Howdee do an Tank you

"Howdee do an tank you nuv uh bruk no bones" - Guyanese Saying

We were asked to figure out this Guyanese saying during our Creolese lanugage session. I'll translate: Hello and thank you nenver broke any bones." Meaning: Manners never hurt anybody. Good to remember, at home and while travelling.

So, Guyana is amazing. This country has beautiful natural resources - fresh water from frequent rainfall, fertile soil, plenty of coconut and other fruit trees, and fresh, ocean breeze. To keep the blog to a readable length, I'm going to write about a recent holiday, and an experience in the schools.

Last week Chris and I were able to celebrate the Hindu holiday, Phagwah. It is the celebration of good over evil as we usher in Spring. It is celebrated with vegetarian food, water, and colored powder. We stay with an Afro-Guyanese homestay, so we went down to a friend's Indo-Guyanese family to celebrate. We arrived in white t-shirts to have the children dumping buckets of water over our heads. We hadn't even made it through the front gate. Thinking we would be safe inside, we entered the property, shortly following came powders of all colors, women and men smearinng it on our faces and shirts followed by a kiss on the cheek. The water represents the renewing and freshness of Spring, the colors the hope of Spring. We were fed Indian sweets and drinks, and later a vegetarian lunch of curries and rice and roti (like a tortilla). Family members, neighbors, and friends stopped by to smear us with powder and soak us with water. Everyone wishes blessings and good times. Later, we went on a walk to visit others, powdering and soaking others. Everyone was cooking and baking, sharing the fruits of their labor with us. We had no idea we would come back home so colorful. We took showers, scrubbing and scrubbing and still had green bellybuttons and red hairlines. Phagwah is a great time to be in Guyana.

We have beenn training everyday for our service, which will officially start later in April. The classroom sessions are a bit boring, but we have been able to get into the Guyanese schools several times and this week we got to teach a "Health and Family Life" session to a 5th grade class. Guyana has the 2nd highest infection rate of HIV in South America, so we are here to do HIV/AIDS education, so that is what we focused on. We did a drama about HIV attacking and taking out the immune system. After explaining the immune system and the roles of the white blood cells, we took the kids outside and I took several aside, placing red bandanas on their heads. We marched back into the group of kids like scary monsters with our 'mean, HIV faces' on. We searched out the studennts representing the immune system and surrounded them and took them out of the group, telling the students we had taken our their immune system. I had all the rest of the class fall to the ground - because without your immune system, the body can't fight off anything and will eventually die. They loved it, laughing and acting out the roles. We felt this was a family-friendly way to explain the significance of HIV/AIDS to 5th graders. The Guyanese students are amazingly well-behaved and very hard workers, so I'm very excited to get into the classrooms and start working. After doing some lessons these few weeks, I'm gaining confidence about being able to make a difference.


Oh! And I should give a happy birthday shout-out to Chris, who is now 24 and had a great Guyanese birthday on Thursday. I made him some homefries and fried eggs for breakfast. He is currently relaxing in the hammock he got for his birthday. :) He has been an amazing support as we adjust to a nenw country, climate, culture, etc... I love you, Chris! We will be separating next week as we each go and visit a current volunteer to see what life is like - he will be traveling down a river we are currently staying near to stay in an Amerindian village. I will be travelling to the other side of the country to stay in an area called "Black Bush". We're very excited to get out and see some more of the country. I have a mailing address you can use to mail things until April 8th or so. We will finish training and move to our permanent sites on April 23rd, so we'll send out that address when we have it.

Currently:
Kristin and Chris Adkins
c/o US Embassy
Attn: Peace Corps
100 Young and Duke Streets
Georgetown, Guyana
South America

We will have some ideas for care packages once we get to site later in April, but we'd love some mail and (if you really need to send something) snack food and pens. :)

Love you all!
Also, if you're interested, we do have a phone number and I'll be glad to give that to you, we can receive calls and texts.

Alright, I've finally gotten a chance to put in my two cents on this computational machine. I don't think that West Virginia has anything on Guyana - wild and wonderful what?!
Guyana... what exactly can you say? Everyone has been so nice and hostpitable. The staff has been excellent on training. All the trainees are feeling some angst, but I think it is mostly because we just want to bust out and get started on things. There is a lot of talk about resources and planning and calenders and that is all well and good, but it is so easy to get bogged down in everything and lose sight of what is important.
However, when we walk down the road and just wave to someone or sit out on the porch in the evening and watch a small family ride by on a bike - its a reminder of the people that we are here to serve.
Mushy stuff out tha way. Cows. Cows. Cows. Goats. and Dogs. Lots of em and there is not a soul watching out for them. They bark all night... so some ear plugs would be nice.
Oh and when I get home I'll have to take a picture of my elbow to illustrate the improper way to sleep with a misquito net. Lets just say that leaving your elbow touching the side of the net will leave that part of your body like an adolesence's face.
Goodness the foods and smells and sights of Guyana just blow the mind. The heat is rough, but the people are so warm and open and interested in what some 'white boys' are doing walking down the road.
And for a grand finale! Some terms:
"pork knocker" someone that mines for gold or diamonds
sometimes people will say "White boy at ya" and you reply "at ya"

