Communication

I've been reading a super interesting blog lately (more on that later) and it's motivated me to try to write an entry a day. I think it's a lot easier to get a feeling for how things are here if you can read about all the mundane things that happen. When I leave the entries to once or twice a week a lot of that little stuff gets dropped. We'll just have to see how long I can keep to that; hopefully it'll force me to put my iphone down a little. One of the other volunteers pointed out that I should still be able to pick up free wifi on my phone even though I stopped my contract. I took it off airplane mode for the first time in three months and sure enough, internet. Now I'm back to obsessively checking my mail and facebook every five minutes, not to mention the unhealthy amount of time I'm spending on my newly downloaded Oregon Trail game :/ (But it's so much fun!!)

So a little story from last week. As you know, one of my responsibilities here is to run the inservices for the kids and also for the staff. Well I didn't realize that this also meant I needed to help coordinate the inservices from outside organizations. Tia Rosa had told me a couple of weeks ago that a woman was going to be coming to give an inservice about HIV. Since she wouldn't be in the office that day, I was going to have to show this woman around a bit, have lunch with her, etc. I wasn't looking forward to it (anti-social personality flares up a bit when I need to try to talk Spanish for several hours to someone) but I had other things to focus on so I put it to the back of my mind. On Monday Tia Rosa comes up to me and starts talking about the lady that I need to meet with the next day. Turns out it's not a lady, it's some kind of group of people from an organization. She tells me that on top of going to listen to the presentation, I also need to introduce them in front of the assembly. I immediately complain because I have no idea what I need to say. Tia Rosa agrees to help me write a speech which she promptly does by herself and then hands to me. She leaves for a few minutes, then comes back and tells me that they had just arrived and wants me to go meet them. "Oh, are they sleeping here?" I ask. She looks at me weird and says no, then we walk over to the other side of campus to the cafeteria. I see all the kids lined up outside the cafeteria and finally it dawns on me. "Um, Tia Rosa, is the assembly today?" And of course it is, and of course since I had no idea I hadn't brought the speech with me, nor do I have enough time to run back to the office for it. Thank GOD the Año de Servicio girl Estella was there and I was able to have her help me write something up really quick. I tried to memorize the speech in the three minutes before I had to present it (which naturally didnt work) so I had to just read off my paper like a doof. All went well though, turns out the group (who I introduced as Los Payasos, though I had no clue what that meant) were a group of traveling clowns!! They were apparently hilarious because the kids were cracking up the whole time. They taught all about myths/safety with HIV, really great stuff. This is part of a series, so tomorrow they're going to come back to do the next presentation in the series.

This is them singing a song about vaginal fluid. I don't need to understand the words to know that it's amazing

On the subject of poor communication, Tia Rosa and I had another issue this week. I had been stressing out about getting my presentation done in time for my workshop this week and losing a full day to a med run didn't put me in a great mood. I had to go represent the clinic in a meeting after the med run so I was looking at a 12 hour day in total. As I was walking to the meeting, Tia Rosa stopped me and told me that the boys in one of the sections were having issues with hygiene and the Tios there wanted me to do an inservice on proper genital care. Awesome, no problem, I'll do that next week. No, actually they want it tomorrow, she tells me. I feel my blood pressure sky rocket. I explain to her that I can't put aside time to prepare another presentation right now because I have to finish my other one. I couldn't figure out what the big friggen rush was. She tells me that they really want it tomorrow so I need to try to figure out a way to make it happen. I grumpily head to my meeting and a few minutes later remember that I have a mandatory volunteer meeting the next day at 3; there's no way I can do the hygiene inservice, it'll have to wait. I talk to Tia Rosa and tell her I'll do it the following day for them. I tell the director of the boys section who agrees as well. So the next day I put aside the PowerPoint for my presentation and start to work on a hygiene one. I ended up having to a do a good deal of research on uncircumcised penis care since I know very little regarding children, only adults. I end up making a pretty kick ass PowerPoint and finishing it up the next day, a few hours before I'm scheduled to give it. I ask Tia Rosa to help me edit it which she gladly does. Finally it's all set to go. I tell Tia Rosa that I'm getting ready to head over and she says, "Oh you don't have to give that presentation, I already gave it yesterday while you were at your meeting." Wait, what? She just spent like 45 minutes helping me edit this presentation, what did she think it was for??!? So I wasted two entire days of work for nothing. Stuff like that happens all the time here though, you can't be angry or you'll go crazy. You just have to shake your head and move on. And hey, at least I learned how to clean kids' genitals really well! That might come in handy one day!

