Life as usual

I’ve been in G-mala now for almost a week and it’s pretty fantastic! The food is great, the city is beautiful, the people at my school are great, and I even understand most of what people are saying when they talk to me in Spanish. I got a great deal on a cell phone here (Q89, which is about $11.50) and it came with Q200 of free credit (which is like 275 minutes) plus 2000 free texts (but they all expire in a month) and free internet for a month (but it’s the worst internet ever so I don’t use it). So now if I get lost I can call someone to help me find my way instead of just staring at my map hoping something I see on the street will match what I see on my map. But I’m getting pretty used to the area between where I live and where I go to school, which is great because I can find my school, the book store (with the American owner), the post office, and a couple other shops/restaurants on my first try!

With the purchase of my cell phone I got a free picture with Santa! And the guy with me is Gio, one of the school's coordinators.

I went to church Sunday at a church with an English service (some missionaries who I was in contact with before coming said it was the only one with an English service that they knew of), and it was super tiny, and the sermon was (I’m not kidding) 7 minutes long. It’s an Episcopalian church so it’s super liturgical, which is a little different than I’m used to, but I was surprised at how many of the things we do at First Pres the same way (like the same[ish] prayer of confession and after finishing a scripture the reader says “This is the Word of the Lord” and everyone says “Thanks be to God”), so it wasn’t totally strange to me. And I thought the church was a lot further from my house than it actually is so I was a little early…which means I was really early since most of the people at the church are on Guatemalan time (which means everything starts 15ish minutes later than it is supposed to). It was pretty funny, when I walked into the church the pastor introduced himself and then he said, “We start every week precisely at 9AM. That is, if you’re using a Guatemalan clock.” Hahaha! Good times.

Spanish class is going well. It’s so much information at once that I’m really tired all the time, but I’m learning a ton! I love practicing my Spanish with people who work at the school because they’re really good at explaining things to me in a different way if I don’t understand a word, and they’re really patient with my slowness at conjugating verbs in my head or stumbling through words that always mess me up (like caricaturas, amplificador, and anaranjado [cartoons, amplifier, and the color orange]). The family that I live with is really great about it too, but I don’t feel quite as comfortable practicing with them.

Every day there is an activity that the school facilitates and I guess Monday nights are almost always salsa class because there’s a local studio that has classes Monday nights, so that’s something easy to plan since all they have to do is take us to the studio. Well, I decided to go to salsa class last night because I figured, even though I don’t really like dancing, I’m in Guatemala, I had nothing else to do (besides study a million irregular verbs that my teacher taught me…), and I’m pretty sure some part of my tuition goes toward organizing the events, so I went. Never again. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, but I’m pretty sure they had me dancing with a 15 year old who probably weighs 30lbs less than me, didn’t really talk and didn’t seem like he knew what he was doing much more than I did. Plus it was in a pretty small building with too many people in it, so I kept bumping into people. Now I can say I’ve taken a salsa class (as in: been there, done that).

There’s a big market here which is made even bigger because people have set up booths to sell Christmas stuff and it’s super fun to walk through and see all the stuff that people are selling. There are tons of nativity sets, but it’s kinda weird because the most common is just Mary and Joseph together….like, not with Jesus. And then most of the little baby Jesus’ have the ugliest faces, like their faces got squished so they’re long and thin. But there’s also tons of fruit that people are selling, so I definitely plan to go back before it’s all over and buy a bunch of star fruit and maybe some apples (the apples in the grocery stores here are from Washington). It’s pretty funny to me how you can buy pretty much anything here and it’s so much cheaper than in the states! I mean, I know most of the clothes are knock-offs and stuff, but even the apples are cheaper here than in WA and my $11 cell phone and I bought a scarf for $6 that would have been like $20 at Target or wherever. Even the McDonald’s here is cheaper than in the states…for the exact same stuff!! But gas here is expensive, it’s like $4.20 a gallon. So far that’s the only thing I’ve found here to be more expensive than it is back home.

Last night I watched the fútbol final on television. It was the two Guatemala City teams playing (Las Cremas and Los Rojos) and las cremas won. I love how important fútbol is to the people here! Pretty much every restaurant has a TV and they always have fútbol on and then after the match was over last night a bunch of people shot off fireworks in the street (including the people I live with). And I just think it’s cool how it’s not just a sport for young people to enjoy, I was watching at my house with 3 generations. Maybe it’ll be like that one day in the states…but probably not since we have all of those other “super important” sports. Haha!  

Well, I think that’s pretty much it. I love it here and I’m stoked that I get to learn tons while I’m here and……yeah. Oh! There was a little earthquake on Saturday night (well, Sunday morning…at like 4) and I wasn’t sure if it was an earthquake or just a big truck going down the road outside my window, but then lots of people were talking about it and asking me if I felt it…so I guess it was an earthquake. My teacher said it was probably due to volcanic activity, but it’s actually better to have little earthquakes with some frequency than for all the energy to get stored up until there’s a huge quake like the one about a month ago. Anyways, yeah, my life here is getting pretty normal…I mean, I’m still loving it all the time, but I can actually sleep now because I’m not crazy excited just to be here like I was the first couple nights.   

