So here’s the thing, week 8 was so much better than the other weeks.
You wanna know why? It was week 8. One week from the end.
On Thursday of week 7, Thanksgiving, we got our sites! And boy, was I counting my blessings and piling up gratitude in both my arms like  (more on that, soon). After week 7, everything was better because nothing mattered (practicum over, site placement done).

The last three weeks of training built on each other because, unlike weeks 1 through 5, things had their place. I can’t describe it better. In the last weeks, days blurred together as they accumulated in cumulation. I had to let these days pass and hold onto the good stuff to write about later. Too much internal clogged up to write because of no time alone, no time to unwind, think, breathe, be in a blank space. Too much more to get through before I could pause to think.

The events leading to the end (posterity):

Monday Nov 28th- Progress Check #1,079, plus a language proficiency exam #141, our new language teacher assignments
Tuesday- Host family training (how to pay rent, etc…), Security Session on: LGBTQIA panel on sexual identity in Guatemala, Readiness to serve offering (I sang a song and read a word for each person) At home, I packed my stuff up
Wednesday- More language classes, other stuff, I finished packing my stuff up
Thursday- I don’t remember, oh yes- Mayan language day, leave our big bags out to get picked up by PC
Friday- Swear-in
Saturday– Free day in Antigua
Sunday– Leave our host families, 6 Hour workshop with our new work partners on Youth in Development
Monday- Workshop all day- How to deliver feedback, Who is Cuerpo de Paz?
Tuesday December 6th– Leave for sites with work partners 

On Saturday, November 27, I slept in. I slept ’til 1:30pm don’t tell nobody.

Reality check: I learned that I can’t sleep in on here, ever. I love sleep and yes I take a medicine that makes me drowsy but the way my family reacted about it made me feel shitty. It’s like: yes it’s my free time except not really because if I decide to sleep that’s not acceptable here. I’ve slept in late before so this time was one time too many: “Natalia, haces esto en Los Estados?” I shrugged and said: “Sometimes on the weekend.” And then I told them I take a medicine that makes me drowsy and Javier said “Ese es una excusa,” jovially, but it hurt my feelings. It’s a cultural difference: I’m not implying they’re insensitive or that I am lazy (I woke up at 5:40 every day this week to be at the Camioneta by 6:30am). But I learned, well, I can’t sleep in here. I thought more about my privilege as a US American and that sleep is not a coping mechanism in this developing country. You wake up every day and do your duties, no matter if you’re hungover, tired, overworked or simply can’t deal. It was a wake-up call, literally and figuratively, and as I walked around Antigua trying to find the cheesecake I thought cost 150 but really just cost 65 because I’m still no good with numbers.

And after I sought supplies in Antigua (cheesecake and Johnnie Walker as thank-you gifts) and cash from the ATM, we had a celebratory dinner for my send-off which felt a bit forced. I think this is because I don’t know the rules of an adequate thank you in this culture. What are the right words? How do I express genuine gratitude and tell this family that they have imprinted on my heart in their time, words and deeds? In the US, I know what constitutes a thank-you, even by region of the country. Here I have no idea. I felt like I should give a toast, words of despedida, but mostly I was overwhelmed by all that I had to do before I left. I wasn’t ready to leave site, I was frustrated by training, and tired. And still adjusting to living here. And there were still flea bites all over my upper thighs. My brothers directed the conversation to me, which seemed an appropriate gesture as it was ‘my dinner,’ they asked where the other volunteers are going. About other volunteers: “Ella habla bien el Español?” and Rosa Maria responds to her sons: “Sí, ella habla muy bien El Español” and I felt my heart sink. Why do I care if she tells them that my friends speak good Spanish? Would she tell them I speak good Spanish? Blech. Sensitive over nothing.

Then on to of the apathy of my departure, there was a rub: After making cupcakes for the office in several attempts, my host mom thought they were just for the family. After she discovered my plan to take them to the office, it was a quiet breakfast. I don’t know how passive aggression works here but given how indirect the culture is, I am imagine it is a formal tool of communication.
Plus I was in her kitchen making cupcakes, running up the electric bill, using the aluminum cupcake molds she gave me. She told me her son noticed that I left the light on over the sink the night before (because I can’t see when I walk to the bathroom after 8pm, outside) and she told me the lights here are very expensive and to please turn them off. Was it worth me even getting into it? “I’m sorry I forgot that time but I promise I try really hard to always turn them off. I promise I have been very conscious.” The electricity or ‘la luz’ is very expensive in context.

Then host-brother Francisco asked her the morning after I was packing: “Is everything okay with Natalie? I heard her moving things around in her room and I’m not sure if she was upset” So after the stuffy,
Between the cupcake confusion, the electricity costs, the sleep-crimination and fumbly dinner, I was unfit and fettered by the foundation that got me through training in the first place. Maybe it was time to go. I don’t want to offend. I haven’t even mentioned that the hot water heater stopped working in the shower after I moved in..

