Nighttime stories

Yesterday we dedicated the majority of the afternoon to the orphanage, arriving at 2:30pm and not leaving until 9:30pm. Although it was an exhausting afternoon, it was also so rewarding and good for us to see the orphanage for such a long period of time. It also simulated just a fraction of what the regular workers experience on a daily basis. Being with kids for so long is not easy work; kids have a lot of energy and can by quite exhaustive. It helped me admire even more how dedicated and hardworking the staff is at Fundación. At the beginning of the afternoon, we spent our time playing with the kinders, Laura’s and my favorite group. They had an 8^th grade school group visit to play some games with them and give them a snack. The visiting students took tons of pictures of the kids, and with us also (we felt like odd celebrities), and gave them each a big bag of dulces and party favor toys at the end of the visit. The kids LOVED the sweets and toys. They were running all over the room, shooting propellers at each other, blowing loudly on whistles, and eating tons of dulces. It was really sweet to give all the children toys, but it reminded me again that really nothing at this orphanage is for them to call their own. They have no space of their own, really. The older kids have more claim and respect for their beds and the things on and around their beds, but for the younger kids, toy snatching happens on a regular basis. It’s just like what we see in day cares in the States, except these children have no home to store toys of their own. In some way, it helps the kids understand the necessity of sharing and to not value possessions as much, but on the other hand it’s just sad to see they can’t claim anything as their own.

            We stayed that evening at the orphanage for dinner, which was actually pretty good for mass-produced food. And after dinner the older kids had a Bible lesson of listening to a pastor speak and filling in answers in a workbook. They all looked so exhausted; these kids are on the go all day long, without naps unless they happen to fall asleep in a chair and get carried to their beds. And I was talking to one of the older girls in charge of the 6-12 year old girls, and she told me her only day of rest is Saturday, which happens to be the only she goes to school as well, because she has to be with the other girls during the week. We are always so tired from our time at the orphanage, but kids as young as 15 are there all the time, with motherly duties. Brooks made a good point: In some ways these kids grow up fast, because they have responsibility and independence at a young age, but in other ways they all stay very young at heart, because they’ve missed out on critical nurturing moments when they’re young, and still crave them into older ages. A perfect example of this is what we did that evening. We went around and read bedtime stories to all of the kids, which is something they have rarely experienced before. Laura and I went to the 6-12 year old girls room for a while, and we ended up reading some of the books to them we had brought over from the 4 year olds room. They loved even the more simple books, and ended up reading them with us multiple times, flipping through the pages and counting butterflies, something you would expect from someone much younger than themselves. And one of the 8-year-old girls began reading the book herself, and it was disheartening to see how difficult it was for her to read. Some of these children only go to school one day a week, and they have absolutely no books in their room except for schoolbooks. The library at the orphanage is a fairly new addition, something that the Spanish volunteers helped instigate. These children are all so intelligent and eager to learn, and I by no means want to judge an entire school system or an entire orphanage based on the reading level of one child, but it was concerning and eye-opening nonetheless.

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. :)

Montes caerán...al sonar de su nombre

Wow, what an incredible day we have had here in Huehue. It’s been a mixture of humbling experiences, raw emotions, and precious sights. Our day started at the orphanage, where we met four missionaries from the States that were volunteering there for the day. They were part of a group of 14 missionaries living near Lake Atitlan, in Panajachel, volunteering mostly at a school and orphanage. When we met them at Fundación, they were on day two of what they called their Luke 10 journey, which is the chapter in Luke when Jesus sends out his disciples to evangelize, telling them to take no food, no money, not even shoes with them, and rely on God’s goodness to provide. And in true form, this team had set out without money or food or a change of clothes, one guy following so literally that he wasn’t wearing shoes. They had relied on God’s blessing, and it got them from Panajachel to Huehue for free, on a series of ‘chicken buses’, and free meals. They even had met a group of pastors last night that blessed them with a hotel room, and dinner at McDonald’s. It was so incredible to hear their story, and so encouraging to see people our age living out their faith so passionately. It made me realize how little I really rely on and trust in God. In America it’s easy for us to go to church, go to our Bible studies, be good people, and consider ourselves saved Christians. But Christ died for so much more than that. Christ died so we could give our lives up to the Lord also, and trust in Him with our every move. It’s not until you have nothing, that you realize how abundant God’s gifts are, and how much He cares for His children. I realized that I had never needed God before, never truly needed God in the sense that He was my last hope. I turn to friends and family for comfort, my bank account for money, and my fridge for food. But the lives that these four missionaries were living for three days showed that if we truly give it up to God and cry out that we need Him, and know in our hearts that He is the only thing that could fill our needs, He provides. I pray now for God to move mountains in my life and in my heart, and to remind me that I need Him, and I need Him so much. Because life without Him is not a life worth living.