I started using the verbal med-order technique for my conversations now. When someone says something I think is important, I have them repeat it another time. After that I repeat it back to them and wait for confirmation. I can't wait until I'm fluent in this language!!

What's the buzz, tell me what's happening...

My dear readers. Sometimes it's hard to come up with things to write about; as I fall into a routine here, days pass by without anything truly interesting happening and I find myself having to spend a lot of time brainstorming about what I want to share. Today is the opposite of that. Today I was counting down the minutes to get home and blog because I have a SPECTACULAR story to reveal to you...

It all starts with something that happened two or three weeks ago. I was outside hanging out with one of the other volunteers (the one who reminds me exactly of Tom Mitchell- this only gets stronger as I get to know him more). We were making small talk when I mentioned something about my old cabin. He turned to me and inadvertently said one of the most offense things I've ever heard: "Oh really? You don't strike me as an outdoor/cabin type." WHAT?!?! And this is while (no lie) I was dressed in plaid and chopping wood. Now my image is something that's important to me and it made me take a step back and think about the way I'm presenting myself here. Granted, this dude and I don't know each other really well, so that accounts for part of it. It also made me realize though that when I introduce myself to people here I say I'm from NYC. They must categorize me as city folk and move on! In order to remedy this situation, I decided to grow out my beard in full force. It's probably getting close to being the longest it's been, another few weeks and I should have something really impressive on my hands!

That's not the story though. HERE's the story. Not so much a story as it is a statement, actually. Since it's Lent now (wait, it is Lent, right?) we're doing a religious celebration every Friday until Easter. This week we're doing the Stations of the Cross, and guess who they asked to be Jesus? YES! I can hear the Angel weeping... Naturally I drip Catholic goodness and my amazing beard just catapulted me right over the top. Friday I get to don my robe and sandals and lug a huge-ass cross through the streets followed by a crowd of hundreds of children. My dreams are being realized.

I'm actually really excited for this for a few reasons. Naturally, there the fact that the church and I have been frenemies for a long time, and while I would consider myself a person of high moral standing, their opinion of me would probably differ slightly. Part of me feels like I'm infiltrating a secret club, I'm excited! On a more serious level though, I'm also really happy to be partaking in something that's obviously very important to the kids and staff here. And also I know they asked me because I have huge muscles and am one of the few people with enough strength to carry it for a mile. Yes, you heard that right. I have to drag the cross from the neighboring town, through the streets and up onto NPH property. If my muscles weren't impressive before they certainly will be after this.

Obviously, new facebook profile pic to follow shortly.

A million reasons not to write tonight...

...yet I'm doing it anyway! As anyone who truly knows me can attest to, the quickest way to get me to do something that I don't feel like doing is assign me an even WORSE task to do. Suddenly the first one absolutely needs to get completed before I can even think THINK about the next task. So here I am with a huge project due tomorrow and what am I doing? I'm finally finding time to update my blog! It's something that's long overdue; I felt myself creeping into that space where it would soon be silly to backtrack and talk about all the mundane things that had happened in the last ten days (ten days doesn't seem to long but in NPH time a LOT can happen. Time seriously flies here). To make this a little more manageable I'll probably break it into a few different posts. First let me tell you how things have been going in a general sense. Everything here has been fine. My language ebbs and flows. I thought it was me being crazy until I started hearing the other volunteers mention it too, but there are definitely days that I can speak better Spanish (not surprisingly, I tend to be much worse on Mondays after a weekend of "cheating" with English, Fridays in general are better). I feel like I have a solid handle on basic conversation now, I don't have to put much thought into asking someone how their day was or what their plans are for the weekend. Like most people who learn Spanish (and maybe second languages in general?) I had to learn to start ignoring words I didn't know and listen to the rest of the sentence to try to get an idea of what the person is trying to say. A lot of times when I answer people's questions I actually have no clue if I'm responding the right way, it's all guess work. In general I'm doing well though. The hardest times for me are when I'm at work because I'm constantly running up against vocabulary I'm not familiar with, and working in the medical field it's important to understand EVERY word that's coming through. I'm constantly asking people to repeat themselves at work so the other nurses there think my Spanish is really basic. They're patient though and constantly tell me that in another few months things will be a lot easier.

