Well, no big surprise that a Catholic-run organization would find Confirmation a huge reason to celebrate. Like the Communions we did a few months back, Confirmations are done once a year for all the kids who are ready, regardless of age. This year there was a relatively small group of kids getting confirmed, maybe 15 or so. The cafeteria was decked out to the nines, as usual for our big events.
The clinic was the first department to arrive, so we chose seats right up front. Little did we realize this was the designated section for Casa de Bebes. Jack and I found ourselves in babysitting mode for the next three hours.
The kids were fascinated by Jack's levatating chopped finger trick
I relied more on technology to entertain my kids. Here we are having a scary face contest for the camera. I totally won, suckah.
Aileen (Julian's sister) was one of the kids being confirmed. So pretty.
Janelle, Charlotte and I in our fancy clothes
This is a big step in the life of a Catholic, so the Bishop came out for it. This is the first time I've ever seen a bishop in mass before, so it was kind of exciting for me.
"Mawage. Mawage is wat bwings us togeder today"
The mass itself was pretty short. He kept having the kids chant things like "I love Jesus" and "I believe in Jesus" which seemed a little cult-y to me, wasn't really feeling that. Generally though it was nice. He poured water on their heads and blessed them all. Then he raised his arms above his head and flew off into the sunset, looking for other souls to save.
This is a very short picture dump since the majority of my pictures are still unaccessable in my non-functioning computer. Luckily Charlotte has been extremely generous with her computer and I was able to finally purge my phone of some recent stuff.
Charlotte, Katie and I found an Indian restaurant in Antigua. Food was actually really great, though the prices were a little up there.
Mmmm samosas... Not a huge Indian fan (too many spices for my bland palate), but I do love me some mashed potatoes wrapped in dough
One of the kids who's been staying at the clinic, Maria, made a new friend: a baby iguana who keeps hanging out on the building. He was surprisingly cool with being handled
I continue to visit my favorite restaurant Ratatouille whenever I can. Here's some awesome lasagna I had last week. That salad is a warm fruit salad with honey mustard sauce. Sounds gross, but it was SO GOOD
OMG I FOUND THE BIGGEST SPIDER! This thing was awful, like a spider/crab hybrid. To make things worse, this was in the clinic during my shift, meaning that it was completely up to me to relocate it. I ended up succeeding, but not before revealing my true pansy self to all of the sick kids. Big bugs freak me out.
This month was Janelle's birthday. We had a cake to celebrate and I made some eggplant parm for everyone.
Oh, and speaking of dinners, Liz made us all this really good paella-type stuff. It was bascially rice with sausage, chicken and shrimp in it. Very tasty.
And finally, Tia Rosa brought us all apples one day. This is the first apple I've eaten since leaving the states. They're so expensive here! Can't wait to go home and get my fill :)
Things here have been pretty rough the last few weeks. Stress levels in the clinic are at an all time high, I lost my computer, and I'm just feeling generally depressed and anxious to get back. Luckily, God is always there to provide, and in my time of trouble He has provided me with my favorite anti-stress remedy: food. Not just any food, but amazing baked deliciousness straight from Germany.
