Many things have happened this month. Here are a few quick stories from the month….
So one of the girls on our team had a birthday this month (September 23) and our team decided it would be fun to have a piñata as a party for her. So after ministry one day Bre and I decided to go into the market to pick up the piñata and some candy along with the groceries we needed for the month. Now here is the thing shopping for groceries is hard and stressful enough in Canada but even more so in Guatemala. All the food is in Spanish so you kind of have to guess what you are getting and people are always looking at you because you are white and if you can’t really communicate with people to ask questions because neither of speaks Spanish, like at all. So all that to say it is always a fun and interesting experience. Anyway, we got all our supplies and were feeling pretty proud of ourselves and so we bagged our groceries and headed for a tuk-tuk. So a tuk-tuk is pretty much a little tricylcle type thing with the driver in the front and you sit in the back so with our three big bags of groceries and a piñata it is quite the procedure to get back home. Anyway, we got back home and began unpacking our groceries when we realized there was a number of items we were missing. Then it hit us both, we had left a bag at the grocery store. So we quickly rushed back to the market to see if our bag was still there. We looked around and could not see it so then we began the difficult process of asking the cashier if she had seen our bag. When she understood what we had said she got another man to help us, so we ran around with him showing him the items we were missing. He looked for the bag but could not find it. So feeling rather dejected we began to get the food we were missing (but on a positive note we still managed to stay in budget for the most part). Then we made our way back home and had an awesome tuk-tuk driver who surprisingly enough spoke some English. When we got home we continued unpacking our bags and realized that our missing bag of groceries had been here the whole time but I had put it in this random corner without realizing…. So Breanna and I decided maybe we shouldn’t go shopping by ourselves, or maybe we should more often to redeem ourselves.
This one time in Guatemala a group decided to go to this beautiful lake (that I probably wrote about in one of my previous blogs). Anyway, one morning a group of us decided to get up at 5am and watch the sunrise over the lake. It was an incredible view looking out over the lake with three volcanoes in the background. So we all woke up bright and early (well it wasn’t really bright it was actually quite dark) and headed about a quarter of a mile along the shoreline to this beautiful wooden bridge that was the perfect location to watch the sunrise. It was still rather cold so I had this nice warm wool blanket from the hostel wrapped around me and all my warmest clothes. I realized on the walk I had forgotten my camera to take pictures but I had my Iphone so that was good enough. So anyway, there was 12 of us total and we all sat down in a row along the bridge and began to get comfortable. Well after being there for only a couple of minutes there was a couple creaks and suddenly the bridge collapsed. It happened so fast that I didn’t really realize what had happened but in a matter of like 30 seconds 10 of the 12 of us were in the water. The few minutes were kind of a blur of mass chaos. I was in the middle of the bridge and the natural reaction of people is to reach out and try and grab something which for like 3 people happened to be me, oh and one girl also somehow managed to land on my head so yeah that happened. And I don’t know if you have tried to swim with full clothes and a wool blanket wrapped around you but it is hard. So I spent a couple of minutes struggling to get the blanket off of me and getting to the surface of the water with everyone around me. Luckily we had been to the lake the night before and jumped in so a few of us knew a way to get out and a couple of the people with me were already out by this point and helping the rest. I began collecting some of the supplies that were lost by people such as water bottles, toques, flip-flops and other random items and got out of the water. After the whole incident happened we were able to laugh about it before returning to the hostel and trying to find something warm to wear. It will definitely be a story for the books.
This one time in Guatemala I was riding in the back of a truck heading to an independence day parade (my team marched in the parade with the school we are working at which was pretty cool) and we hit a pothole in the road which caused me to go flying from the back of the cab up into the air. Luckily there was some speakers and team mates to grab me otherwise I am thoroughly convinced I would have ended up flying over and out of the truck completely.
Another fun memory from the month is when I was at the lake I referred to earlier some of us decided to climb to see a waterfall. Of course we got on the wrong path and ended up climbing up the waterfall instead of the path along the side of the waterfall but it was great. At one point there was this mini waterfall that was probably 10 feet or so and I decided to climb it. I got close to the top but it was actually really challenging because the water was pouring down the waterfall and it was super cold and super hard to hold on to the rocks and I couldn’t see anything because of all the water. I decided to just go for it and grab a rock and hoist myself the rest of the way up. Unfortunately the rock I picked was not very sturdy and I ended up breaking the rock and tumbling down the waterfall. Luckily I landed on my feet and made it up the waterfall on my second try. I have some bruises and a pretty banged up toe but it was totally worth it.
One time in Guatemala we were hard at work doing construction and shoveling dirt into a wheel barrow only to move it to another location on the lot and dump it out and level the ground. Anyway, I was in need of an adrenaline rush and just something exciting to do so there is this wall of the school that some team mates thought “wouldn’t it be fun to jump off that wall”…. It wasn’t too high like maybe 15 feet or so. So one girl climbed onto the wall but decided it was pretty high and probably wasn’t that safe. Of course I knew it was completely safe so Rene (the 20 year old who has been working with us this month) and I decided to jump off the wall. As usual I was right J and it was completely safe and no harm was done and I was able to go back to work.
There are many other memories from this first month in Guatemala but here are a few snapshots of some of the more interesting moments from the month that I am sure anyone who knows me is not surprised at all by these stories. For our debrief in Nicaragua we will be volcano boarding which is pretty much how it sounds- riding a board down the ashes of an active volcano. So stay posted for stories on that and my 26 hour bus ride to Nicaragua.