I have to say, learning a new language is completely exhausting. You have to be focused at all times, it's like concentrating on homework all day long, by the evening I'm ready to pass out. I've been going to bed every night by 9:30, 10 at the latest and sleeping really heavy until 7. I'm looking forward to getting to the point where I can actually go out for a beer with the other volunteers without daydreaming of my bedroom.

I keep getting hit by how liberating it is to speak another language. All the people that I've met here already, staff and volunteers alike, would have remained strangers to me if we didn't have Spanish in common. The other day I was sitting on a bench waiting for some friends in Antigua when a white dude sat down next to me (this is common stance in Antigua since at times it feels like there are more tourists there than Guatemalans). I thought he might be from the States so I struck up a conversation with him. Turns out he was from France and spoke poor English, but we were able to chat in Spanish. He was an awesome dude! Turns out he's a nutritionist who works with kids in foreign countries. He started out as a volunteer but now has a paid position and has traveled non-stop the last five years throughout Central/South America and Africa. He gave me some great pointers about what non-profits he's had success with, it was a really great conversation and it never would have happened if I didn't speak Spanish! A similar thing happened again this weekend. I was on the bus to Antigua and I noticed two white folks (I swear I speak to people other than white folks, they just stick out more here!) I sat next to one of them for the bus ride and I was really curious about his story (the town he was coming from isn't known as a big tourist hub so it's really rare to see extranjeros (foreigners) on the bus. I have a natural aversion to talking to folks on the bus because it's really hard for me to hear what their saying, but this guy was lanky and bearded with thick framed glasses and I had a sudden desperate hope that he was a gay Brooklyn hipster on vacation or something. Turns out I was slightly off the mark, a quick conversation revealed that he was actually a volunteer from Belgium doing some kind of project near my orphanage. I asked him twice what he did and couldn't understand what he said either time (Spanish with a foreign accent is even HARDER for me to understand). Eventually I just faked it and said, "Oh that must be challenging" which is a statement that can pretty much be applied to any job. We exchanged numbers since he's here for a few more months and doesn't have much of a support system. Next time the other volunteers hang out I'll invite him and ask him to explain his very interesting project to everyone (while I listen intently, hopefully in a less-noisy setting). But anyway, again the point here is that I wouldn't have been able to talk to that dude if I couldn't speak Spanish. Opportunities, I tell you!

Speaking of language, my English classes have been going really well. Last weekend I actually made a lesson plan for my class with Tia Rosa and Ezekiel. It worked out well. They weren't too thrilled to spend the first part of class doing review from last week, but since I've decided to be a hard-ass teacher, I made them do it anyway ;) Besides, the Carroll Book of ESL states that repetition is the most important part of learning a new language. Tia Rosa offered to make me dinner at her house next week which I'm totally into! She seems to think that my mom will be upset if I lose weight on this trip so she's always force feeding me something, so I'm a little concerned about proportions when I have dinner with her, but I've certainly dealt with more difficult things in my life. I hope she makes fried plantains <3 Ok, ok, kids. How are the kids doing. Everyone is lovely, I have my own little group of young people who I'm friends with now, they come in to visit me in my little hidden room behind the clinic. I've been taking a little boy to med runs the last couple of weeks. He's only three and another completely adorable kid. He's so serious all the time and very quiet, which is super cute in a little kid. We read books together a lot and last time we spent a good two hours telling each other stories. He loves lions and he wants me to tell all these different stories about him being a lion and going on adventures, it's so much fun. He has amniotic band syndrome which is a fairly common syndrome. During pregnancy fibrous strands float around inside the amniotic fluid. These strands can wrap around an embryos body parts. Since these fibers can't stretch, as the embryo grows, the fibers become tight and eventually cut off pieces of the body. Its kind of like when a dog gets an embedded collar (for those of you who are obsessed with Animal Cops like I am). Anyway, there are varying degrees of severity, depending on what parts of the body are effected. Some babies miscarry due to this if the bands wrap around an especially important part of the body. Most live births present with missing fingers or toes like this little guy. He's lucky in that he's only missing a few fingers, nothing that will impact him too badly. He's generally a really healthy kid. Oh except I need to add that he gets HORRIBLY car sick and has puked with me a total of 10 times. I now keep several bags and a towel to protect our clothes whenever we have to travel together. I have so much more that needs to be said but I need to go to sleep. Tomorrow I'll write some more (after my bid presentation, that is!) Yeah, i should probably mention something about that, at least. Tomorrow is my first charla (workshop/inservice) for the teachers. I'm teaching them some basic first aid since all the classrooms have access to first aid boxes and no one has a clear idea of how they're supposed to be used. I'm a little nervous that a) I won't have my power-point done in time, though I'm close to the end and more-so that b) they'll ask me a ton of questions and I'll have no idea what they're saying. Plus a few of my volunteer friends will be in that class so it'll be even more embarrassing if that happens!! Here's hoping that all the teachers' eyes glaze over and I can escape unharassed :) Here's a pic of Tia Rosa singing Spanish children's songs to me and a kid!

