We have officially survived our first travel day! It only took approximately 20 hours, across two days but we've made it safe and sound to Tegucigalpa, Honduras at Zion's Gate ministries. Chicken buses are quite an experience. I'll explain all that on my next blog (heh).
But for now, what I'd like to talk about is my top favorite things from my life in Guatemala.
1. Mangoes. I love my mangoes, and Guatemala has a ton of super good ones. I mean, probably not as good as mangoes from the Philippines, but they are pretty good runner ups 🙂
2. Macario and Rosario. I love those two kids so much. I can never understand how anybody could abandon them. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with them, but one of the things they warned us, especially with Macario, is to be careful that he not get too attached. We were only going to be there for a month anyway, and it would suck for him to have us leave him too. But I'm glad that he looks so much better since the first day we saw him. He's much more social too, which is great, coz I heard he'll be moving to an orphanage soon.
3. Painting. I don't usually enjoy painting, but with good company, it's pretty therapeutic. We painted A LOT at the hospital. Lockers. Garbage sheds. IV poles. The emergency room. The nursery room. Hallways. Bathrooms. Parking lots. I think at this point we can start our own painting business.
4. The maintenance crew. Those guys are so sweet and fun. We have a great time with them, and even with our great language barrier and my limited knowledge in spinach (read: i only understand the words that we Filipinos share with them), they are great to talk to. Rito would give us peaches made by his wife. Tomas, on our last day, all gave us these little Guatemalan purses. Beny calls me lovely Ara. And they love their besos. LOL
5. Blintz Cafe and Regi's. The two cafe's that serve really good Guatemalan coffee AND free wifi, which is why I can't complain that it's super slow and disconnects every 5 minutes and would be down for over an hour (see what I did there?). Still, Regi has Cappuccino a la Nutella. It's a cup of cappuccino with a think layer of nutella at the bottom. Love nutella. Love cappuccinos. Love Cappuccino a la Nutella.
6. Sally and Irv. They are our host a the hospital. Sally's a sweet little lady who LOVES to talk. She's super hilarious, I could listen to her all day.
7. Lake Atitlan. BEAUTIFUL place. I could go back there for vacation. It's this ginormous lake in Panajachera, surrounded by a couple of volcanoes and small little towns around the coast. It's so pretty, and you could find pretty good deals at the tiangge's around town.
8. Cliff jumping at lake Atitlan. It's the first time I went cliff jumping, and it was pretty sweet! The jump itself wasn't exactly straight from a cliff. It's from this wooden balcony that they built on to the cliff. And as you jump, you get a great view of the lake and the two volcanoes. Best experience evar. Can't wait for my next cliff jump!
9. Fireworks. Although I don't appreciate loud pops and bangs at 4 in the morning, I love that Guatemalans love their fireworks! They use it for every celebration. We had fireworks for some of out squaddies' birthdays. Every night, we would see fireworks up in the sky.
10. Those muffin breads. I don't know what they're called, but it's like muffins made with sweet bread dough. It reminds me of one of those merienda's from the Philippines. I could eat them all day. (I also noticed this is my third food entry LOL)
11. Worship time with the whole squad. I think this is my most favorite. You could feel the presence of the Spirit and it's an amazing time with the Lord. And it's really encouraging to be surrounded by people who worship the Lord like my squad does.
And there you have it. I'm sure there's more, but this are my top 11. If you want to learn about how we got to Honduras, watch out for my next blog!
