Fun, fun, fun

So being in Guatemala is not only really rewarding and eye-opening, it’s also a lot of fun. The past three days have been filled with so much excitement and joy, again I feel very blessed to be here. On Friday we had a normal morning at the orphanage, but in the evening I got to cross something off my bucket list I didn’t even know I wanted to do: be painted and dressed up like a clown to entertain 100 Guatemalan children. Daniel and Lorena, the Spanish volunteers, had met the Huehue clown last year and came up with the idea to have themselves painted like clowns and entertain the kids. So as a new tradition, all of the volunteers had their faces painted by the clown and dressed up in goofy clothes, shoes included. My clown name was Linda Clown, because they said I was pretty/looked like a Mexican singer named Belinda. We all made jokes and danced in front of the kids, and they absolutely loved it. It was such a sweet idea for Daniel and Lorena to have, and I was excited to be in the right place at the right time to enjoy this with them.

            Saturday we began our day with a trip to the Mayan ruins here in Huehue. Maren, the German student who has been living in our house the past two weeks, joined us. She is leaving tomorrow to travel more with her boyfriend, and we are all going to miss her so much. She has become a member of our family here in Huehue. Our journey alone to the ruins was interesting, and the destination was even better. We got on a bus and Maren asked if it went to the ruins, and the driver basically said “more or less”. We ended up taking the bus out of the city, where it stopped at a random dirt road and the bus driver told us to keep walking for 10 minutes, and we would find the ruins. After getting off and looking around us, we wondered if the bus driver was playing a joke on us poor gringos. But we kept following what looked like paths, ran into an old man holding a machete who walked us part of the way, and after a bit of a climb, emerged to find the ruins. They were quite impressive, and we spent a lot of time up there just sitting and enjoying the view. We were bummed they ended up finding us and made us pay the entrance fee (50.00Q for the extrañjeros, 5.00 Q for Guatemalans – I felt a bit cheated), but it was well worth it. It was also fun to do my first tourist thing in Guatemala, because tourism is not at all what we have been doing here so far. After the ruins and lunch, we went to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make dinner for our host family. It was bit hectic – they didn’t have a lot of the ingredients we were looking for, and Brooks had to use his translator and ask for help quite a bit. After we had sufficiently wandered the grocery store, bought everything and retuned home, we were greeted by yet another surprise – our house didn’t have any water. Occasionally our water doesn’t work because our house is located at the bottom of a hill. But not having water makes cooking pretty difficult. Luckily after some trips of borrowing water from the neighbors and other improvisations, we were successful at making dinner. Laura made a delicious broccoli and cheese soup, Maren baked fresh bread, Brooks and I cooked pasta and fresh pasta sauce, and I made an apple pie for dessert. It was delicious – exactly what we had been craving. And we planned the meal for 10 people, which in our mind was lot of people, but we ended up having A LOT of food. So we all stuffed ourselves, and were slightly in pain after eating so much. So worth it though.

            Sunday we broke from our usual routine of church and rest by going to the orphanage for another fun surprise – a second pool day! Laura’s aunt had wanted to make a contribution to the orphanage, and offered to pay for something fun for the kids to do. So again we loaded 100 kids and 10 adults onto an old school bus, and took off for the pool. This time I brought my suit, and ended up spending most of my time swimming with Juila, a girl who works in the kitchen, and other older kids. It was nice to finally have time to bond with the older kids, because I usually spend my time at the orphanage with the younger ones. We had lunch at the pool again, and spent the afternoon trying to take naps, only to get jumped on and poked by kids. My pool day ended with a sunburn, but again, totally worth it. When we arrived back at the orphanage, another fun activity had been planned for us – a futbol game of los extrañjeros against the Guatemalans. Our team consisted of Maren, Wolfgang, and Moritz from Germany, Daniel for Spain, and Brooks, Laura and myself from the U.S. Although I’m terrible at soccer, I did my best to be a human wall against the other team, and kicked the ball away from our opponents a couple of times. I had a blast trying to play, and surprisingly in the end the extrañjeros won!! The victory felt so good, even if I didn’t do much to help toward said victory. :)