Agghh, sorry for not updating in so long...There has been a lot going on here lately, and so there is a lot to catch up on.  First, let´s backtrack to Christmas...

Christmas was very different in the warm weather and away from home and family.  But it was also very beautiful, because I got to celebrate the birth of Christ in a new way.  In Guatemala, the big celebration is on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas day.  On Christmas Eve, I gathered with my little choir at the church to practice before the service that night.  We all wore white blouses to match (like a choir of angels), and we sang four songs during the service.  Two of the songs were already familiar to them - ¨Silent Night,¨ which is translated as ¨Noche de Paz¨ (Night of Peace), and is really quite beautiful in Spanish, and another called ¨Oh Santisimo, Felicisimo.¨  And two of the songs were new hymns that I taught the choir - the Spanish versions of ¨Joy to the World¨ and ¨The First Noel.¨ The harmonies that I tried to teach pretty much flew out the window, but I was just happy that we were able to sing the songs in unison and relatively on-key. I think the music added more joy to the service, and I was glad to be able to share that with the church.  After the service, everyone gave each other hugs and wished each other a Feliz Navidad. I felt like part of a big family, like I was part of something bigger than myself, that I couldn´t describe, part of a body of love and joy and hope.   After the hugs, we had a refaccion (snack) of pan and ponche (a warm drink with chunks of fruit in it), and it was delicious.  Later, I retired back to the house with my family, and we stayed up until midnight, which is when the big celebration starts. At midnight, we set off a row of firecrackers in the yard, and so did about everyone else in the town.  The night was filled with the screeches of firecrackers on every street, and the flashing lights of fireworks in the sky. The kids in my family were all very excited and happy, and it was certainly a fun (and loud!) celebration. We all gave each other hugs again, and I really felt like part of the family, being able to share such a joyful night with them. After watching some of the firecrackers and fireworks for a while, we turned on some blasting Christmas music (marimba-style) and ate a meal together. We had more ponche, and tostados (crispy fried tortillas) with refried beans, chopped beets and radishes, ketchup, chopped boiled eggs, and cheese on top (which sounds kind of gross, the combination of all those ingredients together, but it was actually pretty tasty).  And we had a basket of bread, and some apples and grapes, which were a very special treat.  The neighbors even came over later to wish us a Merry Christmas and give us hugs. By the time we finished eating around 1:30, we were all pretty sleepy (especially the youngest of my host siblings) and soon went to bed, but the celebrations in town continued pretty late through the night.  You could hear blasting music from the neighbors´ houses and lingering firecrackers until about 3 or 4 in the morning. It was a big loud party, which I guess is an appropriate way to joyfully celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus.

Christmas day itself was very relaxed, and we spent the day together in the house. One of my host brothers, Hector, who lives in another house with his wife Mikael and his one-year-old son Josiel, came over to visit, and we all had lunch together - fried fish, rice, and leftover tamales that Mikael had made for midnight the night before. We bought a watermelon and sliced it up, and it was delicious, although it was a little weird to be eating watermelon on Christmas. 

Christmas was filled with a lot of mixed emotions for me - I was excited and overjoyed to experience Christmas in a new way, with people I have only known for a few months, but with whom I could share such joy and hope and unity in the love of God. But it was also very difficult and sad to be away from family and friends, and the homesickness was pretty strong. But it made it easier to know that my parents were coming to visit less than a week after Christmas...

My family came to visit the first week in January, and the time with them flew by.  My mom and dad took a taxi out to Chocola to pick me up, and they got to meet my entire host family and attend a service at the church, where they were welcomed by everyone. It was a pretty overwhelming and dream-like experience, like a clashing of two worlds.  Plus, I had to try to be a translator, since my parents don´t speak any Spanish, and my host family doesn´t speak any English. So, it was pretty interesting and a bit awkward, but everyone was very excited to meet each other. I´m so glad that my family got to see where I´m living and working, and that they could meet my host family and understand more of what my experience in Guatemala is like. Plus, I miss them a whole lot! And as for my host family, they were all super-excited to meet my parents, and the night before they arrived, we did a massive house-cleaning and pretty much rearranged the whole house. We were up early, to make a special lunch of fried chicken (Guatemalans love their fried chicken...especially chicken from Pollo Campero, a huge multinational fast-food joint, that is everywhere in Guatemala.  The owners of Pollo Campero, along with the owners of Gallo beer, are the richest people in the country...but anyways, I don´t want to interupt my story too much with my rant on huge, exploitative corporations....).  So, we made a special lunch of fried chicken, refried beans and veggies, and of course, there were tortillas.  We had someone else help with the tortillas, since there just wasn´t enough time for us to make them with all the other preparations. My host sister Franci made me put on her traje,  the traditional Mayan dress that the women here wear, so that I could meet my family, dressed like a true Kiche Guatemalan woman.  I wore her guipil (the intricately-embroidered top), and she wrapped me in her colorful corte (the skirt, which is a long piece of patterned cloth that you wrap around) and secured it with the typical belt, called a faja, so tight that I could barely breathe. I finally realized part of the reason why Guatemalan women walk so slowly - the cortes are hard to walk in, and you can only take very short strides without tripping over yourself! So Franci and Sonya helped me get dressed, and I went out to the road to meet my parents and direct them to the house.