            After such a reflective morning at the orphanage, the mood shifted for me in the afternoon when we were greeted at the orphanage by a full marimba band. The Spanish volunteers had never heard marimba before, and the orphanage decided that just would not do. So they brought a band to the orphanage, and we were entertained by groups of the children doing choreographed dances. They were SO cute. It was incredible to see that the orphanage gives so much to these kids, and not just in their needs, but in their enjoyment also. They had dressed up almost every little girl in a beautiful dress, and some of the boys were wearing traditional Guatemalan outfits. They fed the kids a full meal of bean tostadas, chicken taquitos, tamales, and punch. And even after the little kids ended up making a mess of their dresses by getting food all over themselves, it didn’t matter. The orphanage had extended grace and freedom to the children to dress up and feel special that evening. It was a great afternoon at the orphanage.

            This evening, the mood shifted once again when we went to church at Gloria de Libano for their evening worship service. Linda had a mission team with her visiting from Texas, and they blessed us all with music and amazing voices. Once again, everyone was weeping, falling to the floor, and praying over each other. It was easy to see that we were all sharing in an indescribably beautiful moment together. The raw love and need that they have for Jesus impresses me every time. And it was in this moment that I realized, truly realized, how much I too need God. Dios, te necesito. It felt more real to me when I prayed it in Spanish for some reason. This realization did not come to me because I was battling an addiction or a bad lifestyle or homelessness or poverty, but it was still such a powerful realization to me nonetheless. At that moment I felt so much understanding of what God wanted for my life, and such a strong connection with Him. He wants me to need Him, purely and passionately need Him, with a need that can be filled by nothing else. I pray that God keeps this realization in my heart, and when I am being bombarded by all the feel-good and self help messages of this world, I realize again that He is my creator and wants deeply for me to need Him and His overwhelming love and grace.

Teach Me How to Dougie

Like most of our weekdays so far here in Huehue, yesterday and today were spent mostly at the orphanage. Yesterday morning we were greeted at the orphanage by a strange sight – almost all of the kids were gone at school. We had never seen the orphanage so empty before, and while it was nice for us to be able to focus on the younger kids and the older kids that were not in school for whatever reason, it gave the orphanage a very different air then it had had before. I ended up spending the morning in the baby room, which has become a place I gravitate towards at the orphanage. I have always loved babies, and because I know these babies have no parents to dote over them at the end of the day, I feel an extra sense of need to offer them love and comfort. The children at the orphanage are, in general, incredibly independent children, mostly out of survival I’m sure. By the age of 3, they feed themselves, dress themselves, walk themselves to the bathroom, and initiate play by themselves. But the babies here are still beautifully dependent creatures, and I enjoy so much being a person that feeds their needs, be it through giving them a bottle, changing their diaper, holding them, or simply smiling at them and tickling their little bellies. As I said before, there are two babies at the orphanage that are the smallest babies I have ever seen. They were most likely born prematurely, and although I don’t know their stories, I am so sad for the terrible things I’m sure their little lives have seen. After returning home for lunch and walking back to the orphanage, it was time for us to give our United States presentation. I started out with the boring stuff, showing off the map and the monuments in the U.S., and then we moved onto G-hug, Brooks explaining about American football and American food (hamburgers of course were our example – how stereotypically did we just describe the U.S.?), and the grand finale – Teach Me How to Dougie. We had a great time showing the kids how to Dougie, and although maybe only one or two caught on, it was still a fun and super cute way to break up their first day back to school. After the U.S. presentation, we practiced throwing around the paper mache football, and it was a huge hit with the kids. It was so cute to watch them try to throw the ball, and then attempt to kick it because that’s pretty much the only thing they know balls are good for. Laura and I spent the rest of our time hanging out with the preschool age children, attempting to help the Japanese volunteer teach them how to make an outline of their hand, and mostly just serving as a lap for the kids to sit on. Yesterday left us exhausted, and as I tried to communicate with Guatemalans at the grocery store on our way home and failed, I knew my limit had been reached. We ended up buying the makings for s’mores at the grocery store, and shared this awesome American dessert with our host family. They all loved it.

