Christmas Season without the snow

So the holiday season has been pretty rough and lonely here, but I am trying to take one day at a time and appreciate the new experiences. Thanksgiving Day went by, and it really did not feel like Thanksgiving. I spent the day at a conference at a Presbyterian seminary in San Felipe. The conference, which was called "Caminando Juntas" ("Walking Together") was run by CEDEPCA (the organization that my director Marcia works for) and was designed to educate Guatemalan women about domestic violence and child abuse. It was a really awesome experience, because there were women there from so many different parts of the country and so from many different walks of life - some who had been victims of domestic abuse, and others who wanted to learn more about the issues so that they could help women in their churches and communities. It was a really powerful workshop, and it was inspiring to see so many women speaking out and stepping forward as leaders in their communities, since women here are so often marginalized and left without the same opportunities or access to education. It was also fun to see some of the dynamics of the group. Celeste and Callie (two of the other volunteers) and I had shared a room the night before with an eclectic mix of women, all packed into bunk-beds. As we were trying to fall asleep, there was one rather big lady who started laughing for no reason and couldn´t stop. An older lady in the room told her to quiet down and then tried to sing some lullabies to calm her down, but that only made her laugh even harder. Meanwhile, two ladies on the bunk beds below me chatted in Mam (a Mayan language), as the laughing and lullaby-singing continued for quite some time. The next morning, we were awoken at about 5am by more commotion, and the whole situation was really pretty absurd and funny, although I didn´t get much sleep that night. In the morning, Celeste, Callie, and I got to take a dip in the seminary swimming pool (in our pajamas, since we didn´t have our bathing suits). It was our defiant celebration of Thanksgiving, as we tried not to think of our families at home gathering together over meals of turkey and pumpkin pies.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, however, I got the chance to cook a "traditional American" Thanksgiving dinner for my host family. It was pretty interesting, since I had to cook over a fire (we don´t have a stove or oven) and was limited to the ingredients that I could find at the market in San Antonio. I only made stuffing and a few vegetables, since I didn´t want to see one of our turkeys be slaughtered. I´m not sure how it all turned out; it definitely wasn´t as good as my mom´s cooking, but at least I got everyone in my host family gathered around the table to eat together. Since there are so many people in the family, we usually don´t all eat at the same time or in the same place; everyone kind of eats when they are hungry, and wherever there is room (there is a table in the comedor and another small wooden table outside by the fire stove, and sometimes my host siblings just sit and eat while watching tv...). But for Thanksgiving, I was able to get everyone squeezed around the table, and we went around and each said what we were thankful for.  I told my host family that I was so thankful for the way they have taken me into their lives and welcomed me into their house.  I told them that I felt at home with them.  And then after dinner I went in my room and cried.  I really did mean what I said to my host family, but I was still sad and homesick, and the reality is that there are still many ways in which I will never completely fit in here. But I´m glad I got to share Thanksgiving with my host family, and they were all very grateful that I cooked for them and that we could share a meal together.

That week we also decorated for Christmas...with strands and strands of cheesy blinking lights that my host parents´ daughter Dominga had mailed from the United States. There is a strand of lights that plays one line each of Jingle Bells, Santa Clause is Coming to Town, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas, over and over again, in a piercing high pitch and slightly off-key.  It´s pretty annoying, and conveniently right outside my room, but everyone else seems to love it, so I can´t say anything...I´m learning to tune it out. :)  As we were putting up the Christmas lights, my host brother Armando started to get sad.  He is the grandchild of Juana and Miguel, and his mother Dominga is currently in the US and has been since he was very young.  That week, I finally learned from Juana the story. After Armando was born, his mother decided to go to the US to find a job and send back money to support her son.  The plan was that Armando´s father was going to stay with him and the rest of the family, and work to help support the family. But Armando´s father ended up running away with another woman, and left Armando with his grandparents, while his mother was still in the US.  Armando´s mom still sends money and things from the US, and the whole family I think is hopeful that she will come back some day to live in Guatemala. She was supposed to come visit this Christmas, but now she´s not, and I think that she wants to stay in the US.  The whole situation is very mixed up and sad, although Armando is pretty well-adjusted, all things considered. There are so many broken families here, with fathers, mothers, siblings, and husbands who have gone to the US to find work, leaving their families behind in order to be able to provide for them financially. I could tell that Armando was getting sad as we were putting up Christmas lights, and that night we had a moment of crying together.  He told me that he missed his mom, and I told him that I missed my mom too, and we cried a little bit, sitting on his bed. It was very sweet, and I´m glad we got to share that special moment and cry together because we missed our mothers.

