IDA--I forget what this acronym means...

To catch up from my internet absence, I’ll write about my IDA trip. This was an opportunity for trainees to visit Volunteers dispersed throughout the country. The farthest site was 8 hours away and the nearest only 30 minutes. Guess which one I got? A lovely 8 hour bus drive on four different buses to San Pedro Necta, Huehuetenango near the border of Mexico. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more!

I visited another solo Healthy Schools volunteer, Mari, at her site in lovely Huehuetenango. She lives in a large town nestled amongst green mountains. It is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in Guatemala thus far. While there, I helped her put on a four hour sustainability workshop for her teachers, we attended a school football game when classes were canceled, swam at a local pool in the woods, hiked through some coffee plants, ate in a comedor, made mini pizzas, watched a few movies, attended a Life Planning class for teens put on by another volunteer, played cards, and laughed a LOT. When I proclaimed that I felt like I was on vacation with a friend of mine, Mari replied, “Guess what? This is the life of a volunteer!“

Only in Peace Corps does a random stranger show up at your door to share your bed, your food, and your jokes only to become a friend within hours. At one point we were watching a movie in which I noticed the characters were driving in a car with seatbelts. I turned to Mari saying, “I feel like I never wear seatbelts here!” To which she responded, “You just stood in the back of a pickup truck all the way down a huge mountain.”

Good point.