After all those activities in February, I still had the biggest one of all waiting for me the second week of March. That week, as I have mentioned to you all, 12 parishioners from my student parish in East Lansing would be coming down to my site for an alternative spring break (short for ASB). This was something I had been dreaming and planning about well before March of last year. I knew it would be exciting to have some peers come here and work with me, but I think the most important aspect of them coming down for me was that I would get a chance to share another way of life, culture, and world with them. While they were coming down here to serve others in my community, my goal was to serve them so that would leave with experiences, attitudes, sights, and thoughts that would change them or get them to begin to open up a little more from where they were before coming here. Not to say that some of them did not have experiences like this nor that they didn’t have their minds or heart open to, for example, the poverty in other parts of the world; to the contrary, just coming down here taking a spring break at one’s own cost shows some understanding and openness. I just feel that we can always learn more. I know I am not done, and will never be done while here on earth.
The basic layout of the week went like this:
Sunday: The group arrived after leaving Chicago at something like 2 or 3 in the morning. We went in a bus directly to my site. On the way, we got stuck waiting for construction crews to let us by 2 times for a total wait of about 35 min. That was one of the first lessons of how time is different here. We got to the rectory, where Fr. Victor graciously let them all stay and where, Sandra, the housekeeper, would be graciously making their meals. The only big activity that day was a soccer game with the youth group of the parish. We played on a recently carved out field still with softball size rocks and subsequently, many came down with some slight injuries but nothing serious.
Monday: This day was the only day that I wanted for us to use public transportation and the only day that we really needed to be on time because the private bus I hired from someone in town (Don Elvis… yes his name is Elvis) would not be available. And guess what, we were late, really late. And we missed the buses. So we had to walk. The walk would normally take about 1.5 hours at minimum. It would have probably taken more being a group and since we were carrying a jug of water. Thankfully, the police drove by about 15 minutes into the walk and gave a ride down to the first village from where we could walk up to where we needed to go in about 30 minutes.
We arrived at the Catholic Church in the village where the local church ministers and youth group were waiting for us (now we were the ones that were arriving late) ready with their instruments and speakers to sing some songs and start the activity. The activity would be hard, cutting tires and then flipping them inside out. Luckily we had about 40 other people who were there to do the work with us and who would be benefiting from the work. I think I had said I visited the dump on my birthday to get some tires; with help from the municipal government, my NGO, and my housemate, I was able to bring up 200 tires! That’s a lot. I brought about 130 to my site and another 70 for some other interested people in another site. With the tires, we’d make two things: a container in which tiny gardens could be planted and a gray water filter so that the families would have something with which they could water their vegetables during the dry season. After tricking the group into doing all 90 (I think I said “let’s just do these last 2 here and see where we are.” a few times), we finally finished and shared lunch with everyone else that stayed til the end with us (I think there is something special in sharing a meal, albeit tiny in size). From there, we were invited into 2 homes where questions were asked, stories told, and pictures taken, including pictures of the ASB’ers (the parishioners on the ASB trip) with a calf. We walked back to the church to get picked up; everyone was thankful we had a ride back up to town.
Tuesday: This day was the earliest day that we would have to get up. We would be going to a primary school up in the highest part of Eastern Guatemala to do some dental hygiene presentations in 1st through 6th grades. The presentation included a song (the ASB’ers probably cannot forget the song) and a skit in which people had cutouts of happy teeth and sad teeth. Part of the skit included asking the kids what foods were good for the teeth and then having them give that food to the teeth; if after giving the food the teeth were happy, the kids would know that the food was good for teeth. Especially with the younger ones, I had to laugh doing this. For instance, I would bring out a carrot and ask them if they thought this would be good for their teeth. Some would yell out “NO!” I would then take one up front, ask them again what they thought, and then have them feed the carrot to the teeth. They looked so surprised to see that the teeth were happy. At the end of the presentation, we did a demo on how to make your own toothpaste and handed out more donated toothpaste and toothbrushes. The school seems excited to know how to make toothpaste in order to start having a toothbrushing time after snack time. So after doing all 6 grades and giving the recipe and some ingredients for making toothpaste to the middle school, we started to hike back up (I forgot to mention that the roads were not too good to the school so we had to walk for about 30 minutes to get to it) and had lunch under a shade tree away from the extremely dusty paths (everyone would have black boogers and brown pants that night). We then gathered about 7 sacks of cow poop for our next day’s activity from a person who graciously let us have it. From there, we went to the ecological park I had told you all about before for 2 hours. The owner, who was planning to close the park pretty close to when we got there, let us all come in and explore the park and hanging bridges. He would let all the ASB’ers who wanted go to go on the zip lines. Since these ASB’ers came down here to work, he would accept no payment.