¡Bienvenido a Xela!

After leaving Iowa I had a 4 ½ hour layover in Houston, which turned out to be incredibly boring. I must say, traveling alone is way more boring than it is stressful. But as my plane was starting its descent I decided to look out the window to see if there was anything to be seen, but all I could see was the light at the end of the wing...until I saw a huge flash of lightning! So I kept watching and the lightning continued in the same spot and it lit up that whole part of the sky. It was so cool!! When I stepped off the plane in Guate it instantly got muggy and I could smell it in the air and I started to get pretty stoked. I mean, I’ve been stoked ever since I knew I was going, but the whole day of traveling kind of got me more bored than stoked. Anyways, everything with customs went super smoothly and I got my luggage and walked outside. If you’ve ever been to the Guatemala City airport you know that when you walk outside there are tons of people standing around a fenced perimeter waving, calling out names, taking pictures, and holding up signs with peoples’ names on them. I got a little worried when I saw only Hispanic names, until I saw a little white board with light blue ink (terrible color choice for optimal visibility!) that looked like a name about as long as mine. So I walked up and, sure enough, it was my name. We got in a van and headed to the guest house. When we got to the guest house (only about 7 minutes from the airport) I was shown my room and where the bathroom was and I was given the wi-fi password. After letting the internet know I was still alive I tried to get some sleep. Impossible. It was muggy and I was super excited to be in Guatemala. But eventually I fell asleep because I knew I had to be up by 6:15 so we could leave at 7 so I could make my bus.

I was served the best breakfast ever! Watermelon, papaya, banana, pineapple, toast with raspberry jam, and tea. So much yum! Then we headed to the bus station and I got onto a big charter bus to wait out the 4 hour ride to Xela. It was really entertaining to watch this guy hanging out of the door at every bus stop area yelling out “Xela! Xela! Xela!!!” and waving people on. It was also fun to watch the bus driver make the signal to passing drivers to call him and then his phone would ring 5 seconds later...he signaled at a lot of passing drivers, I have no idea how he knows all of them! Well I arrived in Xela and had to take a taxi to my school. Taxis are way more expensive than buses, even the nice buses! It cost me 57Q (approx.. $7.25) for the bus and 30Q ($3.80) for the taxi. But whatevs, I got to my school and it was great! I drug my suitcase up the stairs (the school’s on the second floor of a really cool building) and Francisco showed me around the school and told me about a bunch of stuff and then the lady that’s hosting me came to pick me up. If you find yourself thinking that you’d like to travel around Guatemala, let me give you one piece of advice: don’t bring a rolling suitcase! The sidewalks are only wide enough for 1 ½ people at their widest points, but they get narrower, and if you try to walk in the road you’ll either get run over or your suitcase won’t roll because the roads are funky. But anyways, we got to the house and had some lunch and then I chilled in my room for a while and decided to do some exploring. I asked the lady hosting me where our house was on the map my school gave me and then I headed to the bookstore (Steve, you were right. I should have brought the pocket dictionary also...but I didn’t, so I bought one for 24Q). I knew I loved it instantly because it’s tiny and full of books, and the guy who owns it (or at least the guy that was working) speaks English (I think he’s American). I’ll definitely be frequenting that store.

Well then I headed to my school because they have activities every day and tonight was going to this restaurant for a marimba concert and Mayan dances & songs. One of the school coordinators, Gio, his mom, who just so happens to be who I’m staying with, and three other students, Ryan (England), April (Australia), and Leslie (England), all went and it really wasn’t that fun. By the time we got dinner it was around 8 and we were all super hungry and it wasn’t even good...plus all the marimba music starts to sound the same after a while. But it was still great to get out and be around other people kind of like me and even greater that the lady I’m staying with was there so that she could guide us back home.

All in all it’s been a crazy couple of days and I still can’t really believe that I’m here in this beautiful place. In the morning I start classes and from there it’s 4 weeks of hard-core Spanish learning. I really hope I can pick it up quick enough that by the end of the 4 weeks I don’t feel overwhelmed to be here anymore...otherwise I’ll just have to hang out at the bookstore all the time and talk to the guy who works there.

Iowa in a nutshell

We came. We ate. We slept. We visited. We left.

Ok, so we did a bit more than that. We got to spend time with our grandparents every day that we were here and it was great to see them so often, even though they told us the same stories every day. We got to spend a bunch of time with our Uncle Bruce & Aunt Janice and our cousin Sarah and her daughter Maddison (and a little time with Sarah’s husband Nate, but he was gone most of the week for work). We even managed to go out to lunch with Lyle (the farmer that my dad lived with when he first came to this country) three times, usually we only get to see him once when we visit because he’s so busy all the time. We got to go see the Omaha zoo on Saturday, but since it’s winter only the indoor exhibits were open, which actually was the best thing ever because it was so, so, so cold out! Lyle took us on a tour of his farm and showed us where he and some other guys has to blow up a levee last year to save the town of Missouri Valley from flooding (and by blow up I mean they hired a guy who brought in 800 pounds of dynamite to make it go ka-boom).