NPH has several workshops to help teach the kids useable trades: carpentry, sewing, metal working. We also have a bakery that I've had very little contact with, save for the fact that they provide all of the volunteer houses with a few loaves of wheat bread each week. Well this week I learned a bit more about our bakery. The man who started the bakery up is a German guy named Gunther. He's part of a non-profit organization that helps support bakers in foreign countries. He travels all over the world spending a few weeks in each place and offering support to local businesses. He teaches them new recipes, offers advice and helps provide updated ovens and equipment. He started the bakery at NPH several years ago and every year he comes to work with the children for a month. It was really amazing to see how the kids interacted with him. He doesn't speak Spanish, only German and a bit of English, but these kids LOVE him. They run up and hug him, everyone shouts out his name as he walks by. I was really surprised at first but I soon figured out why. This man is a baking GOD. He doesn't need to speak, all he needs to do is cook. The first day he was here he invited the volunteers up to the bakery for a special treat. Here's what was waiting for us when we got there
Those are trays of cheesecake squares, peach crumble, strawberry cobbler, danishes and cookies. We had a free for all there, it was all for us and we were even allowed to take some to go. Baked goods are my absolute weakness. I will do anything for a danish, small children would be trampled if they stood between me and a brownie. Needless to say, I took full advantage of his kind offering. I piled my hands high with goodies and made a break for my house, but before I left he asked if he could take my picture (possibly for a warning sign to post in the bakery for future events?). Anyway, with barely ten words spoken between us, Gunther has quickly moved into the position as my favorite person at NPH. Every morning he and the kids whip out something new and delicious and we're welcome to go buy a piece of it (with money going directly to the house). It's like a bake sale on steroids, it's amazing. Check out this beautiful loaf of bread I bought yesterday. Do you have any idea what kind of french toast that'll make?!
Gunther will be here until Nov 15th and I plan on taking full advantage while I can. It's kind of sad that his arrival coincides with me discovering that I'm at my lightest weight in almost five years, but hey, that just means that I have room to play, right? At least he'll be gone six weeks before I head home so that gives me time to correct any slip ups ;) All hail Gunther!
Well, as some of you are already aware, I made a really dumb mistake last week. After a lovely day in Antigua, I headed back to Parramos. At some point during the bus ride, a water bottle that I had in my bookbag cracked and leaked all over my beautiful computer. I had no idea any of this had happened, my bookbag didn't feel wet at all. It was only later when I pulled out my computer and was met with this sight did I realize what had happened:
After the initial panic subsided, I went online (on someone else's computer) and got some advice from a few friends. Since I didn't have the tools to take out the battery (why do you thwart me with complicated computer designs, apple??) I had to settle for burying it in pasta and hoping for the best. Here it is pre-plastic bag covering. It's a good thing I'm a carb addict and had six bags of pasta on hand.
I left it for a week but sadly it didn't have much affect. The water splotch is still there in full force. The good news is that the computer seems to be working fine, I didn't lose any data (which I have no backup for since coming to Guatemala). The bad news is my screen is shot. I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure I need to buy a new LCD screen for it and then it'll be okay. They run around $150/$200 if I replace it myself (which I may be able to do). I asked about getting it done here but was told that since they'd have to order the part from the states, it would actually end up costing me way more here than at home and I was better off waiting.
Sadly ladies and gents, that means I'll be without a computer for the remainder of my trip. I'm depending on the kindness of my fellow volunteers for any kind of internet time on their computers, but updates on the blog will undoubtedly be affected. I'm grateful that this happened with only 12 weeks left instead of in the beginning of my trip, and hopefully I'll still be able to blog about some of the huge events coming up in the next few weeks (the giant kite festival, the departure of the kids for their vacations and most exciting of all, my very first friend visit! My good friend Tracey will be coming down to experience the chicken-bus firsthand and I'm sure I'll have a ton of stories to share.) Hope everyone at home is doing well (and on an unrelated note, I hope everyone will be voting next week!!)
Since I arrived here, everyone's been telling me about NPH's huge anniversary celebration. It's without a doubt the biggest event of the year; they have dances, put on shows, eat great food and play games for four days straight. It's so important to the kids here that volunteers are actually required in their contracts to stay and participate for the whole thing. Usually the celebration is in mid-November, but like I mentioned before we've been having some major financial problems here. All the kids are being sent to their relatives houses for November and December so the house can save a little money on food/employee salaries. To accommodate this, the anniversary celebration was moved to October and shortened to one day.