It was very strange, but when I met my parents out at the road, and they got out of the taxi, they both looked really pale and my dad looked like he was on stilts. My mom thought it was funny that she finally felt tall, because everyone in my host family is so short! My host sister Vivi had gone to the molino to grind a bit of corn so that I could show my parents my amazing tortilla-making skills, and my mom even got to try making a few tortillas, too. We had lunch together, all smushed into two tables (we had to borrow some plastic chairs from the church to fit everyone around the tables at the same time). The over-lunch conversation was a bit awkward (since no one could speak to each other, although I did my best to provide some loose translations).  My mom broke the ice by going around the table and reciting everyone´s name (which is a task, considering how many people are in my family, and how everyone has at least two names, plus maybe another nickname, that they use interchangeably.  It took me about a month to get everyone´s two or three names straight...). I had given my mom a list of all my host siblings names ahead of time, so she could study.  And my host family was so impressed that they all clapped for her after she had gone around the table saying everyone´s name.  After lunch, my parents had some small gifts that they brought, to thank my host family for taking care of me so well.  They had also brought a bag of music books and small percussion and wind instruments to use for teaching, as well as a beautiful keyboard (!) that was so generously donated by someone from my home church to be used in my work here. (Thank you so much to everyone who donated to the ministry I am doing - the instruments have been such a blessing in working with the children and youth here!)

When my parents took out the basketball and soccer ball that they had brought for the kids, my host brother Tito nearly jumped out of his skin.  We had all been talking about how we wanted to get a basketball to take to the cancha (court), because we had been borrowing a ball from my brother Pablo´s girlfriend, but we accidently popped it, and it was lying deflated near the pila (the stone basin sink) in the kitchen.  So of course, when my parents brought out the balls, we all (including my parents and my host dad) immediately started tossing the basketball around in the kitchen. My host siblings and I brought my parents to the bosque (the park) to play a little basketball, and we took them on a loop around town to see the streets and houses, the market and coffee-processing plant.  We came back just in time for the Sunday afternoon church service, where everyone welcomed my parents and I did a very poor job of translating the sermon (which just so happened to be delivered by my host dad that day).

After a whirlwind of touring and meeting my host family, I went back with my parents to a hotel in Guatemala City to meet my sister and her boyfriend who had also come to visit me. I had a relaxing and restful week with my family, and I took them touring around some sites in Guatemala.  We traveled to Antigua to walk around, look through the market, see some of the old earthquake ruins and cathedrals, and of course, eat.  We also traveled to beautiful Lake Atitlan, a deep craterous lake surrounded on all sides by volcanoes - one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life. We spent the day looking at beautiful handicrafts, jewelry, paintings, and traditional cloth hanging in the numerous stalls in the streets of Panajachel.  We also took a public boat ride across the lake to the other side, to meet my friend and fellow volunteer Anna, who is living and working in Santiago Atitlan. (Many of the locals from Santiago and other pueblos surrounding the lake have to take a 20min to half hour boat ride every day to get to work on the other side of the lake.  Others are forced to terrace farm on the precarious volcano slopes, pushed to environmental extremes because they have no other farming options.)  Anna took us on a tour around Santiago, and after eating a quick lunch, we hurried to make the boat ride back to Panajachel, so we could catch our shuttle from there back the hotel.  The combination of eating hurriedly, and then getting on a very bumpy boat (the wind was a bit strong that day), and then jumping right on the shuttle bus to travel over rocky, curvy roads (the main road back to Guate is under construction, and has been for a long time) was a little sickening, and I ending up throwing up when we got back to the hotel.  But other than that, it was a fun excursion to beautiful Lake Atitlan. :)  That week, we also got to hike Pacaya Volcano (which I had already hiked with the other volunteers, during my first few weeks of language school, but under very different conditions, in pouring rain and cold). Although we didn´t see any lava this time, the view was amazing, and we could see all the way to Guate.  At the end of the week, my sister and her boyfriend accompanied me back to Chocola, and got to meet my host family as well. It was a little less awkward, since they knew un pocito de espanol, and we ended up going back to the park a second time to play with the new basketball.  My sister even came with me and my host sister Vivi to grind corn at the molino, and then we made a few tortillas. Unfortunately, my sister and her boyfriend both ended up getting very sick for the ride back from Chocola, but they were still both very happy to meet my host family and see where I am living. I was very sad when my sister left, realizing that my family visit was over, and that I wouldn´t see them again for a long time.  My sister left me crying at the road, and my host family didn´t quite know what to do with me for the next couple of days. 

But January has been a bit busier, and I´ve started getting involved with more groups, which has definitely helped with the homesickness.  I´m starting to feel like my Spanish is improving, and I´m able to communicate much better with people, although I still listen a lot more than I speak. I feel at home with my host family, and they take care of me like a daughter and a sister. I´m getting to know more and more people and to build relationships, which I think is the most important thing I can do. Rather than just looking from the outside, I am living with people and getting to know them.  Often times, we (the privileged) are so disconnected from the poor; the gap between those who have and those who don´t have is enormous and growing, and it is so easy to live while ignoring the reality of poverty in our world. I think many times, people think that feeling pity or feeling sorry for people is the same as compassion. But feeling sorry for people only disempowers them more, as if there is nothing they can contribute or do to improve their life situations. I don´t feel sorry for any of the Guatemalans I´ve met, although many of them have very difficult lives.  On the contrary, I admire and respect them, because they are so strong and resilient and joyful through hardships. And I am learning to frame my world views, past experiences, and faith in a new way, because of the relationships that I have formed with Guatemalans.