Wednesday: This day we went down to the rehabilitation center for severely malnourished children. We had an opening prayer service with Fr.Victor, the nuns who run the center, and the young women who are there as well. The young women, who were there to help the nuns take care of the children in exchange for the possibility of studying in middle school and high school, would be joining us in the work. Among us all, we split into 4 groups and did random tasks the center needed done. We painted trees, rocks, and walls with lime, we did some landscaping and weeding, we cleaned an area of the yard where a garden would be planted, we took down a huge free-standing wooden stage, and we made a compost pile with the organic debris from our yard work and with the cow poop we had brought. That night, back at the parish, we celebrated Helen Puplis’s grandson’s birthday with all the Guatemalan norms: piñata, firecrackers (I think I scared some people), and cake.
Thursday: Our last day in my site, we spent half of it cutting coffee in the parish coffee fields with about 40 other parishioners. One thing to note is that the driver I had hired, Don Elvis, and his son had accompanied us the whole way participating in everything that we were doing (they did not just wait in the car for us to be finished. Just their presence, not to mention being accompanied by so many people each and every day, really made a difference. We had a goodbye lunch with the priest and Don Elvis and his son (I lit another pack of firecrackers just to make the celebration an official Guatemalan celebration and scared everyone, including the priest) and took off to Antigua where they’d spend their last night in Guatemala
Friday: We went to the volcano, which was awesome as usual, and then did some shopping in Antigua before heading for the airport where their plane would leave at 8:30pm
Phew! What a week.
For now, you'll just have to go on facebook to see some of the pictures
Here is just a side story I wanted to include for you all. I was with a family eating lunch and the mom brought me a rock bigger than the size of my hand and on one side, it was filled with large crystals the width of pencils that had grown. She had found the rock in the fields one day while working. She asked me, “How was this rock made? Did someone put the crystals on this rock?” I replied, “No, the rock was made by natural processes in the ground that take place over a long time.” She asked me again, “So God made it?” “Yes, He did.” I said. She then commented “Well, then it must be true that it takes a long time because God must have had to think a long time to make such a beautiful rock.”
The basic layout of the week went like this:
Sunday: The group arrived after leaving Chicago at something like 2 or 3 in the morning. We went in a bus directly to my site. On the way, we got stuck waiting for construction crews to let us by 2 times for a total wait of about 35 min. That was one of the first lessons of how time is different here. We got to the rectory, where Fr. Victor graciously let them all stay and where, Sandra, the housekeeper, would be graciously making their meals. The only big activity that day was a soccer game with the youth group of the parish. We played on a recently carved out field still with softball size rocks and subsequently, many came down with some slight injuries but nothing serious.
Monday: This day was the only day that I wanted for us to use public transportation and the only day that we really needed to be on time because the private bus I hired from someone in town (Don Elvis… yes his name is Elvis) would not be available. And guess what, we were late, really late. And we missed the buses. So we had to walk. The walk would normally take about 1.5 hours at minimum. It would have probably taken more being a group and since we were carrying a jug of water. Thankfully, the police drove by about 15 minutes into the walk and gave a ride down to the first village from where we could walk up to where we needed to go in about 30 minutes.
We arrived at the Catholic Church in the village where the local church ministers and youth group were waiting for us (now we were the ones that were arriving late) ready with their instruments and speakers to sing some songs and start the activity. The activity would be hard, cutting tires and then flipping them inside out. Luckily we had about 40 other people who were there to do the work with us and who would be benefiting from the work. I think I had said I visited the dump on my birthday to get some tires; with help from the municipal government, my NGO, and my housemate, I was able to bring up 200 tires! That’s a lot. I brought about 130 to my site and another 70 for some other interested people in another site. With the tires, we’d make two things: a container in which tiny gardens could be planted and a gray water filter so that the families would have something with which they could water their vegetables during the dry season. After tricking the group into doing all 90 (I think I said “let’s just do these last 2 here and see where we are.” a few times), we finally finished and shared lunch with everyone else that stayed til the end with us (I think there is something special in sharing a meal, albeit tiny in size). From there, we were invited into 2 homes where questions were asked, stories told, and pictures taken, including pictures of the ASB’ers (the parishioners on the ASB trip) with a calf. We walked back to the church to get picked up; everyone was thankful we had a ride back up to town.
