So last Friday there was this job fair in Chiquimula and ADISO was invited to attend. I hadn´t planned on going, but Carlos asked me if i was going to come too. So i agreed. We got everything ready the day before: banner, brouchures, keychains to sell, photos, cpu, and a bunch of other stuff. Since we don´t have a car and it would have been difficult to bring all this stuff on the bus, dra. Flor said she´d lend us her car. We decided to leave at 6:30 am because there´s road construcion and we wanted to have enough time to set up the stand. I woke up at 5:40 and made my way to the office by 6:15 as milo and i had a agreed. I was the first to arrived and unfortunatley i didn´t have my keys to the office (mirna accidently took them to san luis earlier in the week.) so i sat on the curb for about 20 minutes. Milo showed up and carlos with the truck shortly after. We loaded up the truck and headed out. We passed by the gas station but it was closed. Luckily we had just rented two tents the day before so we had money to pay for gas. I suggested that we go to the other gas station a little out of the way, but what choice did we have. we got gas and met edwin in the terminal. It was around 7:30 and we were on our way. The feria de trabajo was in a girl´s high school and we set up in the gym-auditorium. I was just thinking about how professional we looked with all our equipment when we realized that we´d forgotten the mouse and keyboard in ipala. Oops. Carlos called his little brother (his family lives in chiqui) to ask him to lend us his. The fair was supposed to start at 9 or 10 but they didn´t start letting people in until around 10:30. i quickly realized that job fair means the same in spanish as it does in english. People were coming to look for work and we were without jobs to offer. Domino´s was there and wackenhut and the gas company. The stand to the right of us was a woman´s co-op from estanzuela. I started chatting with a woman as she handicrafted. Appearently the co-op was actually defunct because the former president stole all the money. But this woman and her friend were continuing on. The stand to the left was guatecompras, this governmental entity that monitors the government´s spending to make everything more transparent. Neither of these stands had jobs to offer either. Carlos and edwin took off to give some sort of project presentation to the Environmental Ministry and milo and i were left with the bad 80´s techno music and the few people who passed by our stand. I decided to take advantage of the captive audience and invited people to come visit the volcano and give them brochures and stuff. Then i had to put the smack down and talk to the dj to get him to change the music. I still have the music burned into my mind. It was horrible. A woman who works for a water park in río hondo called valle dorado walked over to us and we started chatting. Later she came back with 2 free passes to the water park. Sweet!! Then she came back a few minutes later with 2 more for milo. Double sweet. I want us to go as an office, but worst case i´ll just ask sindy or ema to go with me. I was told there´s a pool side bar and nothing sounds sweeter right now. Anyway carlos and edwin came back; they said the presentation went well and seemed happy. Edwin decided to leave and go back to ipala. We thought we were going to get lunch but really it was just a can of supercola (which i declined.) carlos brought back tacos de papa with were deliciously deep-fried. I had a couple and gave the rest to milo. We had another small dilemma: the president of guatemala was in ipala on Friday. He was in ipala to inagurate some obras like the new bus terminal and the paving of the road from the highway to chaguiton (halfway up the volcano.) before you needed a 4 wheel drive car to make it up to the aldea, but after the asphalt, any car should be about to make it. (except maybe a taz, right kate?) this is going to be great for tourism on the volcano. Because people are lazy sob´s and why climb up a volcano when you can drive up it in the comfort of your own car? Anyway, the president was supposed to be on the volcano to inagurate the project, but unfortunately the two representitives of ADISO who were supposed to be there, you know representing us, were mia. So, carlos considered going, but he had another presentation to give to INGUAT (the guate tourism board) in the afternoon in chiqui. So we had 3 people at this job fair in chiqui where we didn´t really have any business being, and nobody on the volcano which we co-administrate to greet the president of guatemala. Es típico. Carlos and milo went to eat lunch and i held down the fort. There wasn´t much to hold down, because nobody was coming in. The boys came back and the afternoon dragged on. There was a rumor that the president was going to come to the job fair later in the afternoon but i didn´t believe it for a second. This job fair was a flop. He was going to send some scouts in ahead of time and they were going to tell him as much. Carlos took off around 2:45 to give the other presentation. Milo and i tried not to fall asleep. A little later on some people started arriving. But not just any people. People in army gear who took up sniper positions on the roof and people who had bomb