Homestay

Chris and I are safely in Guyana, we started with a few days of training in Georgetown and on Thursday, we rode speed boats over to the Essiquibo (spelling?) coast. We are in a homestay in a gorgeous home right on the Atlantic ocean. We are being well taken care of by our family. The food, especially fruit, has been amazing. Right now we are doing some basic training for cultural integration and all the rules and regulations - nothing too fun :) Today, we are learning how to wash our clothes by hand, which should be quite an experience. I will have to write more later as we have more time - today is our first day with the internet, and there is quite a line to use it. We love you and miss you! Don't worry about us, we are well-taken care of.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Less than 7 hours from now, Chris and I will depart Roanoke: Philadelphia bound. This is the real beginning of our Peace Corps experience (the application process does NOT count). It has been a long road coming and I am super excited it is finally here. We have packed, sold, stored, and given away most of our things - still not sure what I'm going to do with the clothes still here. We have our super cool Gregory packs to carry on the bag, a rolly suitcase for one hand, a regular backpack to wear on the front, and a purse and camera back for the other hand.

It is amazing that we can carry all that we need to survive, yet we build and buy these huge homes to hold all of our 'stuff', and boy, do we have alot of 'stuff'. Note to self: Work on simple living and cultivating the ability to not 'need' many things.

We will have a day of training tomorrow in Philly before taking a bus to fly out of JFK tomorrow at midnight to arrive in Georgetown, Guyana on Tuesday morning. I can't wait to feel that Equatorial heat! I have been frozen for the last several months. We will meet our host families a few days after we arrive. For two months, we will have training where we learn how to do our jobs, how to fit in the culture, how to speak Creole (!), and how to survive in a rainforest. Oh, and my favorite - how to wash clothes by hand. Likely to be the most challenging part of our whole trip :) We are very much entering the unkown - I don't know what to expect, but that's okay. No, I don't know if we'll have electricity or internet or running water. I don't know if our housing will be wood, brick, or mud, or if our showers will be daily accessible. We'll figure that out along the way, and we'll communicate the mundance and the exciting via this blog and personal emails. We'll send an address as soon as we can, as well as a list of things we'll be needing :) We love you all, and well, we're Guyana miss ya.

"Desserting Us" Shin-Dig

So, we've had a few going away shin-digs put on by our lovely parents :) How blessed Chris and I are to have parents who love us and will miss us so. We will miss them dearly, as well.

We spent last week in Kentucky supporting Paintsville basketball, Quick Recall, and Paintsville Lake. The ice storm did a number on Kentucky's trees, homes, and roads. Thankfully, most everyone had their power back. It was great to watch some of Lucas' basketball game. They move at a pace that allow me to learn a little about the rules of the games. Lucas is going to be quite a player once he reaches high school. Andy is quite a player, but due to some poor coaching, he's no longer playing. Tessa is progressing quite nicely with her music, acting, and academic skills. She will do quite well at Berea if she decides to go there. Barry and Karen stay busy with work and the kids. We also headed to Georgetown to see Audry and Rudy. They are doing well in their beautiful home, enjoying more and more vegetarian foods as we exchange tips and ideas for vegetarian cooking. We also got to hang out with grandchildren Gavin and Cyrus. It is getting stranger to think of all we will miss out on while gone for two years. There will be many championship games, plays, graduations, weddings, birthdays, Christmases, etc... shared by family members and friends while we are gone. This is one of the only sobering facets of our adventure. Our favorite feature of the Paintsville party (after the friends and family) was the cake. See above. "Good luck, Chris and Kristin. We're 'Guyana' miss you." How creative??

We came back home to prepare for the "Desserting Us" party in Roanoke. We had many, many friends and family show up to help us celebrate our departure. Again, it was amazing to see each person and to think about what they are going to experience in the next two years that we would miss: law school, weddings, births, new jobs, holidays, etc... Thanks to everyone who came out - it was great to spend time with you. The boys prepared the bonfire and fireworks while mom and I prepped quite a bit of food and decor to fit our rather loose theme of Valentines day/Jungle/Global. My Berea girls came in for the weekend and it was great to spend some quality time with the people who inspired who I have become. Hopefully, they and others will be visiting us in Guyana - we welcome visitors! It will make the time fly by. In an effort to keep posts short and sweet, I'll leave you with some pictures from the party :)

Going to Guyana

Chris and Kristin, here. We are going to blog our way through our United States Peace Corps experience and beyond. We hope you enojoy our stories as we share our experiences. We will miss all of you greatly and hope to keep in contact through and beyond the blog.

We are currently living and working in Roanoke, Kristin is waiting patiently to quit her job at HSN and Chris is enjoying his last few weeks with his clients. We have finished months of paperwork, doctors appointments, and daily email checking to find out if we made it. Currently, we are scheduled to leave February 21st, more exact info to come. We are off to Guyana in South America to work with education and community health - specifically, HIV/AIDS.

Kristin is volunteering with the Presbyterian Community Center to gain some experience. We have purchased our Sony Alpha 300 camera, our awesome Gregory internal framed packs, and an umbrella. :) We are getting ready to sell, give back, and store all of our belongings that won't fit into our packs. More importantly, we are ready to go. :)