So I've got to get a little vent out before I can move on to the rest of this post...

Dear Guatemalan Men I encountered on the street today (and all the rest of you that have acted similarly or even worse),
I really find it disturbing the way you treat women.  And I REALLY don't appreciate it when you try to talk to me while taking a piss on the street.  First of all, do your business elsewhere.  Second, I refuse to look at you or acknowledge you, despite your degrading attempts to get my attention.  I walked to the other side of the street for a reason.  And I'm sure you think it is appealing to try to talk to me in English.  But it's not.  Especially your crappy and inappropriate pick up lines.  Leave me alone.  I have a taser.   Furthermore, until you realize that females are not meat, you should stay away from them in general.   I kind of hope you get smacked. 


Okay, done.  There's really nothing else I can do about the disgusting males here, and its even more degrading to just have to walk by and take it.   So I needed some kind of outlet. 

Glad that in this case, a few bad apples don't spoil the bunch... My roommate is in the States this week, and so I've had the whole apartment to myself.  A little lonely, but a lot of time to reflect.  And last night as I was eating my dinner of beans and eggs (huevos rancheros style, made of my own volition), I was reminded of just how much I love this place.  Although, ironically, I sometimes feel the opposite, big picture wise the thing that I love the most about here is freedom.  That's the word that comes to mind.  At least in regard to the burdens and weight that come from living in the states.  But I think you don't notice those things as much until you get out for a while. 

Anyway, this place is a gem.  It really is.  Diamond in the rough...gotta look past a few things, or maybe its just all part of the charm.  It is easy to complain about little things, but I certainly hope that I haven't misrepresented how wonderful this country is.  Its hard to put a finger on what it is that makes it such a treasure, but it certainly has a special place in my heart.

Some things I love...
1) the view.
2) the fact that I can buy fresh produce, herbs, etc for mere cents
3) Tortrix Limon
4) Riding in a micro and having the driver pull over to buy some tamales from a woman selling food out of the trunk of her car
5) the colors
6) the walkability
7) paca shopping
8) the people
9) Triple Saldo days
10) the language

So, so much.  You know what else I have loved this year?  The way I've been challenged to cook/bake more things from scratch.  You have to get creative in the kitchen sometimes, when you just can't get certain ingredients here.  Or certain conveniences that are easy and cheap in the States are crazy expensive here.  Some successes I've made this year?  A few successes I've made so far (and will continue with)-- hummus, salsa, granola, and I'm forever sold on stove-top popcorn...so easy, so cheap, and so much better.

Life at school is getting back to normal.  This is the first full week we've had in a while.  Last Friday was my rescheduled birthday after school, at none other than Pizza Hut!  Funny, I think I actually had my birthday at Pizza Hut when I was in 2nd grade...full circle.   It was fun though.  Pizza Hut is MUCH fancier here.  I was kind of shocked.  And the kids were really excited about it.  My class present was some Victoria Secret lotion and spray called Love Spell... and on the way my class mom asked me if I was single.  Hmm, trying to send a message?  Haha.  PS and by the way, my class mom who has a son in my class, is only 2 years older than me.  Scary. 

Speaking of my students, they are definitely growing on me more and more.  Today as I walked out of school to the teacher bus I was the recipient of a hug sandwich from two of my students.  I also get frequent encouraging notes from them in my mailbox.  They are super sweet.  And my students from last year stop by to visit often, which is fun too.

And on the spiritual side of things, the Lord has been teaching me a lot.  Some of the female teachers have been doing a study on the book Prodigal God by Tim Keller.  Its been pretty thought provoking.  And I have taken a pause on the church search...I was getting really discouraged.  But I've started a Sunday tradition of going to a little cafe and spending some time in the Word, which has quickly become a treasured time for me.

In other words, I'm enjoying life!  And I don't want to jinx it, but it just might officially be dry season!! :)

When it rains, it pours...

So I left off with the disastrous field trip.  And you know they always say when it rains, it pours?  Well, in this case it was quite literal.
Tuesday night we all stayed late at school because we had a silly skit night.  One of the parents and her highschooler son were driving my roommate and I home because it was late and the buses were no longer running.  Well, it had rained all day long and was still raining when we left school.  I made a comment about when we got in the car.  To which the highschool boy negated my comment about the unusual amount of rain by simply stating it is rainy season.  (Which I did know, but it usually only rains for a few hours in the afternoon,not all day). 
Anyway, I went to bed that night, and I didn't sleep well and I remember thinking many times in my half asleep state "It is still raining." 
 Well, morning came and I was ready to go to school and celebrate my birthday with my students.  That's when my roommate knocked on my door and said "Look out your window."  I did and this is what I saw...


This picture doesn't do it justice... It was literally waist deep...

