I got an unexpected but very pleasant surprise when my dad called me last saturday night. “I have someone here that wants to talk to you,” he told me from his house in Jersey City, New Jersey. He handed the phone over, and to my amazement I was greeted by Katarina, the mother of one of the teachers I work with here in the Guatemalan highlands. I was so shocked at first by the connection between these two previously seperate parts of my life, it took me a few moments to understand what was going on and piece together how it had happened.

About a month ago I was talking with Lucia, one of the elementary school teachers I work with, and her mother Katarina. Lucia mentioned that her father was living in the U.S., and her mother Katarina had obtained a tourist visa and was going to visit her husband in a few weeks. While they weren't exactly sure what city in New Jersey he lived in, Katarina recognized the name Jersey City when I told her that's where my dad lived. I told Katarina that my dad would be happy to meet her and her husband while she was visiting the states, and wrote down his phone number and address. I honestly didn't expect them to call. I thought they may feel uncomfortable calling a complete stranger in a foreign country, and more or less forgot about it.

I was mistaken. When they coordinated the visit over the phone (fortunately Lucia's father, Juan, speaks English after 4 years living in the U.S.), my dad specifically didn't tell me beforehand in order to make it a surprise, which it certainly was. The next day my dad told me more about the visit. When they arrived at his door, he knew they were the right people because Katarina was dressed in her traditional Guatemalan traje, which he recognized from when he came to visit me earlier this year. They ate BLTs and drank soda. They chatted about work, family, their lives in Guatemala and the United States, with Juan serving as a translator between Katarina and my dad. They asked to see pictures of me, and took pictures with my dad and of the house. While they had taken a bus the 10 miles or so to get there, my dad drove them home afterwords.

I hope to meet Juan next year when I'm back in the U.S. next year and ask him to show me the Guatemalan restaurants in the area. I told my dad about the 3 different parts of the peace corps mission, and how his hosting people from my site for dinner at his house had so perfectly fulfilled the goals of cultural exchange and understanding. While this experience doesn't deal directly with my work here, it really meant a lot to me that after living in Guatemala for over a year and a half I was able to share a small part of my life and my family back home with people from here in my site.

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Otherwise, my work is going well. I've mostly still been observing classes. As always there are some days that are very encouraging and others that are very discouraging, and the struggle is always to make the steps forward outnumber the steps back. The routine definitely gets tedious and frustrating at times, but I suppose it's a very good thing that my role seems to be receding as the teachers continue to take over the different elements of the program on their own. They all know by now what's expected of them—whether they do it or not is a different story—but I suppose I've done my part. My official counterpart, the school superintendent, has also taken more initiative to be involved recently, which is encouraging. Yesterday when I went to see him in his office I even saw he had a “healthy schools” note hanging on the wall.

One event I've planned with my schools for this month which I'm excited about is transversal visits between my 3 schools. The idea is for all the 14 teachers to visit each others' schools over the course of the month. We hope to use the visits to share ideas and suggestions, and for me to organize some training activities. Unfortunately the first visit last week had to be postponed when the school director was in a motorcycle accident. He's ok and is at home recovering, and we plan to reschedule the visit for early september.

The United Nations has recently begun working in my area in conjunction with the TIGO foundation (TIGO is Guatemala's largest phone and telecomunications company). Part of their work is to improve local schools, and several schools in the area have received some major infrastructure improvements. 2 of my schools are among the schools to receive projects.

In Oxlajuj they just finished a project to build a new kitchen, bathrooms and sinks, and the school is currently getting a new paint job. In Ichomchaj they just started construction last week on 3 new classrooms, new bathrooms, 6 sinks, and a kitchen expansion with at least one improved cookstove.