Everything this week was wonderful and we have been so blessed during this visit! It’s been really hard to watch my grandparents be old people, watching them not be able to remember whose children Steve & I were when we first arrived, not remembering that they’d told us the same stories multiple times, spending most of their days sleeping in their chairs because they just don’t have energy for anything else, and seeing them both use walkers when they go out of their room. But it’s also been great to be around their sense of humor (my grandparents have the best jokes!) and hear them tell us stories from the past that we hadn’t heard before and hear them sing together and see how much they care about us and how much they love having us visit.

This week has gone by quite fast and I’m sad to realize that it’s already over, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything! We’ve had a great time and as I sit here reminiscing over the last week I also look forward to my next trip. Tomorrow I fly from Omaha to Houston and then from Houston to Guatemala City. Once I arrive in Guate there will be someone from a local guest house to pick me up and I’ll be staying there tomorrow night. Wednesday morning they will take me to the bus station where I will take a 4-hour bus ride to Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela, pronounced shay-la) and that’s where I’ll be for at least the next 3 months, but hopefully for the next 11 months. I’ll be sure to post something as soon as I can once I get there just to let y’all know I’m still alive!

Jenna, Jaxon, Steve & I in a tractor at Lyle's farm

Day 1

Our first day was a pretty standard travel day: wake up at 3am, eat a quick breakfast, and head to the airport (by the way, why are there so many cars on the road at 4 in the morning?!). Everything with security and checking in went pretty quickly and Steve & I got on our plane to Denver. In Denver we had an hour layover, during which we ate from the copious amounts of snackies we brought with us (home-made beef jerky, sticky rice, apple slices, fudge, and cookie crumbles (they were cookies, but they got a bit smashed in Steve’s backpack). In the Denver airport I was a little worried that the men’s bathroom doubled as a tornado shelter….do those happen a lot in Denver? It’s like in Oregon when you see all the tsunami escape route signs on the side of the road; one would think I would have heard about tsunamis frequenting the state just below mine.

Anyways, we got to Omaha and I was amazed at how small that airport is. I was trying to find our flight on the reader board so I could figure out which carousel our luggage would be coming out on until we looked to see that there are only like 3 carousels and only one had luggage on it and, big surprise, all the people from our plane were gathering around it. So we got our luggage and found our cousin Sarah and her super cute new daughter Maddison and we were off….well, sort of. Steve brought his mandolin and broke a string re-tuning it when we got off the plane so we had to stop by a music store to get new strings for him. After another quick stop at Target, we headed to Missouri Valley and Sarah showed us the nursing home where our grandparents now live and showed us how to get there from her house (she and Maddison couldn’t come in because our grandpa has been fighting a cold). So Steve and I headed over to visit our grandparents. It’s really weird to see them just sitting in a room all day, they used to always be go, go, go. But I guess that’s what happens when you get old. After hanging out with them for a couple hours we headed to my aunt’s house in Logan where we’ll be staying for the week and Steve and I promptly fell asleep after eating dinner. Hahaha! Ok, not really, but I fell asleep for an hour or so and finally went to bed around 11 and Steve went to bed around 7:30 (for those of you keeping track, that’s 5:30PST), so we were pretty tired.

All in all, it was a great day. We got to see all of our family here and since we traveled at such a weird time we’re pretty much used to the time change now. Tonight my sister-in-law, Jenna, and my nephew, Jaxon, fly in and they’ll be around for the rest of the time Steve and I are here too. There’s been talk of going to the Omaha Zoo, which is apparently the nation’s best zoo (for those of you who don’t know, I love the zoo!!), and we plan to get dinner one of these nights with our old family friend, Lyle (he sponsored my dad to come to the United States….so basically, without him I wouldn’t be here writing this blog). It should be a really fun week!  

My last day at home

In just 16 short hours I'll be on the first plane in the biggest adventure of my life. You know that feeling like you're going to forget something really important? Well I don't have that. Which makes me think that I must be forgetting something monumentally important...like, so important that I don't even know I'm forgetting it. But I made my list and double, triple, quadruple checked it and even added a few things, and my suitcase is still only 35-ish pounds. 

This is everything I own for the next 11-ish months

So clearly, something must be wrong, right? None of my bags are bulging like they do when I go on little 10-day trips, my mind isn't racing with panic and excitement, and I don't feel like there are a ton of things I'm forgetting to do around the house before I leave. My room is clean, my bed is made (that never happens!), my laundry is done, and I don't think I've left anything lying around downstairs.
Is it possible that reading all of those articles online and in travel books about packing light and preparing for a trip have actually paid off? Maybe. But I think that the bulk of my peace is from the knowledge that God has prepared all of this before me and that countless people have prayed for me in the past couple weeks and will continue to be praying for me throughout my trip. I can't wait to start my newest adventure, dark and early tomorrow morning, and I'm so excited to be able to share it with you!