From Chichi to Panajachel: End of Week 1

Thursday morning had us trying to figure out how to neatly write the alphabet on a plaster wall so that it looked decent. We found a 14in ruler with the bubbles in it to make sure our lines were straight and Jacob got to work drawing the line for where the bottom of our letters would go. A brief conversation on how tall the letters should be and the top line was drawn. The full line measurement taken and divided up into sections for each individual letter and once those lines were sectioned off, Allison and Lindsey started outlining the letters themselves. We did struggle getting started. It was a lot of women with a lot of opinions on how things should look and poor Jacob just wanted to draw the lines and section things off. Sound familiar to anyone?

Once we got things moving everything smoothed out and we all got to work. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make 28 letters look uniform? Yes, 28 letters. We added the two letters of the Spanish alphabet on the end. Eventually we were all trying to draw out the the letters. Round letters are hard to do. As more letters were outlined a couple people switched to paint and started painting the letters. I think I’ll stick to outlining the letters from now on. My painted letters are the worst of them all and we still have to do this all again outside. 

No painting happening outside today. It started raining. But we do need to make a trip into town. Luckily the truck has a tarp over it when it comes to pick us up. A quick visit in town and we headed back for dinner. Team time was fairly quick. We were all tired, either from painting and cleaning up or from painting and going into town. 

Friday morning had us scrambling to make sure everything was clean and ready for the kids that would be coming at 10am. The first ones showed up at 9am. We let the ones with homework inside so we could help them. It’s very hard to find synonyms in Spanish. 

We tried something a little different today. The little kids played for 2/3 of the time then we took them down on the steps for music and lessons while the older kids that had been on the steps doing music and lessons came up to play. Minus the problems with getting young kids away from toys it wasn’t too bad. I’m trying to get some of the parents to help lead things now so they can take over completely once our group is gone and it’s just Juan and his wife again. 

We had a quick lunch after they left, including my birthday cake (early because we didn’t want to eat cake at breakfast), and a few of them came back for guitar lessons and some of the women came back to get their hair done by Evelyn. I helped with the guitar lessons. I may not know guitar but I can watch and show the kids where to put their fingers on the strings. As that lesson ended I somehow got roped into cutting someone’s hair. I “didn’t do that bad” according to a hair stylist friend of mine. I’ll take that as a success. 

I’m being called to the truck for another trip to town as I’m finishing up the haircut. I refused to feel rushed. I finished the cut then moved quickly to the truck. Today we had some groceries to pick up as well as pulling out money for our first adventure day. Back to the house in time to learn that supper is going to be late. Which gives us time to do our team time. We went over some questions provided by AIM and discussed how we felt the first week had gone. 

Saturday we got up bright and early to take a bus to Panajachel which is a city on lake Atitlan. The lake was huge and beautiful. Our group got there first so we found a coffee shop and hung out for an hour while we waited on the other groups to arrive. We located the next group down by the docks and tried to get ahold of the last group. It took another hour and then we moved on without them because they kept stopping at shops. We hired a boat out on the lake to take us to another town and Makalah bought my ride as a birthday present. Once there almost all of us tried on the traditional Mayan clothes and took some pictures. Jacob even bought a shirt so I’m sure you’ll see him wearing it in future pictures. We walked around a little bit more before deciding to head back to the main town for lunch. 

As we reached the dock a boat pulled in and cheers erupted. The last teams had caught up. We all hugged and exchanged greetings before making our way to the natural “hot springs” I quote that because it was more like pockets of oddly warm water at the edge of the lake. 

I started out deciding not to get in because I knew we still had 8 hours left in the city and I didn’t want to walk around wet all that time. I changed my mind watching them have so much fun in the water and knowing I wouldn’t get this chance again. Once I’d stripped down to my bathing suit I decided that rather than tear up my feet on the rocks I would go around the partially submerged concrete dock and just walk in. Being the last one in gets you a lot of attention apparently. I had pretty much everyone cheering me on as I approached the water. I planned on just walking down the dock but it quickly became apparent that that wasn’t going to be an option. The water was very rough and the algae growing on the dock just under the waterline was very slick. I would have simply hopped off the side but there was chain-link fencing sticking out to grab me if I didn’t jump out far enough. I could have attempted to continue down the ramp but I saw exposed rebar just a foot further down. As I contemplated my options, they were taken from me as the rough water pushed my feet out from under me and I fell hard, on my side, on the dock mostly in the water. Immediately, Lindsey Jack, and Jacob started swimming over while I simply attempted not to be drug off the dock and into the fencing attached to the sides. Jacob had shoes on and was able to get a grip on the dock and so got behind me while I attempted to hold on and keep my head out of the water. With his help I got into a slightly better position and with a push from Jacob and pull from Jack with Lindsey there as a spotter I managed to get into the lake. The water was cold. There were just a few random spots where the water was warm from the heat of the volcanoes.