The renovations will really make a difference, especially in Ichomchaj. They've been short 2 classrooms since last year, so 2 classes have been working in makeshift open air classrooms made of corrugated metal. The metal turns the classrooms into an oven during hot days, and on rainy days they get filled with water and mud. The stove will allow the school snack to be cooked in a healthier, more environmentally friendly way, as opposed to over an open fire as it currently is, which not only uses more wood but also creates lots of smoke which often flows into the adjacent preschool classroom. Upper respiratory infections caused by smoke inhalation are one of the two main causes of infant mortality in Guatemala, and the improved cook stove will have a chimney to prevent these problems, as well as serving as an example for the community. The new bathrooms are also very important, since I often see kids going off in the woods when the existing bathrooms are either occupied or disgustingly dirty from being broken and backed up. Possibly most important, however, are the new sinks attached to the new bathrooms. Along with upper respiratory infections, complications from diarrea are the other principal cause of infant mortality in Guatemala, and the World Health Organization estimates that the risk of diarrea can be reduced by up to 80% by adecuate hand washing. Hand washing literally saves lives, and now kids will be able to do so more easily after going to the bathroom and before eating snack.

Despite the undeniable benefits the project will bring to the schools and surrounding communities, my only reservation regards the lack of community involvement in the project. I've been talking about the need for these projects at these schools for almost a year and a half now, and trying to get the parents, school committees and local municipal government to support them, with limited progress. I've talked lots of times about the importance of sustainability and community involvement, as the peace corps philosophy stresses, and that any project must be 'tripartito'--I don't know the english equivalent, but it basically means that the project has to done in '3 parts', supported by both the local municipal government (financially) as well as the community itself (providing free labor to the masons) in order for the peace corps to support the project via the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Now another organization has come in to do these projects, and I can't help but feel the wind taken out of my sails a bit. On the other hand, however, despite the critical importance of community involvement in the education of their children, shouldn't schools with decent infrastructure—bathrooms, sinks, a kitchen, and enough classrooms—be a GIVEN, a minimum starting point, things they shouldn't have to fight for? Furthermore, I've always complained about how NGOs and other international organizations are always centered around large touristy cities like Antigua and Xela while neglecting more remote communities like the ones I live in, so it's nice to see the U.N. step in take initiative as part of the millenium goals.

Of course there's also a personal aspect of it as well. While many of my friends have played important roles in school and other infrastructure projects in their communities, I really can't take much credit for these projects other than helping to identify the needs in the schools (which I suppose is important). Every peace corps volunteer wants to feel heroic, that they played an essential role in bringing something critically important to their community. I suppose I'll have to be content with the less visible contributions I've made in the schools and community. And of course in the end I also have to keep in mind the MOST important thing: the well-being and quality of life of the kids I work with and their families. That well-being is the real reason I'm here, and is undeniably benefited by these projects.

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With only 7 and a half months left of my peace corps service, I've been thinking with increasing freqency about the future. I remember when I first started thinking about joining the peace corps, the thought of what I would do AFTER the peace corps barely crossed my mind. Now, 7 years later by my calculations, the story is somewhat different and the post-peace corps reality is quickly approaching. I remember reading somewhere during training that readjustment to life back in the states is often even harder than adjusting to living in your peace corps community was in the first place. I find this hard to believe (living here the last year and a half has been plenty hard enough), but am nonetheless determined to making the transition as painless as possible.
The more I've thought about it, the more convinced I am that graduate school is my next step. When I graduated from Hopkins I was sick of school and academics, and just wanted to get as far away from it as I could. Now, over 5 years later, things have changed quite a bit. Living in a community with a 70% illiteracy rate and where education is often not appreciated, I find myself very excited by the prospect of being back in an academically stimulating and challenging environment. For the past several months I've been looking at different masters programs in the international development/public policy field. I've made the goal to do at least one graduate school related task every day, and this has not only helped me get a good start on getting my applications together, but has also given me a new sense of purpose and motivation when my work has been frustrating or I've felt down. I've been taking an online statistics course through Carnegie Mellon University, which will hopefully strengthen my application and has also been very interesting and even fun. I'm still deciding which schools to apply to, but have decided to shoot for some very selective programs. I've been pleased to learn about some amazing financial aid possibilities, as well as some special fellowships specifically for returned peace corps volunteers. If all goes according to plan I should be starting in August of 2011, just over a year from now!