            Today Laura and I only lasted through a morning session at the orphanage (Brooks was sick), and after coming home for lunch we realized we were just too tired to make the trek back to the orphanage in the afternoon. It has been a difficult balance, trying to make the most of our time here without wearing ourselves down excessively. But I think that is a difficult balance to find in life in general, and is a lesson worth learning here. Hopefully our afternoon of rest will make us ready to get out and conquer tomorrow, and a full day at the orphanage.   

Los domingos bonitos

My morning began by waiting at a random bus stop with Brooks and Laura, in anticipation that Brooks’ phone conversation with Kildare, the pastor of Gloría de Libano, had resulted in Brooks correctly asking for a ride to church, and describing the correct location in Huehue for him to pick us up. He was late, which we thought was just in typical Guatemalan style, but we found out once we got in the car that he had been having a lot of difficulties with his car, and it just stopped running at certain times. At one point during the drive, the car simply refused to drive up a steep hill, and Brooks, Laura and I had to get out to remove some weight from the car, while Kildare rolled back down to the bottom and gunned it up the hill. And at the end of the church service, in true Guatemalan form, we needed three guys from the congregation to push the car so that it would go. The service this morning was again very beautiful. It started with an older woman of the congregation praying and saying some words, and after that everyone began singing. They sing almost everything a capella, and their songs always break out into a fluid display of compassion for Christ. They sing whatever is on their heart, and everyone joins in with them. After a couple of song, with prayers and crying out to God mixed in, Kildare got up to give the message. Seeing as how it was given in Spanish, it’s difficult for me to both mentally translate a message, and get substance out of it. But he is a very passionate speaker, and I caught myself nodding along multiple times even if I only understood a couple of words or a sentence. After the service they had a bit of a “coffee hour”, which consisted of us standing around some chairs, eating tamales and drinking a warm punch made out of pineapple, apple, and papaya. The church has a pretty small congregation, there were only about 15 people there this morning including ourselves, but it made chatting with people after the service a little less intimidating. Some of the younger members of the congregation even asked Laura and I to sing worship songs in English for them, right there on the spot. I guess they’re so used to breaking out into song, they assume we do it too. I amused them with the chorus of one song, and promised next week we would have more (in reality hoping they would forget the promise). As I said in an earlier blog post, this church is such a real and raw presentation of people yearning for and hoping to see Christ’s face. They weep and fall to their knees praying to Him, every Sunday, and their passion for His way is so inspirational. It’s beautiful to see people so desperately wanting to live their lives for God, and so desperately seeking Him. Guatemala is a very religious country; where one would usually see a really gangster windshield sticker, they have “Cristo es mi vida”, and other things like this. There are so many churches in this city, and Bibles sold on almost every block. It’s such a stark contrast to what I’ve seen in Oregon, where faith is counterculture. It surprises me every time I see religious references, and puts a little smile of excitement on my face.