Meanwhile, at the church, I have started getting involved in some new activities.  A few weeks ago, I started teaching keyboard lessons.  I have about 11 or 12 students right now, and that number keeps growing - more and more people keep approaching me to ask if I can teach them.  I´ve really enjoyed teaching lessons so far.  I like seeing people nervous and squirming in their seats, with red faces and sweaty palms, trying hard to play a piece correctly...and then all of a sudden, their faces light up when they finally get a piece right, and they start to relax and smile.  It´s like a little moment of revelation, of overcoming an obstacle.  It´s also been interesting for me to learn all the different musical terms in Spanish, so that I can teach different concepts. 

In the past weeks, I´ve also formed a humble choir of about 15 young people to sing at the church service on Christmas Eve.  We´ve been having practices two times a week, and it´s been interesting to say the least.  None of the young people in the choir have ever had any musical training before, and a few are a bit tone-deaf. It has been funny trying to teach them to harmonize and sing without belting at the top of their lungs. But we laugh a lot, and it has been a learning experience for everyone, myself included. I´m not sure if it will all come together before Christmas Eve, but it should definitely be a memorable experience. :)

I´ve also started getting involved with the Presbyterial (the women´s governing body of the churches in our Presbytery), and my time with those women has been one of my favorite things that I´ve been doing lately.  I attended a session meeting about two weeks ago, and it was nice to see some familiar faces there.  I recognized some of the women there from the Caminando Juntas conference, as well as from another presbytery meeting that I had attended several weeks before.  I feel like I am starting to build relationships with these women, however slowly, and I´m excited to see what develops from these relationships. At the session meeting, the women asked me to preach a sermon at their convention in January, and I was completely terrified.  But I said yes, because I didn´t want to regret not accepting such a challenge and an opportunity for growth.  So, the second sermon I will have ever given will be in Spanish.  I figure I have several weeks to prepare, and to look up the necessary vocabulary, and practice my pronunciation...I´m still pretty terrified, but hopefully I will be able to say something that will resonate with the women at the convention, that touches at least someone there.  It is going to be interesting...I´m sure there will be stories in my next blog entry. :)

After the Presbyterial session, I went with the women on a visita (a visit to the house of someone who is sick).   We went to the house of a pastor named Manuel, who is very old (I think in his nineties) and has been suffering from joint and leg problems.  He is the sweetest old man, so friendly and warm and funny.  He was very happy that I was there, although he couldn´t get my name right and kept calling me Alejandrina.  It was very endearing.  We sat and talked with him for a while, and prayed for him, and sang a few choruses of some hymns.  We also brought a basket of food staples, such as sugar, rice, and beans for him and his family.  When we arrived, Manuel had his daughter bring out vases of soda for us, to receive us into his home.  I´m really glad I went to visit with him, and it was nice walking back with the other women in the group and futilely trying to find a bus back to Chocola, only to be smushed into the back of a tuc-tuc (a three-wheeled, death-trap vehicle that serves as a taxi).  

The women from the Presbyterial invited me on another visita with them about a week later, to a nearby town called San Miguelito.  The ride there was quite long, since we had to take a bus, and then another bus, and then a pickup truck, and then walk some more to get there.  San Miguelito is further up in the mountains, and the view from the back of the pickup truck was breathtaking, as we passed green mountaintops, with crystal streams flowing beneath in the valleys.  On the ride back to Chocola, I sat smushed in the back of a pickup with about 15 other women, with one of the women holding onto my knee for support and another gripping around my legs for dear life, as the pickup manuevered over the rock-covered roads. We joked and laughed most of the ride back, tossled around in the back of the pickup.  One of the woman told me at one point, ¨This is the life of a Guatemalan, and you´re living it.¨  And I smiled and thought to myself, ¨This is why I´m here: to be smushed in the back of a pickup truck, swerving over bumpy roads, and laughing with a group of women, as we hold onto each other desperately.¨ 

I´m looking forward to working more with the Presbyterial and the women´s group at the church in Chocola. I´ve already found lots of joy and laughter in the time that I´ve spent with many of them.  I still feel like I am in a period of waiting, but I think God is teaching me things slowly, and I have to be patient and wait for some things to grow inside. I feel like there is so much more to say, but this blog is already very long.  I will try to update soon!  In the meantime, Feliz Navidad and Feliz Año Nuevo! 

