Get Pumped

A year ago today I officially sworn in as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer (with so many milestones and anniversaries it is hard to keep up, right?), and therefore I have exactly one year left in Guatemala. To mark the anniversary I was considering writing up a list of goals for my last year, but then I realized I don’t have any. I jest. I have lots of goals actually, but I fear they would be of little interest to most people (like my blog in general), so I am going to share with you just one of them.

I was a gym junkie in the states—the kind that recognizes everyone else in the weight room on a Friday afternoon. Lifting weights, mixed in with some running or preferably a sport for cardio, is my favorite form of exercising. But since arriving in Guatemala I have yet to enjoy this pastime. The closet gym to me is in Cobán, and the thought of waiting/traveling for an hour and a half roundtrip in a packed micro after getting home from work after 5:00 pm is sufficiently unpleasant enough to have prevented me from ever going. One of my goals for this year was to work up the ganas to actually go to the gym.

But God has smiled upon me and instead of having to motivate myself to travel to the gym, He has brought the gym to Tactic. Lisa and I were walking through town yesterday on the way to one of the aldeas when we came upon the just opened Tactic Gym, fit with a squatting apparatus, bench press, free weights, and other equipment to my liking. In highly emotional moments I revert back to English, and to Lisa’s confusion I just started spouting out in my mother tongue how excited I was that there is now a gym in Tactic. I went in to ask the owner about times and prices, and he warned me that in the evenings the cycling machines are usually all taken. “Vaya,” I said with a laugh, “No estoy interesada en las bicicletas. Quiero usar esa máquina (pointing to the squat machine…I have no idea how to say “squat” in Spanish).” With a surprised look on his face, he replied that it shouldn’t be a problem.

So I have yet to go to the gym, but it kind of makes me a little giddy just knowing that it is here so close. Lisa has expressed interest in going with me to get rid of her “flabby stomach” (I told her that problem could be remedied with exercises I could teach her that can be done at home, but she said she would be embarrassed to work out in front of her mom and sisters), and I am so excited to finally recover some muscle tone. My goal for year two is to get pumped—not just in the physical way, but also in an overly-excited-teenage-summer-camp type way (I know it is horribly cheesy).

It is odd to think of a whole year as the “home stretch,” but with the rapidity in which my first year passed, I feel as if my time left in Guatemala is short. I want to live every moment here as if it were my last (yes, admittedly much easier said than done). I want to be pumped every time I give charlas to the women in their communities. I want to be pumped to find more new clients in the states and here in Guatemala. I want to be pumped to get Nu’Kem Fair Trade “certified.” I want to be pumped to learn how to weave (I joke with the women that after I learn I am going to steal their designs and start my own business in the states). I want to be pumped to pass on more business knowledge to the board of directors. I want to be pumped to live everyday—every fleeting day that I have left in this gorgeous country working with these amazing women—to its fullest.