.

I´m the only student in a house of 12 guatemalans...2 parents, who have 8 children and a few grandchildren running around. as far as I can tell almost all the kids live there except for one son who is in school somewhere. The father works in real estate, and is a very jolly man, one daughter is a teacher, and another works in a cafe.... of course, i´m getting this information through my limited spanish, so we may have very well been discussing the weather outside and I think we were talking about their careers.

Everyone is super super friendly towards me and are encouraging me to talk a lot. This leads to some interesting conversations...I´m living in a constant state of confusion, but I´m beginning to like it. I had expected to see more tourists here, but apparently this is not tourist season. It´s much more authentic than I thought. I´ve only seen a handle of ´gringos´since I´ve arrived - mostly the city is bustling with young school kids running through the streets.

Thier are 3 daughters in the house who are in their 20´s and they seem really sweet and accomdating. i think tomorrow we´re going to go out...i couldnt´understand what we´re doing but I´m looking forward to it...I don´t go out at night because we are a bit outside of the main square, and they advised me not to go out alone (although they assure me is perfectly safe if I´m with them). So since I´m not sure how to meet people since I sound like a two year old, I´m go out in the mornings to cafes, to school in the afternoons, and studying at night. it´s good for now. I may try to get a place close to the central parque in a couple weeks so that I can go out at night, but we´ll see how it goes. The family situation is definetely the best for learning spanish now.

And that´s too much english for me now! i´ll try to post pictures later this week. Adios!

Just starting...

Check back for new postings early September. Thanks!