500 Tortillas Later

Things have been pretty slow here lately...My teaching position at the school hasn´t started yet, since the school is on break until January, and my work at the church is very informal and unstructured.  I am still looking for places where I fit in and can offer some of my gifts to the people here. Sometimes it is frustrating, because I´m not sure what I´m supposed to be doing or what my purpose is. I am able to understand a lot more Spanish than I did when I arrived, but it is still difficult for me to speak, and I often feel insecure and unsure about what to say or how to say it. I have had to trust a lot in God to bring me up out of my insecurities and fears, but it is a slow process. I have been able to do lots of Bible reading lately (I´m hoping to get through the entire Bible this year) and I have been very encouraged by story after story of God´s steadfast love; time after time, God chooses the most unlikely people to be great leaders and messengers of His love to His people.  I just recently read the passage in Exodus where Moses tells God that he is not an eloquent speaker.  He begs God to choose someone else to be a messenger to His people.  Yet God uses Moses anyway, and he becomes a great leader of the Israelites. God tells Moses not to worry about the words that he will say, because the right words will be given to him at the right time.  This passage has been very encouraging to me; I am learning to trust more and more in God´s power to use me, whether I think I can do it or not, or whether I think that it´s happening or not.

Although things have been slow, some of my favorite moments have been when I´m just ¨being¨ with people, whether it is talking to my host mother after dinner, with the glow of the fire lighting up our faces, or laughing with my younger host siblings as we run around the house trying to spray each other with water on a hot day. I have had a lot of time to practice my tortilla-making (and tortilla-eating!) skills, and a lot of laughter and wonderful conversations have taken place over the dinner table or while making tortillas. I think that an important part of my ¨work¨ now is to observe and listen, to learn what life is like for people here, what joys and struggles they face, how they understand God and express their faith in this different context.

I did get to visit the school where I will be starting to teach in January.  A man named Eligio came and took me on the back of his motorcycle up the hill to the neighboring town of X´ojola (which is pronounced almost exactly like Chocola - it is very confusing). At one point, he made me get off the motorcycle and walk up a steep and rocky hill. He said that the road was very treacherous, and I guess he didn´t want me to fall off the back of the bike, so he rode up the hill on the motorcycle, while I huffed and puffed my way up the hill to meet him at the top.  We finally got the school in X´ojola, and although we didn´t get to go inside (Eligio didn´t have the key), it was good just to see the place where I will be teaching and to talk with Eligio for a bit.  Eligio is a teacher at the school, and he is also the secretary of the plenary (the governing body of the Presbytery, which consists of 8 Presbyterian churches in the area). We also went inside the communal health clinic which is next door to the school, and got to chat with a man named Manuel who works in the clinic. While we were inside, it started pouring, and we could barely hear each other over the din of the rain on the metal roof. Since Eligio and I had come by motorcycle, we decided to wait out the rain before heading back. So we waited...and waited. For about an hour and a half. And the rain didn´t look like it was about to stop anytime soon. So Eligio finally ran outside and hailed down a pickup truck (he knew the driver, who was one of his former students).  He stuck me in the front seat of the pickup, next to the driver, and told me he would ride ahead of the car in the motorcycle, to accompany us back to Chocola. So off we went.  In the back of the pickup, a group of people huddled under a plastic tarp (pickups are used as a form of public transportation here), while I sat in the front seat perfectly comfortable and dry.  By the time we got back to the house, Eligio´s clothes were soaked through from the rain. He got off the motorcycle and ran up to the house to bring an umbrella for me, so I could walk from the pickup to the house without getting wet. And he told my host parents that he had returned me, safe and healthy, back to the house, just as I had left.  I felt terrible.  I didn´t want to be treated special. I just wanted to fit in, to ride on the back of Eligio´s motorcycle in the rain and have it be horrible. There have been many moments like this, where I have been so humbled by people´s acts of kindness toward me. I am realizing now that what Eligio did was not to make me feel like I was different, but to make me feel cared for and loved, like a sister in Christ.  I came to Guatemala hoping to learn how to be a better servant, and I have found myself over and over again being served by other people.  I am learning to be more gracious and to accept help and kindness from people.  I certainly do need lots of help at times, in a new place, where everything is different and unfamiliar and often lonely. God is certainly showing me how to be servant - and it is through the way that the people here have received me and loved me and welcomed me into their lives.

