Big events this week. We started by painting Antigua red on Halloween and yesterday we ate lunch with the new ambassador. However, all of that paled in comparison to our site assignments. I had placed my bet and mentally prepared myself get the remote, arid site out in the Western highlands. To my surprise, I got Coban (the site I secretly coveted). Needless to say, I am really pleased with how things turned out. For the event, our jefe came out to the center and drew a big map of Guatemala on the ground. We all closed our eyes and our teachers placed us on our respective sites. At the same moment, we all opened up and saw our placement and sitemates.

I am going to be working on the Chirrepec Tea Cooperative and I´ll have two sitemates from the ag. marketing program. Unfortunately, another volunteer who was supposed to be placed in Coban decided to go home. It´s a bummer as she was the most knowledgeablele of all the ag. volunteers (she regularly ¨field butchered¨livestock). Since her site will be left open, my boss asked me to pick up some of her work at a school in Coban. So with that, I´ll be working with families on the cooperative and teaching to 4th and 6th graders in the city. Also, I´ll have to start Kechki classes as most families on the cooperative do not speak much Spanish.

If two months ago you had told me I´d be living in a city, teaching 4th graders and working on a tea co-op speaking kechki, I would have laughed. I had imagined the Peace Corps experience in far more rugged and subdued terms. It´s amazing to think back to the beginning of training and to see the difference between my expectations and how things have turned out.

Anyways, I´m pumped about Coban and I´ll be going back on Monday to start getting things together. Perhaps I´ll visit the Children of the Corn....