This is my first time living with a host family at age 30! It was harder and better than I could have predicted, learning a language is harder and better, too. Total immersion takes guts: the barrier of language, cultural norms, gestures, and the cloud of collective uncertainty collected around me like dust bunnies to carpeted corners. My scholastic hubris set me up for Spanish exasperation, my personal confidence shifted when the cultural rug was ripped from under my very socks.

On one of these lax evenings alone in my be-tiled outdoor square room, drapes pulled, I found Lin Manuel Miranda’s vine collection on youtube. If anyone’s asking for my vote, one problem with globalization is that Broadway is so close: I can feel inferior with the click of a button. Hook line sinker and I’m flailing around inside my career doubts and identity losses again, the broken record of Broadway vs. ActualWay. And I’m in Guatemala eating beans in search of something-yet-to-be-defined but surely won’t end in a Tony. Beans and toots.

Insecurity + Host family rubs- left the lights on, slept in, made cupcakes for the office, maybe broke the water heater, maybe broke the coffee pot, Awkward goodbye dinner + Not enough space from volunteers + Packing up all my stuff + Meeting socios + Leaving for site

And this is how I am feeling as I leave for my real job. 

So stack it all up: this is how I was feeling when my job, POR FIN, got real in Guatemala. On Saturday I left my perch in Ciudad Vieja, bags piled up on my back wearing heels and headed to the gas station, cursing the powers that be for expecting us to move out of our 9-week homes and meet our 2-year work partners on the same morning, requiring that I wear business casual as I clopped along by the donkeys and camionetas. When I got to the gas station and saw my colleagues crying as they hugged their families goodbye, I realized I had it much easier than them. My CV family hosts students for a living but for these other families, their trainees became a part of their lives. I loved my time with my family, in spite of the last-minute misunderstandings, but I wasn’t crying. My heart didn’t hurt but my shoulders ached and I was just dying to five minutes by myself. I felt like The Grinch. Off to meet our work partners.

Clint steps into a pile of dog poop. He walks to the gas station to clean it off. We all sit in the bus, Tanya wrapped in the arms of her host mom, Amanda looking on to the 2 year-old in pigtails waving goodbye, and myself, seated stoically.

We get to The Mirador, I check into a room of four other girls, fuming, and walk to the office. As I am leaving the hotel, I say a cold ‘hola’ to a man I don’t realize is my FUTURE WORK PARTNER. We get taught how to avoid unwanted attention all day, and the one time I am supposed to be friendly to a strange man, he’s my key to the community: Fabulous.

We meet in the conference room downstairs. I have to keep reminding myself that it isn’t practice this time. 
My old job as an Executive Assistant, I was basically a fancy coffee server with skinny legs with the power of buzzing the door open. I got out of that job to travel Europe, major bucket list contender, and did not look back.
And what do you know? The first time I’m working with a man-stranger-coworker, I find myself asking if he wants coffee.
I want to kick myself. The Southern woman in me wants to be hospitable, the feminist gen-y-er in me wants to flee.
We do a site presentation and manage to stumble through. He looks tired. I know I’m tired.

During dinner, we sit with all of our work partners and do you know how helpful 9 weeks of training feels in this moment? Basura. I’m torn by the desire to check-in with my US friends and supports- this is the biggest challenge yet!- meeting our socios. What are they like, how are you feeling, how are you liking them? Except our socios are sitting between us and the tortilla basket. We are anxious, nervy, awkwardly feeling out our first ever Guatemalan work relationships as the dishes of soup get passed around, while sitting with our fast friends from training, trying to make small talk in Spanish.

Teawan keeps speaking to me in English, and I keep responding in Spanish out of an attempt not to exclude them. But she keeps talking to me in English, so I eventually just tell her, I want to speak in English out of respect to them. She says sorry, tries to speak in Spanish, but reverts back to English. I don’t blame her. We are all nervous and we are all about to leave one another to go to who knows where.

Full day of seminars with our new socios on Monday and leave for our sites in separate microbuses, like a carpool line in elementary school, subway sandwiches in hand. The goodbyes wax on as I take trips to and from Bus 7, loading it up with all my nonsense. As the microbus roles off of the campus, I go through a mental checklist to make sure all the important goodbyes happen: yep, somehow, the friendships that mattered the most intersected on my way to take-off. I sit in the magic of that for a moment, and I make small-talk with Pearlene and her socios, trying to grasp that this is for real.

After our friendly Spanish chats I doze into sleep: I’ve got the backwards facing row all to myself.
An hour later, I wake up to the constant jostling of these winding mountain roads. I say goodbye to Pearlene and drop her off in her new home, wishing her all the best.

I sit, facing backwards, and ride into a cloud.