Feb 20th and 21st

Feb 20th

Finally arrived here in Guatemala! The flights went well and I have to say that Continental rocks! Not only did we have a movie on our way to Houston, we also were served lunch and they made 3 trips for beverages! The flight to Guatemala didn’t have a movie, but they did serve another meal. I guess Continental is one of the only airlines left that serves meals. Anyway…it was nice!

The only hitch was as we were taxing around the runways in Houston, one of our team members heard this strange noise. They had to stop the plane and check the overhead bins. She was sure it sounded like something was loose. Personally, I think it was this guy sitting in front of me. He was tapping his foot to the music he was listening to (even though I-Pods were supposed to be off at this point). After the flight attendant asking a bazillion questions about the noise, I stopped him and told him I thought it was the guy in front. He rolled his eyes because this guy had been giving the flight attendant a difficult time. Not in a mean way, just in an irritating “I’m a boy in my late teens” sort of way. Anyway, since we had to stop, we lost our place in line for take off and had to circle the runways for another 20 minutes. We got into Guatemala City pretty late 10:30 and didn’t get back to where we were staying until 12:00am. Can I say tired!

Feb 21st

First full day in Guatemala. Is sunny and in the mid 70’s. Tank top and capris type weather.
We had a pretty rough night last night and nobody got very much sleep. I think I took the record with only 2 hours of very fitful sleep (I‘m pretty much used to that anyway). We didn’t get to bed until around 1am and then had to get up at 6 so we could leave for our busy day with the kids from Community of Faith school. There was lot of groggy people this morning.
We had a blast with the kids and no one drowned, so that’s always a good thing. We divided 140 kids into teams and then the spent the morning going to several different games. I spent the morning manning the ball relay game. I was standing in one position so long I got a nice little burn on my shoulder and neck, despite sunblock! After game time, they opened up the pool for the kids.

They had a nice little shallow area which was probably only 1 foot deep and then a larger pool that went from 3 feet to 6. This totally helped the kids from getting in over their heads, literally! Kids here don’t usually learn how to swim, yet they love playing in water. They will jump in anywhere in the pool, even on top of another person and then flail about until they either get to shallower water, reach the edge, or someone helps them. Because of the smaller pool, the kids who couldn’t swim stayed there which really helped! I was sitting on the edge of the pool, just in case someone needed saving and got soaking wet from all the splashing.

After an hour of swimming, we had lunch, which was amazing! We had steak (everyday food here), tortillas, pasta salad and my favorite, refried black beans. I could write a whole paper on how much I LOVE the black beans here, but I will spare you the details of my passionate love affair.

During the afternoon, thee kids had a worship time and then did a craft. At the end of the day, we were able to give out school supplies to each child. Each class presented us with a card and big hugs.

These kids are amazing! This is the one time during the year that they get to do something like this and we are the only group out of the 12 or 13 that come down each year that does anything with them. So much missed opportunity to minister to them!

After the kids left, we went to the principles house with some of the teachers and had dinner. We had this corn drink that was, well, gross. It was like drinking creamed corn without the chunks of corn. Then we had these tamales that were, well, also gross. They had chunks of chicken in them, bones and skin included! Yep, I’m going to have a hard time with the food down here. That tamale broke about 15 meat rules (if you don’t know about my meat rules, its probably better not to ask, it’s a weird thing of mine). Black beans and rice make up a complete protein, right???

Tomorrow we have church and then changed plans a bit and are going to Antigua (where I'm going to school). I'll try and post some pictures in the next few days.