So I´ve been in Chocola for about a week and a half now, and a lot has happened already. Sorry for not updating in a while, but it´s been hard to get to the internet in the past weeks. I tried to update earlier this week, but the internet here is painfully slow. I have moved in with the Menchu family, and I think I´ve finally mastered everyone´s name. My host parents, Juana and Miguel, have eight children (Franci, Sonya, Tony, Roky, Pablo, Ludwy, Tito, and Mindy) and one grandchild (Armando) living with them in the house. Plus, there are two dogs, a fat pig, six turkeys, several chickens, and a hen with about ten baby chicks that also make their home here. The chickens run freely through the house, and it is quite funny to see the children shooing them out of the kitchen sometimes. Juana keeps saying what a shame it is that I don´t eat chicken, because their chickens are delicious. My first night here, it was very difficult to sleep - the pig makes all kinds of snorting noises through the night (sometimes it sounds like he´s dying), and the roosters start crowing at about 3am (what I like to call the bewitching hour). But I am slowly adjusting to my family, my new home, and the strange noises at night. It feels good to finally be settled in one place, and (somewhat) unpacked, although I am still living out of my suitcase.

My first full day in Chocola, my host sister Sonya, who is my age, showed me around town. We walked to the bosque, which is a big park with a basketball court, tables, and benches, and we sat down and talked for a while at one of the tables. We walked through the streets, past brightly colored houses, tiny tiendas, the big coffee processing plant in the center of town, the market where vegetables, fruits, and meats are sold, and the camioneta stop outside the market. We wove through groves of banana trees and coffee plants, following some of the unruly dirt roads in town, which are spotted with puddles and lots of rocks. We sat for a while on a big rock, watching a group of children outside their school, doing excercises for phys ed class (they enjoyed putting on a show for the onlooking foreigner), and climbed a big hill from which you can see all of Chocola.

After touring the town, we returned home for a lunch of fried fish (it was pretty much a whole fish on my plate), vegetables, and of course, tortillas. My family cooks everything over a fire behind the house. I have been trying to help Juana, Sonya, and Franci cook meals, and I´m slowly learning to make tortillas. It is a lot harder than it looks (actually, it looks pretty hard)! Juana can make about three perfectly round tortillas in the amount of time it takes me to make one, thicker and somewhat oddly-shaped tortilla. But I am learning, and it certainly is a thrill to eat tortillas that I made with my own hands. I told Juana that it is a good thing I have all year to practice...maybe by the time I return home, I will be able to make my own tortillas for family and friends!

I spent most of my first afternoon playing hopscotch with Mindy (the youngest in the family, five years old), Armando (the granson), and Ludwy. Ludwy drew lines in the dirt with a machete, and we used rocks for the markers. Mindy just hopped and spun around without paying any attention to the lines. :) Mindy is so cute, and she has already become very attached to me. Juana told me the other night that Mindy has been praying for me before she goes to bed! How sweet! Mindy is very curious, and she always comes in my room to investigate what I have out on my desk. The other day, she made me show her all my photos of my family and friends, and she had many questions about everyone.

So far, I have been spending a lot of my time just getting to know my family and the town. At times, I´m not really sure what I´m supposed to be doing, because my work isn´t really delineated for me. For now, I am just accompanying my host sisters and brothers when they go out to different places, whether it be to the market, or the panaderia (bread shop) or to grind corn for tortillas at the molina. I am slowly figuring out Cholcola, and meeting people at the church, and finding opportunities to be present to people here.