Mailing address

For those of you that've been asking about my mailing address, here it is! Letters and goodies are gladly accepted :D (but before you get too excited, check shipping costs! It might be more expensive than it's worth)

Shawn Carroll (Voluntario)
Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos
Apartado Postal 4
Chimaltenango
Guatemala, Centroamérica

Carnival!

Learned information of the day: Germany celebrates Carnival and apparently its HUGE there. Since we don't really do anything for it in the US, I'm kind of clueless about it. This weekend was the big celebration in Germany and Holger my German roommate was very nostalgic about it (he was singing German Carnival songs for DAYS and hung balloons up in our room). Lucky for him, most of Central and South America celebrate it too! The school had a day off from classes Friday and everyone had an assembly in the cafeteria. I'm still kind of confused as to the purpose of it, Holger told me that in Germany its a holiday for getting drunk and kissing strangers. I was really curious how that was going to translate into this setting, but here it was more like a parade with costumes. They also had singing and dancing contests which of course the kids loved (ALL kids love to perform). I had to take a kid on a med run in the morning, so when we came back it was just in time for the dancing contest.

As you can see, gender was irrelevant for this glorious Carnival. It's hard to see in that picture but there are two boys who had been dancing together all morning. They were the crowd favorite until the little kids joined. That little chubby kid in the striped shirt had some seriously good moves! He went on to win. The fact that he's the assistant director's son probably didn't hurt his chances either. I don't have a pic but there were also two girls slow dancing and one was in drag! Naturally it made me miss NY.

Next was the parade. I figured out late in the game that my phone takes really crappy action shots, so sadly I don't have much to show you. There was some pretty impressive costumes from the older kids made of garbage and cardboard boxes. I dont have a pic so you'll have to take my word for it. Here are some little kids in costumes! (Sorry for the bad action shot)

Agh!! So cute! That's Jordy as the pirate, God I just want to eat that kid, he's so adorable. Kudos to Myriam (the volunteer who is the teacher at the Montessori) for her awesome costume design!

During the assembly these two random girls sat on my lap. I haven't a clue who they are (stranger danger is non-existant here) but I'm including this pic in case I eventually get to know them and want a momento of our first encounter.

After the festivities all the staff (including the folks who work in the clinic and office) had to help the kids scrub out their sections. It was like a big spring cleaning, furniture was pulled out and curtains were taken down. It's amazing how fast things can get done when you have twenty kids to help. It was so efficient, five little girls with brooms and another five following behind them with mops. At one point a little girl slid down a banister with a bucket of water (no lie) and I think you can guess what song was stuck in my head after that...



Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I'm an awful person, I know ;) I feel like I should add a disclaimer stating that while the kids do frequently break into seemingly-spontaneous choreographed song and dance routines here, they do not in any way share the sentiments of the children in that video.

After our cleaning was done (and I checked all the girls for head lice, something I'm getting remarkably good at) I headed to my section to watch a movie with the special needs kids. Last week we watched Pinocchio (pronounced in Spanish as Peen-ow-cho) and they LOVED it, they've been talking about it all week. This week I decided to continue the Disney theme with "La Sirenita" (The Little Mermaid). The attention span wasn't quite the same, though most of them made it through it. It never occured to me before that when they make a big movie like this, not ONLY do they have to hire a whole other set of voice actors to record the dialogue in Spanish, they have to rewrite all the songs so they rhyme! It's crazy! All the songs have the same melody and stuff, they just say completely different things. Por ejemplo...

