Week One: Done.

Ay, we’ve only been here a week but I cannot believe everything we have done in this short time! It feels like we have been here volunteering and living for such a long time. Laura and I are already starting to talk about the food we miss from the States, and I have to remind myself that I was eating American food just a week ago, and have six months still before I will be eating it again. Yes, I think I have decided to stay only six months now. It is what feels most comfortable to me, both for my situation with Brooks, and also for the opportunity to go home with my parents when they come to visit. And I should correct one more thing from the sentence above: we have actually been blessed with really amazing food here in Guatemala. Sheny, Manuela (Sheny’s friend), or Yessie (Sheny’s cousin) cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner for us every day, and it has been great food. Variety is kind of lacking – lots of rice, beans and tortillas – but those are some of my favorite foods so hopefully I will adjust to the normal Guatemalan diet soon. And luckily I’ve only been sick once so far, from the food, and I’m hoping that was all I needed. Just one time to adjust to the food. Today again we went to the orphanage both in the morning and the afternoon. The orphanage just got five new babies, and I spent part of the morning holding a baby that I swear was only weeks old. They told me he was three months old, but he was so tiny and fragile, he looked almost newborn. In the afternoon we came back for another fiesta of sorts – they had a clown come and play games and sing songs with the kids. We were unluckily chosen to make fools of ourselves for a couple of the games, one where I wore a Mexican wrestler’s mask and danced in a circle with others wearing masks, including Brooks and Laura and the other volunteers. Yikes. We were supposed to have a cultures presentation that evening as well, where each of the volunteers was going to share the culture of their home country with the children. There are currently volunteers at the orphanage from Spain, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the U.S. We were going to talk about hamburgers, American football, the ‘G’ hug, and teach the kids how to dougie. Unfortunately, because the mother of the director of the school was sick, we postponed the presentation until Monday. Which is a good thing for us, because I think we could use more time to spiff up our material to make America look good. The other countries were definitely more prepared than us. After the clown entertainment, we began watching “Tangled” with the kids (in Spanish, of course), and left halfway through before it got dark for our walk home.

            As I said above, we have only been here for a week, and yet I already feel so adapted to Huehue, and I feel like I have been here so long. Somehow this has been a more “hit the ground running” experience than Spain was, probably because we have been so busy with the orphanage, but I haven’t had much time to think about everything we’re doing – I have just been doing. Playing with the kids has been wonderful though, and because they are usually so happy and jovial, I forget that they don’t have parents and that orphanage life is all they know. It’s such a place of mixed emotions. You want to feel sad for the kids, but their joy makes that difficult. Again, it would almost be every kid’s dream, to spend all your days hanging out with and playing with other kids. I continue to remind myself of the reality of what we are participating in, and remind myself that the hugs and attention that we give to these kids is so important because they are not really getting it from anywhere else. All of the love and attention they experience comes from the workers at the orphanage, volunteers, and the other children. Which has been something that is so encouraging, seeing how the kids love and care for each other. They share, they give each other hugs, they comfort each other. It’s incredibly sweet and heartwarming. Tomorrow we are planning to sleep in a bit (which will be amazing, because we have been on the move constantly since we’ve been here), and will visit the town center. It will be a nice change of pace, and I am excited to get to know the city even more. It’s crazy that this place will be my home for six months; I am curious to see if the time begins to fly by or if each day feels so full like it has already. I still feel very blessed to be here, to have the connections that we do, and to feel so comfortable in a foreign city so quickly.