I have been going to the church quite often (they have services every night), and attending different events with my family. My host father Miguel is an elder at the church, and the whole family is very involved in the life of the church. The congregation is fairly small (the Menchu family makes up a good percentage of the attendees), but there is a lot of life and energy there. My first night in Chocola, one of the elders from the church gave me a hymnal with the music to all the hymns (all the other hymnals just have the words, no music, because everyone knows the hymns by heart). The church has an old keyboard, but it has gone mostly unused, because no one knows how to play it. The music at the services is led by a single man or woman who sings acapella over a microphone, at the top of his or her lungs, and often out of key. The elders of the church are all very excited to have someone who can play the teclado (keyboard). I have been going to the church some afternoons with Sonya to learn some of the hymns - she sings while I play the teclado.
Last Thursday night, I had my first music gig at the church. About an hour before the service, the singer for the night (Carlos) gave me about 7 or 8 hymns; I quickly learned them, with the help of Sonya, and was pretty much expecting to be a rock star at the service...for there to be applause and cheering, and a big parade afterward. I prayed to God before the service that my music would be for His glory, and not my own, and He certainly answered my prayer, in a very humbling and funny way. About halfway through the service, the keyboard stopped working (I think it shorts out when it is on for too long), so I told Carlos to sing the next song without me. So he started, and then halfway through the song, the keyboard came back on, but by that time eveyone had already started singing in a totally different key, so it was useless to try to join in. Also, different people kept coming up front to sing different hymns that were not on my master list, and that I had never heard before. So I just let them sing without me, as I sat up at the keyboard smiling and laughing to myself a little bit. Nevertheless, all the church elders were still thrilled to have someone at the keyboard, and I´m afraid they are going to expect me to play every night. I am excited to bring music to this church, and I am hoping that I can teach some people lessons, so that when I leave, someone else will be able to accompany the services on the teclado. I have to adjust and improvise a lot, because the congregation sings a lot of the hymns in a different rythym than is written in the hymnal...It is quite interesting at times. :) But in many ways, I think the music is so much more sincere- unrehearsed, raw, and from the heart. It doesn´t matter so much if the notes are perfect.



Other highlights from the week:

1) There was an earthquake here last Thursday! Actually, it was just a tremor here, but apparently it was pretty strong in other parts of the country. I have never felt one before, and it was very strange to feel the earth moving under my feet!

2) I got to ride on the back of a motorcycle with my brother Pablo to Santo Tomas! We went to go buy bread, but the shop was closed, so we just rode around a bunch to see the town. It was kind of scary, especially on some of the windy and rocky dirt roads!

3) I think there was a scorpion in my room the other day...I saw it on my door, and tried to swat it out of my room with a notebook, but it scurried under my bed and disappeared, never to be seen again. I slept very restlessly that night.

4) I am still afraid to get up in the night to go to the bathroom, since I have to walk around the house in the pitch dark (the bathroom is sort of like an outhouse). Also, a huge cockroach and the biggest spider I have ever seen live behind the toilet.

5) I think I might have eaten shark the other day for lunch! We had this broth thing, with fish, crab, and shrimp, and there was an unidentified piece of something, with very thick and slippery skin. I thought it was a fish I had never seen before, but after I ate it, I heard Juana tell Miguel that it was shark!


6) It has been raining quite a lot here lately, and the roof over my bed has started to leak. :(

There is so much more to write and not enough time...Hopefully I will write again soon! Until then, que les vaya bien!!

Visit to Chocola

So much has happened since my last (very exciting) post...let´s catch up. Last Sunday we visited Chocola, which is where I will be heading off on my own in two weeks (!) to live and work for the rest of the year. The whole day was amazing, and I was so encouraged and excited and overwhelmed all at the same time. Before our visit to Chocola, I was feeling a little discouraged and struggling to understand why I´m here and what my purpose is in these first few weeks. My main purpose and goal right now is to learn Spanish - I´m in sort of a preparation stage for what is to come. It has been difficult to feel like I haven´t quite started my "work" here - I´m ready to go out on my own and start building relationships with people and truly becoming part of a community. It seems like Chocola is going to be the perfect place for me to do this.

Everyone in the community was so welcoming and gracious and kind, and I was so touched by the open and loving hearts that met me there. When we first arrived in Chocola, we met with some of the elders from the Horeb Presbyterian Church (where I will be working), and they were incredibly warm and welcoming. They kept calling me their hermana (sister), and talking about how we are all one because of the love of Christ - we are all part of the same family and same body. There were so many moments throughout the day when I was just so overwhelmed , overjoyed, and grateful for the outpouring of love I felt - tears welled up in my eyes.

