Look, there are kids here!

So I've been talking a lot about all sorts of things and I haven't mentioned a lot about the actual kids. I do run into children from time to time (try as I might to avoid them) ;) A big part of my job is bringing the kids to the med runs, usually to specialists in different hospitals around Guatemala. It gives me a lot of opportunities to be alone with the kids, which in turn gives me a lot of opportunities to practice my Spanish without worrying about sounding like an ass in front of thirty people. The kids here have all proved to be really sweet so far though, everyone is patient and likes helping me when I forget how to say certain words. Here's a super cute girl that I took to an appointment today. She's so little and really shy, but she's five. We spend a good part of the day making videos on my phone and having piggy back rides around the city.

I need to do another longer post on the differences in our medicine/clinics, but I'll really quickly give you an idea just so you have some context for these photos. People here are really paranoid about sickness spreading, so as soon as a kid shows symptoms of something he's immediately quarantined to the clinic. It's good in one way, though really aggressive. The only thing that bugs me is that these kids are kept in the clinic for days and days and days for something silly. They have nothing to keep themselves busy with, no books, toys, TV; they just lay in bed all day staring out the windows. I try to keep them as entertained as I can because I feel bad for them. Usually I gather the kids together and play DVDs for them on my computer. The other days some kids were in with scarlet fever (surprisingly common here) so every day for three days I played one of the original Star Wars movies for them. It was the first time that any of them had seen it and it was completely hilarious to watch their reactions. The collective gasps when Darth Vader was revealed to be Luke's dad was amazing. Here's a group of kids watching Willow:

The two older kids aren't sick, they're volunteers in the clinic. They're kids from NPH too, they're just doing their year of service before they leave for high school. Kids here only have to go to school until eighth grade. After that they have to give a year of service (año de servicio) back to the orphanage, either by helping watch the little kids or taking on a job somewhere in the agency. After their year is up they can go to high school if they want to. Our two kids right now are Martin and Estella. They're really awesome and hilarious. They help me a ton. (You'll notice they're a lot older looking than eighth graders. That's because the majority of kids here didnt go to school when they lived with their parents before they came here, so a lot of them started first grade when they were 10, 11, 12 years old. Everything here is broken into grade level, not age. You can have a third grade class with 10 year old and 17 year olds together).

Martin

Estella

This little girl was in the clinic for days too. She came up next to me and I asked her what was wrong, she told me she was sick and was taking medication. I saw that she had sweat all over her nose so I figured that she had had a fever that broke. We became pals and spend two days playing and watching movies together. Turns out she wasn't in for a fever, she was in for a horrible case of lice. Damn. So far, I'm clean. It's inevitable though, all the volunteers here get lice at some point...

And here are two of my special needs kids! I'm still getting to know them so i can't say much, other than this kid is adorable. His name is Emmerson

This is Delmi. She usually wears a seizure helmet but other than that seems really with it to me. She's very sweet.

I have lots of stories about other kids, but I'm going to wait until I'm not falling asleep to write them. One of the few things that sucks about the medical appointments is that I have to wake up really friggen early for them (like 430a). I'm beat, time to head to bed! More to follow soon.

Macadamia Plantation

Okay, so in reality I went to this macadamia farm weeks ago, but I never got around to posting pics. It probably has to do with the fact that this was one of the more boring tours I went on, but maybe you guys will find it a little more interesting. Either way, I have pictures and I want them off my desktop, so here it goes.
Here's a tree. It has mandarines on it, not macadamia nuts.

I dont have any pictures of macadamia nuts in trees because they all had already been picked, so just imagine what they would look like up in a tree. Good. Next, they all get picked and put onto a big tray to dry out while they wait to be sorted.

The farmer dude then rolls them down this little chute where they fall into bags depending on their size.

Then he dumps the bag into this machine that shells the nuts. The shells are used as organic compost, the nuts get shipped to packaging plants in the United States.

