So here it is, I started a blog.

I am a little over a month into training at the moment and I must say that Guatemala has been a great time. Although I spent most of last week stuck out west in Xela due to the Hurricane, everything has been an experience.


While most of Guatemala got nailed pretty hard by the storm, we managed to have a good time in the hotel. The rains caused landslides blocking the roads out of Xela, killed the power and broke all the water lines. We got by with rainwater and gas stoves. The storm made the trip a wash, but the nights of cards, politics and drinking made it a worthwhile time to really get to know the other trainees.

Beyond last week, training has been a good time. I landed a great host family that is the envy of everyone else. A couple weeks ago, I went along with them to their family finca down by the El Salvador border. The place was incredible. They grew about 25 different crops on a huge piece of land up in the mountains. It was a family plot with 3 houses, about 30 family members and four generations. There are no roads in and we had to walk a mile to arrive. It´s seriously a scene out of 100 Years of Solitude.

Beyond the travels, I have been fairly busy with training. I opted out of Spanish classes to focus more on technical training. So far, we´ve terraced some land, planted a bunch of vegetables and built a chicken coop. We finished the coop last week and bought about 115 chickens to raise and produce eggs. At the moment, we´ve got about 100 somewhat happy chicks, hens and roosters under one roof.

Unfortunately, of the 15 full grown birds we bought, some have gotten sick and we´ve had to cull them from the flock. When this whole ordeal began and the hens started getting sick, it was my job to kill them (I had mentioned my hunting experience before, so I got the job). My instructor told me to take the hen down past the avocado trees, do the deed and to then bury her. Instead, everyone else came to watch. I thought I could get by with the old ¨wounded duck¨move and just snap the neck without making much of a fuss. So I grabbed the hen by the feet and the head and pulled. Nothing happened, it just sat there and blinked at me. On a second and more concerted try, I gave the bird a harder pull and managed to tear the head right off. As there are three Dan´s in the ag program and we need to distinguish ourselves, I now sometimes find myself responding to Dan the Butcher. However, the other Dans find their names prefaced by Diarrhea and Delicate Peaches, so it could be worse.

So that´s the first month in a nutshell. I´ve got more training in the center for the next couple weeks before we go on another training trip to Coban. Hopefully, I learn some more about where my site will be.