Tuesday: This day was the earliest day that we would have to get up. We would be going to a primary school up in the highest part of Eastern Guatemala to do some dental hygiene presentations in 1st through 6th grades. The presentation included a song (the ASB’ers probably cannot forget the song) and a skit in which people had cutouts of happy teeth and sad teeth. Part of the skit included asking the kids what foods were good for the teeth and then having them give that food to the teeth; if after giving the food the teeth were happy, the kids would know that the food was good for teeth. Especially with the younger ones, I had to laugh doing this. For instance, I would bring out a carrot and ask them if they thought this would be good for their teeth. Some would yell out “NO!” I would then take one up front, ask them again what they thought, and then have them feed the carrot to the teeth. They looked so surprised to see that the teeth were happy. At the end of the presentation, we did a demo on how to make your own toothpaste and handed out more donated toothpaste and toothbrushes. The school seems excited to know how to make toothpaste in order to start having a toothbrushing time after snack time. So after doing all 6 grades and giving the recipe and some ingredients for making toothpaste to the middle school, we started to hike back up (I forgot to mention that the roads were not too good to the school so we had to walk for about 30 minutes to get to it) and had lunch under a shade tree away from the extremely dusty paths (everyone would have black boogers and brown pants that night). We then gathered about 7 sacks of cow poop for our next day’s activity from a person who graciously let us have it. From there, we went to the ecological park I had told you all about before for 2 hours. The owner, who was planning to close the park pretty close to when we got there, let us all come in and explore the park and hanging bridges. He would let all the ASB’ers who wanted go to go on the zip lines. Since these ASB’ers came down here to work, he would accept no payment.
Wednesday: This day we went down to the rehabilitation center for severely malnourished children. We had an opening prayer service with Fr.Victor, the nuns who run the center, and the young women who are there as well. The young women, who were there to help the nuns take care of the children in exchange for the possibility of studying in middle school and high school, would be joining us in the work. Among us all, we split into 4 groups and did random tasks the center needed done. We painted trees, rocks, and walls with lime, we did some landscaping and weeding, we cleaned an area of the yard where a garden would be planted, we took down a huge free-standing wooden stage, and we made a compost pile with the organic debris from our yard work and with the cow poop we had brought. That night, back at the parish, we celebrated Helen Puplis’s grandson’s birthday with all the Guatemalan norms: piñata, firecrackers (I think I scared some people), and cake.
Thursday: Our last day in my site, we spent half of it cutting coffee in the parish coffee fields with about 40 other parishioners. One thing to note is that the driver I had hired, Don Elvis, and his son had accompanied us the whole way participating in everything that we were doing (they did not just wait in the car for us to be finished. Just their presence, not to mention being accompanied by so many people each and every day, really made a difference. We had a goodbye lunch with the priest and Don Elvis and his son (I lit another pack of firecrackers just to make the celebration an official Guatemalan celebration and scared everyone, including the priest) and took off to Antigua where they’d spend their last night in Guatemala
Friday: We went to the volcano, which was awesome as usual, and then did some shopping in Antigua before heading for the airport where their plane would leave at 8:30pm
Phew! What a week.
For now, you'll just have to go on facebook to see some of the pictures
Here is just a side story I wanted to include for you all. I was with a family eating lunch and the mom brought me a rock bigger than the size of my hand and on one side, it was filled with large crystals the width of pencils that had grown. She had found the rock in the fields one day while working. She asked me, “How was this rock made? Did someone put the crystals on this rock?” I replied, “No, the rock was made by natural processes in the ground that take place over a long time.” She asked me again, “So God made it?” “Yes, He did.” I said. She then commented “Well, then it must be true that it takes a long time because God must have had to think a long time to make such a beautiful rock.”
The neighborhood kids with whom I play jump rope and soccer.
Sometimes there are obstacles on our playing court.
Me in Chichicastenango in front of the Catholic Church. You can see little bon fires, smoke from incense, candles and flowers; these are all part of the mix of Catholic and Mayan traditions that are done here.
Thanksgiving dinner, candle-lit over the open sky on plastic chairs
The volcano... here you can see exactly where the lava is coming out the side of the volcano.
So it just so happened that the last night that Emily was here, that they would start preparing for Christmas by commencing the lighting of the Christmas lights