Happy New Year!

Wow! Is has been a few of months since I have last written on my blog and I feel kind of guilty but it was a busy past few months. The last time I wrote I was just returning from Alaska and since then I have celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.

October was interesting enough with its own twist and turns but to keep this post from going on to long I will condense. Halloween in Guyana, at least the part that I live in, is not celebrated as it is back in the ole’USofA. I was okay I couldn’t trick or treat but I felt that I had to do something! I hung out with some fellow PCVs and played a game called Apples to Apples while wearing my cookie monster shirt.

Somewhere near the end of October I had decided to go to in Barbados and run in a marathon. I spent most November mornings waking up at 4-5 to run anywhere from 5-20 miles. Where I live in Guyana is a curious place an hour or so before the sun comes up. No lights, the place is only lit by the stars and moon. Where I run there are a lot of rice fields. November is a time when much of the rice fields are flooded and at night time they look like big ponds. Sometimes if the rice field goes on for many acres, they can look like giant lakes. I was able to catch a couple of pretty amazing shooting stars as well. I swear I saw two that had a inch tail of star dust!

I had no one to train with but myself but that does not mean I trained alone. People’s dogs played I great role in my training. I run with my IPOD in and when it is that dark, people’s little mutt guard dogs like to pop out of know where and remind you that you can probably pick up your pace. I know some people who say that they have been bitten but so far I have stayed off the menu.

I also run with a lot of cows…I always thought cows sleep mostly standing up and maybe they do in the US but here they have no problem cozying down on the ground. Most open their eyes and take a peak at me and go back to sleep. I can see them thinking, “What an ass!” And I can tell you with almost complete certainty they aren’t thinking about the group of sleeping donkeys I am about to run past. Sometimes I would give chase to the cows or their calves on my way back down the sandy dirty road. If the cow was smart it just had to scoot to the side of the road and I would keep going and they would be out of my way. Yet sometimes, if I got lucky, they just keep running straight and would let me give chase a ways down the sandy road. Road-Kill ranges from possums to cats, dogs, and If it rained that night or early in the morning you will see many toads, (or as the Guyanese call them Crappos) that you think something biblical might be happening. The strangest road kill I saw during a rainy morning was a Caiman Gator about a yard long head to tail with tread marks around his back and stomach. I am sorry to admit that why I was running by it I was searching for a stick because I really wanted to grab a stick and poke at it!

Thanksgiving was great. Around 10 PCVs came together and we had all the fixings! The only thing that was lacking was NFL football!

I started the first part of December in Barbados! I successfully ran and finished the marathon. I ran the marathon the 2^nd day I was there and had no problem recuperating on the beaches of Barbados! The white sands and blue water are a treat to the eye. It was a nice change of pace and I didn’t want to leave but you must carry on.

For Christmas a bunch of us PCVs got together in a place in Bartica. We had 3 great dinners and tons of free time to spend it on making each other laugh. Throw in some Scrabble, UNO, lots of IPOD music and yes, even some sumo wrestling then you have a good idea of our 3 days…almost.