sniffing dogs on leashes. Alright. And then de repente, he arrived. Oscar Berger. (pronouned bear-shay) El presidente de la republica de guatemala. The band played. People stood up. And he started in with his pocas palabras talking about labor and work and i didn´t really listen. He was surrounded by a small croud of people holding up their cell phones to take pictures and record what he was saying. I walked up and snapped a few fotos too and went back to the stand. I called carlos to tell him to hurry up and come back. Milo wasn´t very excited. He´s angsty anti politics guy. I was excited. He began to walk around to the stands. He shook the guatecompras´ guys hands and i put my hand out too. He gave me a kiss on the cheek. I walked around the stand to get next to him. I kept thinking what with chris solarz do? Chris solarz would get the foto. I gave the president a keychain of the laguna and asked if he had been here. He said of course; they had just come from there, inagurating the asphalt project. (oh right.) i thanked him for all his support and said, ¨Gracias a Usted por todo su apoyo.¨. and then we took the foto with my camera. He gave me another handshake and kiss and he was off. I was pretty stoked to say the least. I´d never met the head of state before. Kick ass. Carlos came back a bit later. ¨You missed the president!!¨ i said. It turns out that the guy from inguat he was supposed to met up with didn´t even show up so he went there por gusto. Bummer. We started packing up but had to wait to leave until the crowds had cleared out. We stopped by carlos´s parents house to drop off the keyboard and mouse. His mom is so adorable. And she called me chula (cute) too. I always like it when little old ladies call me chula. When we got going again, the car wouldn´t start. So milo had to push us down the hill a ways and the engine turned over. Somehow the windshield wipers got turned on and carlos couldn´t figure out how to turn them off. It was pretty hilarious, driving around in the blazing chiquimula sun with the wipers on overdrive. I couldn´t stop laughing. Then i reached over and figured out how to turn them off. We were in a pretty good mood. All in all the day had been successful. And it turns out the president just circled the volcano in his helicopter anyway. we were headed back to ipala when carlos got a phone call. After he hung up, he seemed a more serious. I asked him que pasó? It was edwin. The rumor of the moment was that ADEGO, another ngo in ipala that focuses more on agriculture had just been promised half a million quetzales by the president. Not a big surprise. The mayor of ipala, roél pérez is the president of all the mayors of guatemala and of the same political party as berger. He´s also a big tool. He also doesn´t like ADISO very much. The president of the board of directors and my first counterpart ran against him in the last election. And in general people associated with ADISO are not of his political party. So the muni doesn´t help us all that much. And some say they´ve done stuff to sabotage (or sabowtage) us. on the other hand the muni hearts ADEGO so much. They have free office space and get a lot more financial help. And their secretary was La Flor de la Feria (ms. Ipala) last year. (her twin sister used to work for ADISO.) And now they´ve got Q500,000 to work with and we have Q60,000 in debt and no clear way of how to pay it off. ADISO and ADEGO aren´t rivals really. In fact a former executive director of ADISO works in ADEGO and just came in to visit last week. it´s just ugly politics. So the rest of the drive home was a little more somber. Although i said, ¨you know carlos, they may have half a million queztales, but we got a picture with the president.¨ carlos smiled. ¨Tienes razon.¨
On Monday morning it was raining. strange. Really strange. It never ever rains this time of year but here it is sprinkling at 8 in the morning. I walked to the office. I was the first one there. I now had my keys and opened the door. There was some mail on the floor. Light bill. My newsweek from peace corps. V-day postcard from mara. (thanks mara!) letter from unc chapel hill. I read the postcard, threw away the newsweek, and opened up the unc letter. Don´t tell me my application is missing something this late in the game. The letter started out something like this . . . ¨we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into unc chapel hill´s graduate program.¨ what?? i´m not supposed to be getting these for at least another couple months, right? The letter was dated feb 2. i did a victory lap around the office. Then i started calling people. I called alexa (left a message) and my sister (woke her up) and my parents (woke them up). What a great sign. I was so happy. All that gre studying, all those applications, all those emails, all the difficulty of doing it from guatemala, all seems so long ago. When i think about all i did between june and january to apply to grad school, i can´t believe it. nor do i have the energy to do it all over again now. To all my friends who have applied to grad school or are going to, i salute you. because it sucks. A lot. But believe me when you get that first letter of acceptance, it´s suddenly so worth it.
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