Part of Your World:
(English Version)

Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collections complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm a girl...
A girl who has....everything

Look at this trove, treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you'd think
Sure, she's got everything!

I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
I've got hoozits and what's its galore
You want thingamabobs? I've got twenty.
But who cares? No big deal. I want moooooooooooore

I want to be where the people are
I want to see, want to see em dancing
Walkin around on those... what do you call em?
Oh, feet!

The ease with which I was able to recall all of those lyrics should cause me embarrassment, but it doesn't. Okay, so now here's the Spanish version of the same song translated back to English... (obviously it's not going to rhyme now because it rhymes in Spanish)

What do I have here? How lovely!
It's treasure that I discovered!
It's very easy to say
That it's not lost anymore

That that you see around you
Is so abundant, so splendid
It makes you think that I don't need more gifts
Since I have thousands.

Although sometimes I don't know what they are
You want thingsamabobs? I've got twenty.
But truthfully, I want moooooooore

I want to go someplace special
I want to see a beautiful dance and
Walk with those...what are they called?
Ah, feet!

See?? Same basic idea, but different lyrics. So now its my goal to memorize all the Disney songs in Spanish so I can sing along with the kids, er I mean improve my vocabulary... ;)

After the long day a bunch of us played a really awesome board game called Mensch Argere Dich Nicht. It was actually called something else in English but I can't remember what; I just googled it and it gave me the German name since it's a German game. Anyway, it's really similar to Sorry! except you work in teams and use cards instead of dice to determine how many moves you can make. As you can see, we're all operating on a budget here. Maybe for Christmas I'll buy everyone game pieces so they can retire the pasta shells and chewing gum. It was a ton of fun, made me think about all the card games with mom and the family. (In case you're wondering, my team totally won :)

(Addendum: I just actually read that article on google and have now determined that this is not that game we played. It's kind of similar though so I'm keeping it up here)

General update

Things have been going really well at NPH. I've been getting into some kind of routine in the clinic which is cool. I graduated high school juuuust as Power Point was getting popular so I managed to avoid ever having to use it before. My main job responsibility here is to give workshops to the kids and staff, so this week has been dedicated to learning how to use it. I'm doing pretty good so far. I'm sure my Spanish is atrocious in the slides but I'm planning on having Martin and Estella edit it with me before I show it to the doctor :P My Spanish continues to get better, in a few more weeks I'll be ready to post a video of me talking to wow all you folks at home! I'm also getting to know the nursing staff better. Today one of the nurses actually sat down at my table to talk to me! I hope that doesn't make the nurses sound like snobs, its just that they're usually really busy and our conversation never gets further than, "Hi, how was your night? That's nice." I've been making more of an effort to make conversation with them and get to know them a bit better. They seem really great. Tia Rosa and I have been bonding too. She keeps nagging me about eating more, she says she doesn't want my mom to think that she isn't taking good care of me here. I keep telling her that I'm trying to lose weight but she ignores me. Or maybe I'm saying it wrong. Maybe I'm accidentally saying, "You're right, please feed me more." That would explain a lot... Today Tia Rosa asked one of the nurses to teach me how to pass meds which was a HUGE step. I've been pretty hands off up until now so maybe this means she's ready for me to be more of a help around the office. I hope I can do meds for them, I want to feel like my degree is going towards something here. I've been giving shots pretty regularly which has been fun. For the most part the kids are really good with getting immunizations. Of course there are a few who I need a little physical support, but thankfully Willowglen prepared me nicely for that ;)

I started giving my English lessons! I met with my old Spanish teacher and talked with her for two hours over lunch. Her English was actually really good, she just needs some practice with conversation. I also met with Juan Carlos, the guy from the eyeglass store. Did I tell this story already? I forget. I don't think so. Well, a few weeks ago I went to Chimaltenango (a neighboring town) to pay for some eyeglasses that we ordered for the kids. The man who makes the glasses and I struck up a conversation and he asked me to help him out by making a phone call to the United States. He was interested in buying a machine from ebay that's used to cut lenses, he just wanted me to call the company that makes the machines to see if they sell spare parts in case he needs them. Apparently he wanted me well prepared for the phone call because he had me watch youtube videos about how the machine functions and read websites about it. I made the call for him and he bought me a soda, all was good. I went back to there the following week to bring kids for their appointment. This man (Juan Carlos) approached me and asked me if I could give him two hours of English lessons a week. I agreed to do this past weekend as a trial, so we met up at the McDonalds in Antigua. (Side note: Um, crazy beautiful McDonalds. Check this place out!)

