{"id":1495,"date":"2009-04-16T23:50:19","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T05:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2009-04-18T18:56:14","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T00:56:14","slug":"monkeys-and-buses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/monkeys-and-buses\/","title":{"rendered":"Monkeys and Buses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>With a title like that, you KNOW this post should be cool.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/monkeys-ruby.jpg\" target=\"photo\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/monkeys-ruby1.jpg\" width=\"266\" height=\"200\" alt=\"monkeys ruby.jpg\" class=\"main_img_right\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We had our Regional Security Meeting yesterday. It happens once a year or so, and all thirty or so PCVs that work in the department of Huehuetenango get together with the security director to talk about what we&#8217;re supposed to do in an emergency. Being a US Federal Agency, the Peace Corps is pretty into the whole &#8220;emergency preparedness&#8221; thing. I am not allowed to go into much detail in the blog, but suffice it to say that we are well looked-after should there be a massive earthquake\/ hurricane\/ civil disturbance\/ nuclear war in Guatemala. Though, I was somewhat disappointed to find out that they actually DON&#8217;T have gatling-gun-toting blackhawk helicopters on standby with a team of commandos to extract us from our sites. It&#8217;s like someone telling you Santa Claus doesn&#8217;t exist.<\/p>\n<p>What does this have to do with monkeys, you ask? Well, the hotel that hosts our meetings has a tiny private ZOO attached to it, of all things. How random. The star attraction is a pair of monkeys. I emailed my friend Darren, who is a primatologist, to ask him what kind they are and I will let you know what he tells me. <span style=\"color: #FF0000;\">[update: he says they are spider monkeys, the smallest and most social of the new world primates.]<\/span> While I was &#8220;talking&#8221; to one of the monkeys, I felt something caress my face, and was startled to see that she&#8217;d sneaked her tail out of the cage and past my perhipheral vision, just to touch me. I had to laugh; I got tricked by a monkey! I could see her hands and feet the whole time, but I forgot about the prehensile tail. Oh, and the big pink monkey outside of the cage is Emily.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/ayudante-cargo.jpg\" target=\"photo\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/ayudante-cargo1.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"266\" alt=\"ayudante cargo.jpg\" class=\"main_img\" \/><\/a> &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/bus-cargo.jpg\" target=\"photo\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.JFanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/bus-cargo1.jpg\" width=\"354\" height=\"266\" alt=\"bus cargo.jpg\" class=\"main_img\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On our way back to our site, I was waiting to get onto the bus and saw the <em>ayudantes<\/em> running up and down the ladders of the bus, loading cargo. Those guys work HARD. And who&#8217;d have ever thought a school bus could carry so much stuff? I had to take a picture. It&#8217;s like an ant carrying a giant chunk of bread. And the best part? I posted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Q-ziAVIhnZw\" target=\"_blank\">a video of it on YouTube<\/a> so you can enjoy the full effect.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With a title like that, you KNOW this post should be cool. We had our Regional Security Meeting yesterday. It happens once a year or so, and all thirty or so PCVs that work in the department of Huehuetenango get together with the security director to talk about what we&#8217;re supposed to do in an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jims-guatemala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1544,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions\/1544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jfanjoy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}