A Typical Day

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  Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Hi and Happy August to all!

In my last blog I failed to wish the West Des Moines Methodist Mission Possible Team best of luck and to have a hard working and rewarding experience. I was thinking about all of you last week!

Last week I got my third cold here and this one was much worse than before. Both a head and chest cold complete with coughing and I think fever although I do not have a thermometer with me. I had to stay home sick on Friday but luckily by the end of the weekend I was recovered. I told one of my roommates that I rarely get sick back home, but he commented that at least in the states we have heaters in our homes and offices. Here we do not and believe it or not folks here in Guatemala in the mountains it is COLD. This morning I could have sworn I could almost see my breath in my room, but not quite!

So I decided to let you know what my typical day is even though I may have written some of this before. So here we go...

I get up around 7am and many days I wake up before the alarm even goes off. Now I know those of you that know me really well can not believe this, especially my mother because I am not a morning person and the snooze button is my best friend. But I do get up and get ready and even get to eat breakfast before leaving my apartment. Today I was especially thankful for a shower since yesterday we had no water in our building or actually the area of town I live in. But I felt blessed because not having water only once in 2 1/2 months is great for here!

Shortly after 8am I am off. I walk 20 minutes to the daycare center. It is great exercise and I get to walk through the main market called the Democracia while women and men scurry around setting up their tables and baskets of vegetables, fruits, housewares, clothes, cds and anything else you could possibly sell.

I arrive at the daycare center and greet all the kids in the nursery with a Buenas dias. Usually 3 or 4 arrive before me and the rest trickle in during the next hour. Every morning Fernanda gives me a big smile to my greeting and Pamela continues to say, No, No every day. It always makes me laugh. Danielle just looks at me with her big eyes and turns away, she is obviously not a morning person either and not fully awake just yet.

So while the kids are arriving I make them all bottles and they feast away in their cribs while I sweep and mop the floor. Then I go and wash by hand the towel I used as the mop head. I really long for mops with disposable heads and washing machines at this point. Unfortunately I am a clean freak and I can never get the towels completely clean with my hands rubbing the towel across a washboard sink. Then I play with the kids in the nursery until around 10am when they get to walk across the courtyard to the kitchen for pan or bread as it is called back home. They are good on the trip to get the food, but then bringing them all back is always a challenge. They want to venture into different rooms with the other kids or go out on the muddy playground. It is too cold for them to play outside right now but they don{t understand that. Usually I have to pick Pamela up and listen to her cry and kick her feet back to the nursery. But back inside we play with balls and I started the game where you cover your face with your hands and then say boo when you pull your hands away. It always makes Pamela laugh but today for the first time she said boo back. I am sure boo is not a word in Spanish but it couldn{t hurt, right?

All the kids love to look at my watch. Most people here do not wear watches, which I figured out rather quickly because everyone sees mine and asks me the time. At least I know my numbers in Spanish! It has been amazing to watch these kids grow in the short month I have volunteered at the daycare center. The youngest baby can now hold her own bottle and her legs are going all the time now and I know we will have her in a walker very soon. Lucia now recognizes me and today she cried when she saw I was leaving. Oops. But she is very close to walking all on her own.

Around Noon we feed all the kids and that proves to be a big task. Usually they, us and the highchairs and floors are messy. I have gotten better at getting the food in the little ones mouths and not just on their faces. After lunch they get a bottle and it is nap time. That is when I make my escape for the day.

Then I am off to the Democracia to find some lunch before catching the bus in the park to go to La Esperanza. Most days I pack into the bus and try to squeeze myself down to half my size without even thinking, but yesterday I wanted to kill our bus driver. He was such a jerk. When you have 10-15 more passengers than you should it takes awhile for people to squeeze through to get off the bus. He was yelling at people to hurry up and get off the bus fast. I am not sure he even saw how jampacked we were. As soon as people were off and then new ones on he gunned it and we were off. People would yell baja for the next stop and he would just keep driving and everyone would have to yell baja, baja, baja. Although I have definately had more kamikaze drivers than him. I prayed a lot on that bus!