Well, that's about it! The tour probably took the same amount of time as it took you to read this. I will say this though, they had pretty awesome chocolate covered macadamia nuts for sale. Kind of wish I had splurged for the big bag.

Guatemala Randomness (mostly food)

I have all these pictures to post and no real context under which to post them, so here are some more random tidbits from me...

Bacon isn't prepackaged here! Everything is fresh, so they take a slab of pig and cut it for you, even in the supermarkets. It's cool because that means I can order five pieces of bacon at a time :)

Here's a traditional Guatemalan breakfast: refried black beans spread over toast with cream on top. Actually really, really good :)

And another variation of that, black beans with scrambled eggs and homemade tortillas

Fried bananas with honey. Delicious!!

Soups are really popular here. Lunch is the big meal, so dinner is usually just some soup and bread or something similar. Here is a really popular soup called pepian. It's like a peppery beef stew, really good. Made me think of my mom's beef stew which is quite possibly my favorite thing in the world.

And here's the worst soup I had. Other people would probably appreciate it, but I have an absolute disdain for cilantro and this was cilantro soup. I was a good guest and ate every drop of it though (as my body screamed at me).

I found macaroni and cheese!! Any doubts of being able to make it through a year here have now disappeared

You can buy eggs straight from the farmers. They come in a little bag.

They don't need to choose what kind of sugary cereal to have at the orphanage, they just mix it all together!

This is the wine that the decided was worthy enough to import from the United States. Good thing I LOVE IT!!

They don't use liquid dish soap here, they use this cream that you smear onto your sponge. It works pretty well, plus the added benefit is that you use it for washing your clothes too.

Guatemala also has AMAZING doors everywhere. There have been so many great, old doors, here's just one example.

Here's a little table that the cook from the language school used to use to make lunch. I just love all the fresh vegetables

Here's another shot of my old language school

And then the new school. I might have posted a lot of these pics already, I dont feel like reading all my old entries to figure it out.

When I was at the school my teacher gave me this magazine to read. It's all about different ghost stories in Guatemala. I loved it, too bad I had to give t back

These guys sit on my nightstand at night to bring me luck. I already talked about the owl in another post, the little snowman is a gift from mom. I also bought an awesome little clay armadillo, I need to put up a picture of him too.

Remember how I mentioned before that there are crosses built in all four compass directions in Antigua? Here's the southern one.

Hard to see, but apparently Walmart paid for part of the orphanage

I guess this is what Guatemalans think Irish people look like...

Sunrise...

And sunset!

Cujo

You might remember me posting about a little stray dog that lived here with us. There are stray dogs everywhere in Guatemala, usually with mangey fur and nasty pussy sores (sorry, that's supposed to say puss-y but I don't know how that's spelled; different image, I know). This dog is surprisingly healthy looking aside from some fleas and dirt. She found a way through the fence and started hanging out near the volunteer houses. One of the old volunteers felt bad for her and started taking care of her, and she's been here ever since. People call her Marie after the volunteer who initially took care of her. She's gone through a few caregivers now, people leave after a year to go back to their home countries and someone else takes pity on her and starts to feed her.
The other day I was walking by her and she jumped up all of a sudden and bit me in the leg! She didn't actually get me, just my pants, but she growled and tried ripping my pants by shaking her head back and forth a few times. I was really surprised because it wasn't like I snuck up and startled her or anything, she clearly saw me coming and just decided that she didn't like me.
The first thing I thought of was, "Shit, I didn't get a rabies shot and if this dog bites me for real I'm going to need to go to the hospital." I spent the next couple of days taking the long way around her, never getting close enough to spark her memory of how chewable I am. Finally yesterday I decided that I wasn't going to spend the next year afraid of going to my own house. I made it my goal to befriend Marie. I went to the supermarket and bought her a giant can of dog food and a box of treats. For the last two days I've carried treats in my pocket and every time I see her I give her one. Let me just tell you, not only are we cool now, we're SUPER cool. She runs up and licks my hands whenever I leave the house now and tonight she laid at my feet (with her nasty little flea covered body) while I did the dishes outside. So I guess we're better now. I still think that if I fell down the stairs and passed out she'd probably chew my face off, but at least she'll stop trying to do that while I'm still walking and talking.
Isn't she cute?