So I get there a little before we're supposed to meet, he calls and says he'll be 15 min late. I buy a value meal and am just finishing eating when he walks in. He comes over and is like, "I'm so sorry that I'm late, let me buy you lunch." I say, "Thank you but I just ate, I'm fine." He says, "Absolutely not, I insist." Me: "Thanks, but I'm seriously not hungry. Next time." "Him: "No, no, I'm buying you food." I realize he's not going to take no for an answer, so I say, "Okay, you can buy me lunch but let's wait an hour for my stomach to settle." Him: "No, no! I'm buying you lunch now." So he walks away and comes back with the exact same thing I just ate. I had to sit there and eat a SECOND value meal. Dear lord. It was horrible and hilarious at the same time. The lesson with him went really well though. I had warned him ahead of time that I'm not an English teacher, I could just help him practice his conversation. That worked well for him since his English is actually pretty good. I agreed to meet him every Saturday for lunch and practice. He's going to pay me 50Q (not much, but I felt bad taking ANY money from him and he insisted. It's enough to buy fresh vegetables and fruits for the week :) He's also going to buy me lunch AND he's going to give me a free eye exam and make me glasses!! Woohoo!! Having an extra pair of glasses is a luxury I've never known. Now I can change them with my outfits, how fashionable!

After my lunch with Juan Carlos I met up with Tia Rosa and her friend Ezekial. They both want to learn English and are at a beginners level. I wasn't really prepared to TEACH an actual class, I had warned her that I could only practice conversation but I was able to wing it pretty well. We went over colors, numbers and months and I taught them the verbs "have" and "am". It was probably way too much to go over for our first class, but hopefully they remember something from it. Hopefully I didnt scare them away completely. I'm going to go to the English office at the school tomorrow and see if they have some material that I can borrow. Apparently Stephanie and Charlotte are teaching some of the older kids English in the evenings too, I might try to help them with that to see if i can get some ideas for my classes too. It's totally cool, I'm actually really excited about this! I hope I can help them out, especially Tia Rosa who has helped me a lot already.

Okay, random picture time! Estella has discovered the Camera+ app on my phone and has been having fun. Here's me working.

Jordy's been visiting often. He associates me with my music so now whenever he sees me he says "Hakuna Matata!!" It's his favorite song on my comp. I really need to download some Spanish kids songs, my English ones do nothing for the kids here.

Speaking of music, I really want a copy of the Adele album. I need to start bugging the other volunteers for music.

Scavenger Hunt

Ugh, I've been so bad about writing. I get super lazy after working in the clinic all day and when I get home all I want to do is lay in my bed and play games on my phone. I've been sewing a little more which is good, I need something to reassure myself that I am in fact productive. Right now I'm working on a gift for my sister which is absolutely delightful, I wish I could post pictures but since it's a surprise you'll have to suffer with curiosity for a while.

So aside from our normal 8-5 jobs, the volunteers have different projects that we're responsible for every month. One of them is called Projecto Familiar and I'm really in love with it. The way things work here at the orphanage, the organization wants to try to preserve the family as much as possible for the kids. They have a rule that when a caregiver wants to send a child here, ALL of the children under 16 have to come, not just one (this also helps to dissuade families from having lots of babies they can't afford and just sending the new ones to us). This means we have a lot of sibling groups here. They see each other in passing and during recess, but they don't get to spend a lot of alone time together (with 400 kids here, alone time is hard for anyone to come by.) They started Projecto Familiar to give the kids a chance to hang out alone with their brothers and sisters; we bring them to the park in town or out for ice cream for two hours. I had my first one the other day with a special needs kid and his sister. Since it was my first time I got to buddy up with another volunteer, Bianca. The kids were really cute, they've only been here for a few months so this is all new to them. He ran right up to her and grabbed her hand and wouldn't let go for the entire time. They walked ahead of us and just whispered a lot to each other. Of course it made me think about how it would be for me and my brother and sisters here which made me get all choked up. I'm definitely missing my family a lot :( My first solo-Projecto is this week so we'll see how that goes!