After being welcomed by some of the elders from the church and talking about some of the possibilities and responsibilities I will have during the year, we ate a delicious meal together that was prepared by some ladies from the church. Then, we went to meet my host family!!!! They are wonderful and were so excited to have me there - I feel like I am really going to be accepted into the family as a daughter and a sister. The parents, Juana and Miguel, have 14 children (!!), although I think only 8 or 9 are currently living in the house. I´m so excited to have so many brothers and sisters - I think I will never be without someone to talk to! My first challenge is going to be learning everyone´s name...

I also got to see my room - it is painted a bright, cheery blue and has a big window that opens to the outside. On the bed is a red, shiny beadspread, with a heart in the center, that looks kind of like it should be in a honeymoon suite...haha. I think I am going to feel very much at home here, and I am so excited to become part of the family. I can picture myself really coming alive here...I was imaging myself making all these drawings and covering the walls of my room with artwork, and singing each morning in my room, and playing music at the church, and feeling like part of the community.

Ahhhh, also, my family has a PIG and chickens and two turkeys...I´m super excited! Except I don´t want to become too attached, since they will probably become dinner one night...

After meeting my host family, we went back to the church to go to the afternoon service. Just as the service was starting, it started downpouring, and the rain was so loud on the metal roof that we could barely hear anything. The woman who was leading the songs was singing at the top of her lungs over a microphone. It was such a genuine way to be praising God - I think that if it weren´t raining so hard, we wouldn´t have had to listen so intently or sing our praises so loudly, straining to lift our voices up to God.

I´m so excited to head off on my own to Chocola in less than two weeks!

New Discoveries

So today, I discovered two things:

1. If I jiggle the shower nozzel several times and position it just right, I get about 30 seconds of (luke)warm water - it is amazing.

2. Yesterday my friend Celeste said that she bought a ball of soap (jabon en bola), and she loves the smell of it and wants to just carry it around like a baby all day long. Since then, I have been trying to take note of different smells, because these are the things I am going to remember. I´ve noticed that the bathroom in my house definitely has a distinct smell ( I know this because I have spent a lot of time in there recently...) - it´s not really a bathroom smell, but it´s a smell nonetheless.

Also, it has been raining for the past three days and probably will never stop. I washed some of my clothes by hand yesterday in the pila (a stone basin divided into three sections) and hung my clothes up to dry, but I think they are just going to grow mold instead. It is very wet; I live on the top of a hill, and there is a river of water running down my street.

So I have been in Guatemala for almost two weeks now, and it has already been a whirlwind of emotions and new experiences, of hopes, excitement, fears, and being very much out of my comfort zone. After a week-long orientation in Louisville, our crew of six set off for the airport bright and early at 4:30 in the morning. After a few layovers and much anticipation, we arrived in the airport in Guatemala City that afternoon, overwhelmed by the barrage of new smells, sounds, and sights. Our director Marcia picked us up at the airport, and took us to our first destination, an old Catholic monastery which is now a retreat center, located in Antigua. For the first few days, we took some time to settle in and to get to know Antigua and each other. Antigua is a very strange place - an old colonial city, with red, yellow, blue, and white buildings and cobblestone streets, surrounded by breathtaking volcanoes and mountains. Although the city itself is fairly small, it is much more international than I expected, and there is a strange blending of cultures that is sometimes confusing. There is a large expatriot community here, which makes Antigua feel sort of like a bubble, disconnected from the realities which are very much a part of life in other parts of the country.

After a few days of getting acquainted with Antigua, we packed our things once again to go to San Juan del Obispo, which is where we have been staying for the past week and a half for Spanish school. San Juan is a small town, with cobblestone and dirt roads, and lots of stray dogs in the streets. Across from the school, there is a little shop where you can hear a lady making tortillas all morning. We will be in San Juan until October 13, when our group will split up and we will all go out to our individual placement sites. It has been strange to be in this sort of transitory period, but I am trying to just live each day and soak in as much as I can. I still don't quite feel like the experience is real, and it hasn't completely hit me yet that I am going to be here for a whole year. But I am trying to take things as they come and focus on being here now.