Because I was late getting in I only had about 15 minutes to swim around and hang out with everyone before we had to get out and dry off. Knowing it was slick and going to be difficult I still chose to go back to the dock to try and get out over the sharp loose rocks. I figured I could get to the point above the rebar and crawl up and out. It was not to be. Again I was buffeted by the water. Struggled gripping the dock with my left knee and foot and felt the foot slip and the toenail rip as I continued to try and get up. Gabbi, Jack, and Jacob had been taking turns jumping off the dock and so were all right there to help me as I laughed at how helpless I was in that water. A gap between sections of the dock allowed me to get a toehold and the three of them managed to pull me out of the water. I took a couple steps away from them before turning and sitting down. My toe was a bloody mess. I slowly made my way back to my stuff and started drying off. With no way to clean up the toe, I was not excited by the thought of putting on toe socks and tennis shoes. Luckily Hannah was willing to trade me for the walk back to the dock to catch our boats. I slowly and carefully put everything on during the trip back. Immediately upon docking the boat I hit that toe on a rock. No complaints though because we were on our way to lunch. 

We were walking by the lakeside restaurants looking at menus when we found the perfect spot. Even with our large group of people Jacob found me and asked if I wanted to eat there for my birthday. The menu had quite the range of food so I figured there would be something for everyone including myself. It was kind of him to ask me specifically even though I think everyone had already decided on it. 

The food was fantastic and it was so nice to actually have a chance to sit down and catch up with everyone. It felt like so much longer than a week that we’d been apart. The other teams headed back home after lunch since they had such a far drive in order to get back to their ministries. Our group however still had several hours to kill. We went to check out the paragliding which was closed for the day due to the weather but we have hopes to go back next weekend. Then I insisted we go up to the nature reserve. They had ziplining and cycle-lining and suspension bridges and coati and monkeys. Of course it was raining when we got there so everything was closed. We did get to go up the trails though. Jacob led the way and took everyone off the main path and started climbing the waterfalls. With a minor injury I chose to stay on the path so that they could find it later. Eventually it got too steep and they had to find a trail somewhere to make their way back up to me. The mom in me freaked out for a few minutes when they were all out of sight and I couldn’t hear them over the rushing water. Jacob and Lindsey reappeared and I could breathe again, that its until I realized Jose, Allison, and Daliah took a different trail. I helped guide Jacob and Lindsey through the undergrown and up to my location and we moved forward Jacob’s calm assurance in the direction of the others keeping me calm. We were on a suspension bridge by a huge waterfall when we spotted them down below preparing to get into the chilly water. It took them a while but they did it with lots of screams from the cold. Jacob decided we would go back the way we came so that he could play around on the suspension bridges and I pulled them off to the observation spots where you’re supposed to be able to see the different animals. It was still drizzling so we didn’t expect to see anything and suddenly there was a monkey right in front of us! It literally hung around for a few minutes before leaving and just a few seconds later another came out of the brush. 

When we got back to the main building people decided to borrow the showers there rather than waiting for a bucket shower back home. When I left the room I found Jacob playing around on the closed rope course and Jose followed behind him. I was surprised the security guard didn’t say anything. Then we went out front to meet our tuk tuks for a ride back into town and to dinner. 

Dinner was at a steakhouse and there happened to be live music in English. Pretty much everyone was absolutely thrilled with their food. Jacob bought my dinner as a final birthday present though I did find out they had all done something for me one way or another to stop the other groups from starting to sing happy birthday. For that I am extremely grateful. Having paid first Jacob and I went ahead to find where our bus was meeting us and found it already there. That never happens to us. Our ride is always at least 20 minutes late. Only a couple minutes pass before everyone else arrives (sometimes it takes forever to pay). It was a nice quiet ride back to ministry and Paul (our host’s 5 year old son) was waiting for us to arrive. He had a flashlight and an umbrella to help guide us in though he got shy and didn’t use either. 

I had texted ahead and Katie had grabbed the first aid kit for me and had it on the table. I cleaned my foot as best I could and wrapped it up. I kind of want to go play soccer tomorrow to see if I can’t get the nail to simply fall off. I doubt it would take much. 

That wraps up my first full week in Guatemala. I don’t think my blogs will be as long anymore since you know what ministry we are doing. For the most part I’ll be writing about the other fun things we do. But you all know me, that in itself could end up being long. 

Okay I’m adding one more update. Sunday night We had to take Allison to the clinic and as a health coordinator and someone that speaks a tiny bit of Spanish I volunteered to go and help out. We made it into town and found a clinic that was open and headed in. We answered some questions about what was wrong and they decided it was most likely a parasite and set her up with an iv drip with a gamut of different medicines. While they were sitting there I decided to show the doctor my toe. She very quickly said it needed to come off and so we got set up for the procedure. 3 shots to the toe to numb it and then off came the nail! Allison recorded the whole thing if someone wants to watch it, just let me know! Then when we went to pay they only took quetzals and we didn’t have enough for both. We paid mine and I went out to an ATM to get more money for hers. Of course my toe was all wrapped up and I couldn’t put my tennis shoe back on so I was barefoot. The first ATM was closed so I had to go to a second one. I got the money and went back and we paid the other Allison’s bill. The medicines were explained for each of us and we headed back to Juan’s. 

I’m so glad I got that taken care of now even if it means I have medicine to take for the next two months. I’m also glad the other person is feeling much better already and glad they only have medicines to take for the next week.

Below is a link to a video from our ministry host talking about the needs he has for the ministry to grow. If you feel led to give please either make a check out to Melissa White or give her the cash and we will transfer it into my account to be pulled out of an ATM here in the local currency. We leave here on September 10th so there isn’t much time. Juan and his family are amazing people and I hope you will watch the video even if you can’t give so that you can get a very small glimpse of his heart.