The other thing we're required to do is called Kermes. It's basically one day every two months where the volunteers need to plan a big activity to keep all the kids busy for two hours. They've done all sorts of projects in the past with limited success. Kermes was yesterday and our theme was a scavenger hunt! Now I happen to love scavenger hunts anyway, but to add a little twist to this one, once the kids were separated into groups we tied them up! It was hilarious. Each group had about twenty kids in it of varying ages. We took rope and fed it through their belt loops, basically connecting them into a chain. They had to coordinate their walking to keep from falling, so they ended up moving really slowly. I got off a little easy on this Kermes. Instead of having to lead a group of kids through different stations, I was responsible for making a campfire! The last station of the scavenger hunt was a box of marshmallows for the campfire. Some of the other volunteers made a ton of dough and the kids were able to make bread over the fire too (which absolutely fascinated me. Why have I never heard of that before?!) The kids LOVED it. We blasted music and had a dance party while we ate our food, it was really fun. Here are a bunch of pictures!

The girls waiting for the start of Kermes

And the boys. They're separated by gender a lot.

Here are the kids walking while tied together



Here's me and my buddy Dacia. We do a lot of medical appointments together.

Charlotte and one of the boys from her section (Pablo? Pedro?) showing off his well-done bread

Gustavo and another boy who I don't know. Gustavo is a cute kid. He's close to being non-verbal but has been becoming very friendly and affectionate as he's been getting settled in to NPH

This kid wanted his picture taken, too. I'm not really sure how he got a face full of flour since the dough was all pre-made...

This is Carlito. He was into cooking way more than eating, he kept asking for more dough.

In fact all of them loved cooking the bread. Here's a mob of ravenous children attacking Kristina and Janelle trying to get more dough

This kid is adorable too, though its a crappy picture of him.

This girl's my buddy too.

This kid had such a ridiculously large stick, it was hilarious

Me, Charlotte and Hanna

It was a really awesome time! Once again I was a little surprised by the difference in supervision here. The basic attitude is "if they do something stupid they probably won't do it again." When everyone was done making their bread a bunch of kids dumped the rest of the firewood in, making an enormous bonfire. The staff were just like, ok, our job here is done, the fire will burn out. We just left a horde of crazy children running around a bonfire. Guess everything was fine though, there were no crispy kids waiting in the clinic this morning ;)

Jordy's story

Just wanted to share this quickly. A little boy came into the clinic and the nursing supervisor asked him to tell me a story. This little guy Jordy is apparently known throughout the orphanage for telling really extravagant tales about giants and pirates and the like. I didnt get a long one since he was a little more interested in listening to my music, but it was still adorable. Side note, if you hear news that I kidnapped a kid and am now on the run in Guatemala, no need to wonder who I took.

I can't really tell what he's talking about, but I know it has something to do with a duck in a river who's cold and hungry.

Tour of my house

Some shots of the other volunteers

No big surprise, but I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with the other volunteers. It's been really cool, they're all great people and it's been fun getting to know them. I was a little concerned at first what types of folks would be here with me. The crowd is definitely different than the sorts of people I've been hanging out with in NY the last few years, and I definitely miss that scene, but the people here have been very open and nice. It's also been cool to talk to people who are a lot more religious than I am and get a reminder that it's possible to be Catholic and still be open-minded. I've been stereotyping religious folks for a while and it's good to be called out on it.
Like I had mentioned in an earlier post, there are 24 of us here volunteering, 12 of us just started and the other 12 have been here for six months already. There are actually more people from Germany here than from the US. Apparently Germany has a mandatory year of military or volunteer service after high school for all men, so non-profits are huge over there. They just did away with that law this year so there's been a drop in the number of male volunteers, but there are still a ton of Germans here.

Out for lunch in Antigua with the group (missing two). Around the circle starting from the left: Janelle (US), Me (US), Charlotte (US), Nicole (Ger), Ani (Ger), Marlene (Austria), Stephanie (US), Veronika (Austria), Elena (Italy) and Liz (US). Only missing Holger (Ger) and Karla (Guat)

Me and the girls stopping for some ice cream. Interesting experience when you dont know what flavor anything is and you have to order by color. Makes it a little more exciting :)

But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo...

This is all 24 of us. I'm going to name everyone. I'm the handsome one in the blue.

The 12 newbies