I arrive in La Esperanza close to 2pm. The lady who lives at the church with her son and possibly husband is usually out cooking, feeding the chickens or doing laundry. I think I first mentioned awhile ago that when I would greet her she did not really respond to me. Well all that has now changed through my charm! I say Buenas Tardes and ask her how she is. Of course we talk about the weather and then about classes and the students. I think I have grown on her after all my time here. Yeah!

My classes go very fast and they are a lot of fun since my students and I have really bonded. We laugh and I try to make learning as enjoyable as possible for them. But you never know what they are going to like and what they do not like. The girls really like the songs I have taught them. We played a version of Jepardy last week for review and they really enjoyed that. The attendance for my classes has gone down again. The rowdy boys that pushed at my patience quit attending. Even though they drove me crazy sometimes I still enjoyed them and I did not want them to stop coming. But I have heard this is a trend here. When the material gets harder or learning English is not as easy as they thought they quit showing up. Their parents do not encourage their attendance, in fact they discourage it in a way because they ask their kids to do chores or run to the market or other work or family related things they need to do instead of go to class. But the ones that still come really want to learn and they seem to catch on the quickest. Hopefully they keep coming the next 6 weeks.

At 5:15 I catch the bus back to Parque Central. Usually I have an errand to run like use the internet or go to the store for water or pasta or go buy vegetables. Then it is home to cook dinner and perpare for the next days classes. I am always tired at night.

Some nights are special because we have dinner together, either all of us in my apartment like 2 weeks ago when I made lasagna and others chipped in what they had, broccoli, bread whatever. Or like last week when my neighbor grilled (not sure how fire safe his makeshift grill is...). He grilled steak and we made guacamole, garlic mashed potatoes with real garlic roasted in the oven, and green beans with bacon. I told him this was the best meal I had had in Guatemala. It is always nice to eat dinner with friends to talk and share our experiences.

Fridays I do not teach so after I leave the daycare center at 12:30 I am free to run errands. Friday is laundry day and here you take your laundry to the lavanderia and drop it off. They wash and dry it for you and you pick it up later. It was amazing because my laundry guy knows the church I teach at and he knows the family I stayed with upon first arriving. What a small world. So he always remembers my name, especially since it is a Latin/Spanish name. We have a good visit every week. Last week he gave me best wishes for getting over my cold.

If I do not travel on the weekends they are a time to relax, shop for groceries, practice Spanish and prepare for the next weeks classes. It is also time to hang out with friends and I really enjoy a lot of the friends I have made here. I try to journal a few times a week and I have the best journal to capture my thoughts. My womens church covenant group gave me a journal with scripture on every page and I love writing in it and I really enjoy finding their thoughtful notes to me every now and then. I also have a devotion book with me to keep me on track with my mission. It is amazing how on a certain day a certain devotion just fits me perfectly. This past weekend I was so happy with my experience here and me and just being free to follow God{s will for my life this year. I could not imagine being anywhere else. I had thought most of my prayers here would be asking for strength and endurance to make it through my time here. But I have found that more times than not I am just thanking God for my time here and this experience. Praise is so often on my lips and the tears of happiness have almost burst forth many times over these past few months. Before I could not wait to drive my car again and today I was trying to imagine what it would be like to not ride the buses here anymore and my mind could not picture it. So I guess that is a good thing.

I am counting down the weeks though because I do miss all my friends and family back home. In 7 weeks I will be done with my volunteer work here. I can not believe how fast the time has gone. I still have a lot left to do so do not worry I will continue to stay busy.

Today I read some sad emails from friends back home and I was sorry I could not be there to comfort them. So I am asking for prayers for an unborn baby who has very serious medical problems, this baby is a grandchild of a friend of mine. I also ask for prayers for a woman who is undergoing a masectomy later this week.

God Bless and Enjoy the rest of your summer,

dianaj25