In San Juan, I am living with a host family, and it has been a very humbling and challenging experience. My host mother and father are named Maria and Mario. They have two children living with them, Mario Jr. and Patricia, and Patricia has two small children, Melanie and Diego, who are the cutest kids. I have been welcomed into the lives of these people with love and grace - they have opened their home to me and they take care of me. It is very awkward a lot of the time, because my Spanish skills are not very good; I feel like most of my conversations with my host family have been about food and the weather. It is hard to not be able to communicate much beyond the surface-level, to not be able to express my heart and what I'm feeling and thinking. But I think that feeling awkward and uncomfortable is an important part of this experience - I need to be broken and humbled a bit before I can be remolded into the person I am meant to be.

Here is what a typical day in San Juan is like: I wake up at about 6:45 (or actually, much earlier than that, because I am scratching the bug bites on my feet or have woken up suddenly, wondering where I am). I proceed to get ready for a shower; I collect my soap and shampoo and try to balance my change of clothes delicately on the back of the toilet. My shower usually doesn't last very long at all - the water is ice cold, and I just stick my head under long enough so that I can soap up my hair. After a nice icy shower, I eat breakfast, usually with my host mother and/or Diego and Melanie. After breakfast, I get my books and head to language school, where I sit with my teacher Mirian and talk for about an hour or two in Spanish (with a lot of effort and concentration on my part), before proceeding to some grammar, reading, and writing notes in my cuaderno. It is a very slow, frustrating process learning Spanish, but I guess we have only been here for two weeks, and I shouldn't expect it to come so quickly. My brain usually hurts by the time I have to head home from school - four hours of Spanish school and intense concentrating really takes it out of you. At the house, I have lunch with my family (which usually consists of some kind of veggies, rice, and tortillas - mmm, there is always a basket of warm tortillas in the middle of the table). After lunch and a bit of awkward conversation with my host mother, I head off to meet the other girls for our afternoon activity in Antigua. The school plans activities for us in the afternoons, to help us learn more about the history and culture of Guatemala. Some of the activities have included watching a movie about the recent civil war, taking a salsa class, going to visit the ruins of the San Franciscan church in Antigua, and walking the Cerro de la Cruz, a path which goes up to a huge cross on a hill, overlooking beautiful scenery below. From the hill, you can see all of Antigua and San Juan in the distance. After the afternoon activity, I return to San Juan on a crowded camioneta (in English, a "chicken bus"). I have a delicious meal with my family and attempt a bit more conversation, but at this point in the day, I am usually so exhausted and overwhelmed that I soon retire to my room to do some homework and fall asleep, sometimes with a book in my hand and the light still on.

Some highlights of my time so far in Guatemala:
1. Climbing the Volcan de Pacaya!!! - Last weekend, our group climbed Pacaya Volcano, and saw lava up close! It was a terrifying and thrilling experience. The 2 hour hike up was completely in the rain - it was bone-chilling and super windy, weather more like you would picture in Northern Ireland than in Guatemala. The fog was so thick that we couldn't see anything of the supposedly beautiful view. Toward the top, we were climbing almost straight up, over the volcanic rock (one tumbling rock hit my leg, and I still have a big scrape). All of the sudden, it got really warm, because we were near the lava, and my soaking wet clothes dried almost instantly. It was certainly a crazy adventure - I feel like now that we've hiked that volcano, we can do anything. I think it was a good way to start off our Guatemalan experience. :)
2. The delicious food...the homemade corn tortillas are muy deliciosas!
3. How friendly the people are - everyone says hello and buenos dias when walking by in the streets
4. Playing tag with my host brother and sister after school some days

Some lowlights:
1. The scuttling noises I hear on my roof at night, and the family of spiders living in my room
2. Having a man throw up next to me on a very crowded camioneta one night
3. Being stranded in the bathroom without toilet paper sometimes
4. How the food is sometimes not so friendly on the stomach...:(

Overall, my experience so far has been a mixture of many different emotions, and I am trying to appreciate and live in every moment, whether good or bad, because all these moments are going to shape me. It has been very overwhelming at times, because so much is unfamiliar and unknown. I feel like for the first time, I am not just looking at poverty from the outside, or visiting it for a brief time, but I am actually experiencing and living it, being with the people in their struggles and joys and day-to-day realities. There is so much more to say and I don't have the words to say it. I'm sorry this is so long and rambling, but so much has happened and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface. I will try to be better at writing from now on...
I will have more stories soon!

I leave tomorrow

I leave tomorrow for orientation in Louisville!