Frirst Day of Work and More Pictures!

I don´t know why the pictures are all screwy, but the first two are me on a zipline that Pabel built in the middle of the rainforest! There´s like this really cool park with swings and stuff for the kids. I´m being helped by one of the nursing students from BC who was here.

The next two pictures are my home for the moment! The bug is my first bug in my room. He was about the size of my thumb which doesn´t seem that bad, but is pretty gross. I´ve seen a lot worse since, but not in my bedroom yet, knock on wood.

I definitely won´t be able to keep updating this often but we came into town today so I could get my bank account set up so I can get PAID! Woot.





My address here, if anyone wants to mail me anything *cough cough* is


Angela Cruz


Cooperativa Integral Agricola Nuevo Horizonte


Kilometro 443 Carretera Guatemala a ciudad Flores


Peten, Municipio Santa Ana


Departamento de Peten


Guatemala





it usually takes about a week, depending when you send it since we only get the mail once a week. Here´s my pre-typed update!










Day 4 – Connecting with Canada and my first day of work!!

9:45 pm

The office was really great. Annie was awesome, introducing me to everybody and translating. Everyone has been really welcoming so far and sympathetic, saying that I'll learn Spanish quickly (and I understood that!). My primary supervisor, Luis, is from the International Bank of Development (I think that's what it's called) and was brought on to work on the microcredit program. I am soooooo happy he's there. He's formalizing things and has a whole plan about what we need to do. He thinks I know more about business and economics than I do, but I'm going to work hard to study up with Jeffrey's textbooks and downloading things in Santa Elena.

On that note, I really need to buy a USB port/figure out if my portable hard drive works properly. It crashed yesterday, so I'm hoping when I try again (maybe tomorrow), it'll be up and running again. I brought a CD to the internet cafe today and it only worked in one computer. Unfortunately, that wasn't the same computer as the one that had inputs for my microphone headset so I could talk to Jeffrey. So I was totally inefficient and was rushed with my emails and blog update. I also didn't have enough time to put up all of the pictures that I wanted. I forgot to look up some stuff (addresses!). Next time, I'm definitely going in with a good plan. In two hours, I still felt really rushed.

It was wonderful to use Skype to talk to Jeffrey! My name on Skype is angelafcruz if you guys want to add me and maybe get to talk sometime. I'm going to try to go back to Santa Elena on Saturday, partly because I don't want to sit around the cooperative being really depressed like last weekend.

They're going to pay for Spanish classes for sure! Joanie convinced Mirko from CUSO today. So hopefully sometime next week, I'll be off to do an intense, one week course. The ones I saw online had internet available, so I'm hoping that's the case there. It's going to be hard because I'm settling in here and I feel like this is at least a semi-home. Being torn away from another home is going to be crappy and then I'll have the whole other culture shock experience coming back AGAIN after a week. Or maybe I can commute because the school that Annie found was in the Peten. Not sure. We have to call around demain.

I've started speaking with a bit of a French-Canadian accent which is really bizarre. Trying very hard to not use it.

I got to call my mother at breakfast today using Annie's cell. I cried like a baby, which was pretty embarrassing, but it was great to hear her. I'm fine being away from my family in Toronto, but mentally it's really hard being THIS far. I got a cellphone while in Santa Elena and called Jeffrey and Mom when I got back to the cooperative. I cried like a baby, again, when talking to both of them. I dragged my butt out of my room and sat in the middle of the hotel to talk to the Western people and keep myself from crying too much.

On that note, I'm a bit of an emotional wreck. Mostly because of the lack of sleep and I'm starting to feel sick. Gravol appears to be kicking in. I need to just crash now and hopefully feel rested in the morning!