Normal view for comparison purposes :)

Um, scary!  It was definitely a shock to see the water so high.  We could see in the houses across the street, and there must have been over 2 feet of water inside.   There was no way to get out of our apartment.  I was just thankful we were on the second floor!  We called the director who informed us that there wouldn't be school due to flooding all around Xela. 

Here's some pics of the water coming up the steps of our apartment.

During...

 And as the waters are receeding...  (You can see the water line on the wall)

                                     


Water spewing out of the bottom apartment... We saw literal waterfalls coming out of the houses across the street.

  There are a lot of reasons why Xela floods , but I think the reason why this one was really bad was because it was in the middle of the night and all the trash and debris blocked up the not-that-great-to-begin-with drainage system.   And everyone was sleeping, so nobody helped to clear the drains.  It really was a crazy day.  Just being trapped in side and seeing the enormous amount of damage to people's houses.  We heard stories about people waking up and their belongings were just floating around them. 
And this isn't clean water we're talking about.  The mud left behind was ridiculous.  Like literally six inches of mud on our street.  Disgusting.  That caused other problems and we didn't have school on Thursday either.  And the government here does nothing about it...either preventative or post flood.  The people that live on the street had to pay a lot of their own out of pocket money (which they don't have much of)  to hire a bulldozer to spend three days plowing mud.  The city did nothing about it. 
It really was damaging...people lost a lot of their belongings and some even lost lives.  I think the news reports said about 25 or so people died...
So it was kind of a depressing birthday.  But it was nice to have the day off of school and to relax.  And I recounted many times that day how much I have to be thankful for.  And I did have a student call me (still a mystery as to how they got my phone number) to wish me a happy birthday and "send me a hug".  That was sweet. 
My class birthday party at Pizza Hut :) got postponed.  But students have been bringing in little gifts all week.  They do make birthdays quite special here.

In other flood news, my classroom did sustain a bit of damage.  Turtle was okay... Embarassingly that was my first concern when the director called to let me know that there was at least an inch of water in my classroom.   But all of my supplemental teacher workbooks that were sitting in their cardboard display boxes behind my desk got soaked through.  As well most of the bottom shelf of my classroom library.  It was a sad sight.  But several people helped me to spread out the books in the board room with a heater and fan on them for two days... They look pretty messed up, but still functional.  As for the kids books...Another teacher and I hung string all around my room and had them drying out the past few days.  Unfortunately there are several casualties of books where pages stuck together and ripped.  Also, my classroom rug and carpet squares got soaked and have been out to "dry", but haven't yet seeing as there hasn't been sun for about a week.  My room smells pretty wretched, and there is white mold fuzz growing out of the floor.  But could have been worse.



The road to school...This one is courtesy of another teacher.

 Here's to hoping rainy season is rapidly approaching its end!!

Epic Fail.

Epic Fail.  Yep, its a term our highschoolers use, but it pretty much describes this past week for me in a nutshell.

We'll start with Monday.  Field trip day!   I was really excited about it... we had been learning all about communities, so we had planned to take a little tour of our own community in Xela.  Which I was doubly excited about, because it also tied in Guatemalan culture which is something I feel they miss out on a lot in their American school education.  So anyway, a trolley was set to pick us up and take us on this tour and we were going to make set stops along the way. 

So, morning of the trip, I find out from the school secretary that one of the chaperones has just called to inform her that she "can't make it."  And another mom that was supposed to come with us just didn't show up, neither did her son.  Okay, so about 30 minutes before the trip I'm about 2 chaperones short.  Wonderful.  But I figure we are going to be on the trolley the whole time, and we still have 3 moms and a dad that showed up, so we should be okay. 
And here comes the trolley to pick us up at school!  The kids were so excited and all the mom's had a photo shoot with us on this trolley..

Well, we tooted our horn and pulled away from school, on our way!  We drove down the big hill of our school, crossed the bridge of the river about 1 minute away from the school and then we stopped.  Just stopped.   Engine was dunzo.  Well, the driver seemed to think he could fix the problem, so we waited.  And I went into instant entertainment mode...we sang, we played games, etc.  After sitting on the side of the rode one minute away from the school for an hour while the driver had tried to go get more gas and looked at the engine to no avail, the kids were saying "This is the worst field trip ever."  And I agreed with them.  The trolley experience was the anti-climax of the century.

So the parents offered to continue the field trip in their cars.  We left the trolley and driver on the side of the road (and it was still there hours later when we returned to school....)  So we drove around Xela, and then walked around Xela which was a terror.  I was not mentally prepared to be responsible for 13 students roaming the streets of downtown Xela, where I almost get run over on a daily basis.  Stressful. 

First stop-- public library of Xela, where my class mom had arranged for the librarian to read a book to the kids.  Well, we asked for the woman and she just wasn't there.   Typical.   