Some strange parade in San Andres

For the last two weeks, the nursing supervisor Tia Rosa has been telling me about this upcoming festival in San Andres, the tiny town that neighbors the orphanage. She lives in town and is fiercely proud of it, her uncle was the Mayor for a few years and she's friends with a lot of the local business owners. She didn't try to hide the fact that she was hoping to stir up some tourism revenue for the town, she encouraged me to bring as many of the other volunteers as I could to help spend some money in town. Lucky for her, I don't need to be pushed very hard to blow money on junk food at a fair, so I brought a clan of volunteers and we hoofed the two or three miles to town. I've been to San Andres a few times but I've never seen it so packed, people were coming into town by the busloads. We missed the beginning of the festivities but were able to catch the parade. Like all the other parades that I've seen in Guatemala so far, there didn't seem to be a theme or anything, just a bunch of people in different types of costumes performing choreographed dances. I give them credit, they danced the whole time (and that was one slow-moving parade.)

It's funny what cultural things come over from the States...

Hooray for marching bands!



I tried lots of different food there but sadly I shoved it all into my mouth before I could take pictures of it. First we had tacos (kind of like Mexican tacos except they shells are soft and wet with meat juice. They lay flat and then things are piled on top of them. Sloppy to eat, but very good). After that I had a piece of fried chicken but gave most of mine to this little starving Border Collie that reminded me of my old dog Bonnie. Then Charlotte and I ate HUGE ice cream sandwiches from a cart. We had no idea they'd be so big.

Beer and ice cream :)

I couldn't finish my ice cream so I dropped it in the street for a dog to eat. Charlotte told me later that she saw a lady pick it up and walk away with it. That made me sad. I wish I saw that so I could have offered to buy her a new one, or at the very least given it to her without putting it on the ground first.

When we were leaving town a few of the farmers were coming back from the fields. Here's one bringing back his hay.

Dinner at Erika's

Erika, the volunteer coordinator, invited us to her house in Parramos tonight. It was partly to welcome us officially and also so that we would know where she lived in case we needed to track her down after hours. Her house is really nice. Like most of the houses here, all you can see from the street is a big wall. Once you enter through, you're in a little garden area with a patio. It was really great, I love that you can eat outside with all the flowers without having to worry about saying hello to every person who walks by. It's super private.
We hung outside and had some appetizers first (side note: avocados grow all over the place here, so the guacamole is AMAZING. Everything is incredibly fresh.)

Stephanie, Janelle, Ani and Nicole eating appetizers :)

Charlotte and I doing the same

After that we went inside and had some really good lasagna (sigh, I miss italian food...) After that we had a birthday cake for my roommate Holger! Look at those flames...

There's a horrible, horrible tradition here in Guatemala that when it's someone's birthday you need to shove their face into the cake. Not only is this embarrassing for the person, it infects a completely delicious cake with face germs. Luckily Holger was able to dodge Erika's attempts at a facial.

We brought a piñata as a thank you gift. They're really popular here, lots of people make them in their homes and then sell them in the streets. Apparently I've never done a piñata the right way before. It's not supposed to be attached to the ceiling, its supposed to be attached to a rope. While the person swings the stick, another person is supposed to move the rope to keep the piñata away from them. It was SO MUCH FUN. We were laughing hysterically. Here's Erika giving it a try:

And here's Stephanie. This thing was crazy strong, Stephanie was probably the sixth or seventh person to go, and it was barely bleeding candy. She did this fancy grab-the-head-with-one-hand-while-I-decapitate-with-the-other move (which sadly I dont have a picture of), and even then it didn't die.

I got to go last and I demolished it; its death throws rained candy down on us and all was well in the world. Sadly I was too busy smashing it to take pictures of my awesome feat of strength, so you'll just have to imagine it for yourself.