After saying goodbye to my host family that I have been living with for the last 9 weeks and all of my fellow volunteers, I made the long journey (an hour and a half) to my new site in Chimaltenango. I was one of the lucky volunteers because my counterpart had a car meaning I didn’t have to lug all of my stuff in a micro or a taxi. It is actually quite amazing how much stuff I accumulated in just over two months!
I arrived in site at around 1:30pm on Tuesday and proceeded to drop my luggage in my room before quickly eating a sandwich and heading to the Centro de Salud where I will be working for the next two years. At the health center, my counterpart introduced me to over 20 people, of which I remember two names, and proceeded to give them all a lecture on how they should make sure to help out the foreigner. It felt really nice to have someone who I met literally 48 hours previously take such an interest in my well-being.
From the health center I met up with my site mate who is in the Healthy Schools program and has been living in here for four months. I helped her with some logistics for the Health Fair she helped plan that would be starting the next day. I finally got back to my host family’s house at 6pm and was greeted with an invitation to leave in a half hour to go to my host moms mom’s house (we will call her host grandmother for short). On a side note- my host mom is only 27 so I am not sure if I should even be calling her my host mom at all. I didn’t actually end up getting home until around 9pm to unpack all of my stuff and get ready for the next day (health fair at 7:30am).
Although my first day was chaotic, everyone I have met here so far has been absolutely amazing and welcoming. I can really see this place becoming my new home in the next two years!
The Catholic church and town center
Fijese Que... 