¡Estoy en Guatemala! (I'm in Guatemala!)

Wow, This past week has felt like a month. Ha. So let's see, since my last post . . .

Friday and traveling to Xela
Friday, we had time to pray for each of the summer exchange teams and then the other teams had some team building times, but since we'll be working so much with a couple who has been in Guatemala and wasn't at training, we put that off. We'll be doing more of that this coming week. So while the other teams were doing that, Amelia, Kelly, and I just hung out, bought some gifts for our host families, and got ready to go. After dinner, we got to hang out with some of the women from some of the other teams-- was a lot of fun. Then we left at 9pm for the airport . . . left SFO at 12:30am, had a layover in Houston and then landed in Guatemala City at 11am (correction-- it's only one hour ahead here-- I'm thinking maybe because of daylight saving time in the US?). Then we drove to Xela and got here around 5pm. So that was 19 hours of traveling!

Arriving in Xela
Needless to say, we were all pretty tired (and looking forward to taking a shower!) when we arrived. Our first stop in Xela was Julio's family's house. That's where Melanie and Julio (our team leaders) will be staying. They have a very big family so we were welcomed by about 25 people (adults and kids). It was very nice, but being tired, we didn't stay very long. Instead, we pretty quickly headed over to the place the 3 of us are staying. It is about a block and a half away from where Julio and Melanie are, and it is a large house where students who are studying at a university or language schools often rent rooms. The women who live there and run the place are very nice and very good at communicating with us patiently as we struggle to speak in Spanish at times. It is a very comfortable place to be-- much nicer than I originally imagined. When I stayed with a family near Mexico City 2 years ago, they had a much simpler house-- cement floors, no indoor plumbing (we took bucket showers and had to pour a bucket of water into the toilet to make it flush) . . . but our place is just like a place in the States except maybe that the bedrooms have tile floors rather than carpet. Our hosts cook us every meal while we're around. So last night, we got to have eggs, rice, and beans for dinner-- probably will be a very common meal, I'm thinking.


Today
After a good night's rest (a bed feels so nice after sleeping in airplanes and cars!), we met up with Melanie and Julio and walked around Xela a little bit. We walked to the Central Park where we'll probably be spending more time this week since that's where the street kids are (they mainly shine shoes for a living so they're also known as shoeshine kids). Then we went to a Catholic church. It was very large-- I'm guessing around seven or eight hundred people-- could be off, but it was big! And there was an echo so it was really hard to understand what was being said. I mainly just looked around and observed people. There were a lot of women in what I think are more typical Mayan clothes-- very colorful long skirts and tops. There were also a lot of families with young children and babies. At one point in the service, the priest walked forward a little (off the stage) and all the children went to the front to get a hug from him. It was so cute. Definitely reminded me of reading about when Jesus welcomed the children to him. Even though I couldn't understand much of what was said (and I had a headache), that definitely made me smile :) Also, something I noticed is that there were a lot of women who were shorter than me! I actually felt tall for once. Craziness. My size might actually be an asset here to help me fit in and relate with people more . . . hmm. Interesting.

I've really enjoyed speaking Spanish so far and look forward to getting much better at it while I'm here. I really hope to become very comfortable with the language before I leave, both for the people here and also for when I return to LA. I'd love to be fluent when I return.

Oh, so after church, we went with Julio's family (all 25 of them!) to get lunch, and, ha, guess what we got? Pizza! ha. I had pizza several times last week thinking I wouldn't have it again till I got back, but the second day here we had it! I have to say it was really good pizza too--better than most pizza I've had in California actually.

To come
So, our real work starts tomorrow. We'll start meeting with German (pronounced Herman) and Carla, the couple who has been here ministering to the street kids and also in some other places (a women's prison is one of the other places I think). So we'll figure out more of what exactly we'll be doing, what our schedule will be like, etc. The next time I write, hopefully I'll have more to share about all of that-- things we're learning, places we've gone, people we've met. For now, I'm still trying to adjust to being here. It's very nice, as I said, but it's taking some getting used to being in a new place, meeting Julio's huge family, trying to speak in Spanish all the time (this break to write in English is nice) . . . I had a headache today-- hoping it's just from being tired and traveling and that it doesn't come back.

Prayer Requests
Please pray for all of our team-- for health, rest, connection with each other (as we're away from friends and family, we're going to have to be family to each other for the next 6 weeks), connection with the people we're serving with (mainly German and Carla who don't speak much English at all) and the people we'll be serving. Please also pray for a balanced view for me especially. When I go on trips like this, I feel like we should be doing something (serving, praying, etc) all the time, but I know that it is good to have times of rest and times of fun as well, that it is necessary even. And also, in general, things just are more slow, relaxed here (in most places!) than in Los Angeles. So I need to be okay with just hanging out with people without having a plan, without things being planned out or without knowing when exactly we'll be doing the next thing. That is hard enough for me back at home ;) but here where just hanging out means having random conversations in Spanish, it's even harder. And when it's large groups of people, it's hard enough in English but with large groups of people (like Julio's family), since they all speak Spanish it's even harder . . .

As I've said and will keep saying, I miss you all! Would love to hear from you! Hope you have a good, blessed Sunday, especially Altaer folk who I would usually see today!

Check out Amelia's blog for pictures and a video! http://vivaxela.blogspot.com

shout outs to:
-Sonia who just started her residency (how is it?)
-Ryan and Julie (hope the wedding went as you hoped and that your honeymoon is awesome!)
-Lakers fans-- my heart goes out to you ;)
-all teachers and students who either just finished or are about to finish the school year!
-my home group-- miss you guys!
-my dad-- Happy Father's Day!
-all of my family-- I love you and miss you!
-Joel-- thanks for helping me with guitar stuff. Hoping to find a guitar here!
-Aunt Kendra who lent me her guitar case-- unfortunately, it was just too big to bring on the plane but I really appreciate it! (new airplane rules-- didn't allow any luggage that big even if I were to pay extra)
-Ryan C. and Eric for responding to my last post :)
-Emily S. for being done with her year at Oxford!
-Eric for being so amazingly supportive
-everyone who has supported me financially (thank you!! ¡Muchas gracias!)
-Amy and Margarita (my wonderful roommates back in LA!)
-Gilda whose birthday was last week. Happy birthday!


More next time!