            After the church service, Laura and I walked to a small craft supply store, buying markers, glitter, paper, and glue. I spent a good portion of my afternoon tracing out a picture of the United States on a poster board, and adding pictures of various famous monuments. I am actually pretty proud of my artwork; it’s been a long time since I’ve had the opportunity to draw on a poster board, and I loved it. My proudest creation, though, is that of a paper mache football. For some reason I really wanted Brooks to be able to show the kids how to throw an American football, and what it looked like. So I took a small soccer ball, added some points to the end, and covered it in brown paper. It looks more like a brown lemon than a football, but I like it nonetheless. I’m excited for our Estados Unidos presentation at the orphanage tomorrow; hopefully we get the words out correctly in Spanish and don’t make too big of fools of ourselves. :) 

Lazy Gringo Saturday

Today was a day of rest for Brooks, Laura and I. We slept in until about 9am (still not really sleeping in to me, but better than our usual 7am wake up time), and went downstairs for breakfast. Sheny had made us delicious crepes, to eat with papaya and banana. After breakfast Laura and I came up to our room, hanging out and figuring out the washing machine for the first time. It was nice to relax a bit, catch up on some reading and e-mails. We had been at the orphanage so constantly last week, it was important for us to slow down at least one day and rejuvenate ourselves for the kids next week. Around 11am, the three of us decided to venture out to the city center of Huehue, and see what it had to offer. This whole week has been a week of celebration in Huehue for the patron saint of the city, Carmen. This was why the kids didn’t have school all week, and there were crazy parades and circuses filling the city. We chose a really amazing week as our first in Guatemala. As we left to go out to the city center, we ran into a large horse parade, which seemed to have literally every resident of Huehue watching. We ended up walking in the parade, again, simply to get to our destination more quickly. And that destination was… Domino’s Pizza. We had originally set out planning to go a nice restaurant at a resort here that Laura and I had seen advertising international food. But then Brooks found out that this restaurant was just past Domino’s, and we simply couldn’t go any further. Domino’s just sounded so good. And it was. Not at all creepy like pizza sometimes is in foreign places, and it was nice having a break from rice, beans, and tortillas. We all shared that we felt kind of bad eating there, like it was just too typical for the gringos to be caught walking into Domino’s. But sometimes you just have to suck up your pride, and be thankful that for $6 you can get a yummy personal sized Domino’s pizza in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. While at Domino’s we saw an advertisement for the new Harry Potter movie, which we decided was our next gringo destination: find a movie theater in Huehue playing Harry Potter. Huehue is honestly not that large of a town, so it may be an impossible adventure. But we’re going to try to figure it out anyway. After lunch, we walked on to the city center, which had previously been a kind of mystery to us. Everyone would talk about “el centro” and “el parque”, and we were so confused about where the center and park were. What we found was a large open space with a fountain, trees, and a large, beautiful church. We walked into the church and I felt as though I was in Europe again. It was a great nostalgic feeling. The space within the center was filled with people selling toys and food and balloons and traditional Guatemalan wares. I’m assuming it was all for the festival, but I would love if that stuff was up all the time. It just adds a level of excitement to the city. As we walked out of the church, the dreaded afternoon rains began, and we decided to start walking home. It was surprising to us that it is raining so much here in Guatemala. Everyone to whom I told I was going to Guatemala always asked, “is it going to be like really hot there?” And while we have had some hot moments, especially during our uphill walks to the orphanage, the afternoon weather has been mostly grey and rainy. Again, I enjoy it a bit just because it reminds me of Oregon, and I am glad I will have some time to ease myself into the warm Guatemalan weather. 

            After coming home from the centro, we spent the afternoon just hanging out in our room, reading, playing cards, and catching up on the internet. Felt a bit sloth-like compared to the past couple of days we have had, but I think it was some much needed rest. Tomorrow morning we will be returning to Kildare’s church for service, the church that we attended last weekend and the congregation that Brooks and his team had built the church for this past Spring Break. It was a beautiful service last week, and I am excited to return again tomorrow, hopefully making more friendships and creating even more of a church community. 

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.