Then we went to the museum  (which is ridiculous, by the way.  There are embryos of everything you can imagine in jars.  And a stuffed deer with two heads... its creepy).  But we had to rush through because we got there an hour late and it was about to close.    Kids loved it though.

Then we went to the municipal building where the mayor works. That was pretty cool. We got to meet the mayor of Quetzaltenango.

After that, we were way behind schedule and the kids were starving so we just skipped the rest of the tour and went to McDonalds for lunch.   I was exhausted, but all in all the kids had a great time and it turned out okay. 
But that crazy day was only Monday...stay tuned for the rest of the saga that was last week... A flooded birthday?  Yup.

power's out. surprise, surprise.

Yep, power's out, yet again.   It happens often, so its not a surprise, but it is an inconvenience.   How am I posting on the internet you ask?  Thanks to my trusty internet stick. 

But, I went this evening to a cafe to have wireless internet so I could skype with a friend.  (said internet stick is good most of the time, but it isn't strong enough for skype).   I got all set up, ordered dinner, and was about to get on skype when out went the lights.  Ugh.  I figured it was just contained to that block, and sometimes the lights come back on quickly.  So I waited for my food and for the power.  To no avail.  I ate my food as quickly as possible and headed out the door to try to find another cafe with internet.  No such luck.  Power is out everywhere.  And by that point it was dark...pitch black dark.  I was really scared.  Xela is not super dangerous, but it can be at times.  Especially when its pitch black and I'm an American girl by myself with a backpack... easy target.  Two men on a motorcycle scared the mess out of me as they slowed waaay down and veered awfully close to the sidewalk I was walking on to holler at me.   But I changed my route home multiple times to choose the safest, most populated way.  Still scary, but made it home safe.   My roommate and I think the massive outage is due to the fact that tonight there is this huge promotion at McDonald's to raise money for Ronald McDonald house and they probably blew some giant fuse for the city.  Hopefully it will be back on soon.

Just another one of those... I'm in Guatemala moments.  Another of which happened earlier today at school.  Our school is located right next to a rural and poor neighborhood.  There's just a metal fence separating the school from the neighborhood (and I've contemplated the irony of that fence many times).  But today through the fence there were cows grazing all day in people's yards. 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that last week I stepped on a nail in class and hobbled around for 2 days because it hurt so bad.  (no worries, my tetnus shot is up to date!). 

And on Sunday the water was off for over 24 hours (meaning no running water, meaning no shower for me)

Sometimes I forget that I'm in a third world country.  Other times its painfully obvious.  But I love it all the same. 

Day of the Child.

I simply cannot believe it is October.  Time goes by so incredibly fast.

Things at school are trucking along.  The kids absolutely love our new pet.  His name is Mr. Turtle, but we all call him Mr. T for short. :)

I really wanted to write though about something I'm super excited about being able to help with.  As most of you know, the population of students that go to the school where I teach are some of the wealthiest in Xela.  And I still consider my job there as service.  The kids that we teach will likely be the future leaders of their cities and country.  They need to know Christ and receive an education too. 
However, Guatemala has many different facets.  And there have been many times that I have desired to have more of an involvement with the indigenous community here, especially the poor.  And obviously, as  a teacher, education is something I feel everyone has a right to.
Unfortunately that's often not the case here.   I found out recently, that as a country, the average level of education here is 4th grade.  That's one of the lowest in the world.  There's a American guy here, who's lived here for years and years and has connections with IAS.   However, his main job here is working with a service group that provides education for street kids  (not kids who live on the street, but kids who have to work on the street all day to provide for their family).  Clearly, these kids don't have the option of going to school.  They can't afford private, and most often the selection process is incredibly difficult to get into the few public schools here, simply because of supply and demand.  Not to mention the greatest factor, they don't have time for school.  Most times their income is necessary for their families to make it. 
So the organization that this man works with started many years ago going into the markets and offering  free education to the kids that were working there.  As the program has developed, they have been able to expand and offer more.  Literacy was the initial focus, but the families of these kids started to say that its great if they can read, but would really help them to get a "real" paying job, they needed a high school diploma.  So now they help kids get to that goal.  Many of the students are way past typical school age, but are going back so they can get their degree.  After elementary school, they have to pay to continue.  There are many students that have interest in continuing, but don't have the money to be able to afford it.  (Keeping in mind were only talking Q100 a month which is only $12)  So that's where the opportunity came in for me to help.  These kids need sponsors.  So I get to sponsor a kid to be able to go to school this year.  I'm really excited about it.  There are lots of opportunities to help kids all over the world, but I get to meet the kid I will be sponsoring and talk with them.  Its just a neat thing. 
Helps bring my teaching experience here full circle. 

I've been looking for more opportunities to serve with my time here.  And slowly but surely the Lord is opening up more doors.

Oh, and today is the official Day of the Child holiday here in Guatemala.  What a perfect way to celebrate children  :)