All volunteers and children are required to participate in Anniverario. We were broken into teams of 15-20 people and assigned a type of dance. Once I heard that we would have to present our dance in front of the whole school I instantly lost all interest in participating. I HATE to dance in front of people, especially when I don't know what I'm doing. We were assigned the Merengue which I know absolutely nothing about. We had one week to meet with our groups and prepare the costumes, make a flag, write and memorize cheers, decide on our dance moves and music, and then memorize everything. Considering I needed to miss more than half of our practices because of med runs, I was in bad shape. Luckily Tia Rosa came to my rescue and asked me to cover for the nurse the day of Anniversario. I would have to pass meds and treat the children, so I wouldn't be able to do the dance (hooray!). Right after I told my group that I wouldn't be dancing, they asked me if I'd still be able to help them with the games (during the day we compete against the other teams in a series of games, then at night we have the dance competition). I told them I'd do the best that I could to help them out.
During the week while they were practicing their dance moves, I helped with making costumes. Here was a cool unexpected lesson; I learned how to make grass skirts! Actually, I learned how to make pine needle skirts, but it's pretty much the same thing. There was no budget for costumes or decorations, so we had to be creative. People are very quick to use nature in their arts and crafts here, we're always pilfering braches and leaves for projects, so the first thing our group did was to go out and rip down some low-lying branches from the pine trees. Then, we pulled the pine needles off in clumps.
Next we took two long strings, tied them together at one end, and tied in a small clump of needles.
Keep that up until you have a long string of pine needles, then just tie it around your waist.
Voila! The finished product! (And the only reason there's a space in this one is that it was made for a little kid!)
As we were practicing, we had to show the committee the progress we had made. Here we are showing off our flag and shouting our cheers
Holger and Bryan look on
After all the practicing, it was finally time for the big day. We started with a mass at 5:30 (yikes), then started playing games at 8a. I had to run to the clinic and load up on first aid supplies before meeting up with my group, so I missed the event that I was most interested/frightened of: The Pole. Basically, the point of the game is to climb a telephone pole that's been greased up. Every person who gets to the top of the pole wins a point for their team. I have issues with upper body strength. I've never climbed a rope in my life and I had absolutely no hopes of getting up a pole unassisted. Once I saw it though, I realized it was different than I had pictured. The pole was actually on a diagonal; you didn't need upper body strength, you just needed to be able to shimmy up the pole without falling off (something that proved really, really hard to do). I watched another team do it, and the strongest boys of the group had a really hard time with it. The people running the station said that the little ones could try it as long as older kids stood on the sides to catch them if they fell off (it's about 12 feet off the ground at the top). This was instantly listed as one of the most dangerous games of the day and I spent a good amount of time cleaning scrapes and cuts (though thankfully no broken bones).
I quickly ran to find my group. It was actually really cool how unified the groups became. They ran back in forth under their banners, shouting out their cheers. It was really fun and the sense of competition was pretty serious.
The other games that they had were pretty fun. For this one you had to form a line and pass a wet sponge from the front to the back, then wring out the water into a garbage pail.
This game was very clever on the part of the employees. The kids had to run around and fill up garbage bags with litter. The group with the most bags won.
Finally it was time for the best game ever: the tug-of-war. Let me tell you, they don't kid around with their tug-of-wars. They dug a four foot deep pit in the center and filled it with water, thus making this a huge mud trap.
From a nursing perspective, it was a nightmare. Kids would get pulled into the pit and fall four feet down onto their faces, underwater, then a bunch of kids would fall on top of them. As soon as a team went into the pit I'd run to the side and go through CPR steps in my head. Luckily everyone survived, though we did have one concussion and at least ten sprained knees/ankles.
SO MUCH MUD
I've never felt more valuable at NPH than in this game. When I walked over to the rope, the kids instantly parted to make room. They made sure I had the most secure footing, that I had rags under my hands to have a better grip. I felt like a star, it was awesome. Naturally, my awesome body makes me a prime person for tug-of-war: I'm heavy so I'm an anchor for the team, plus I'm pretty strong, so I can do some real damage. I'm proud to report that we kicked ass and came in first place.
Post-mud clean up
Then it was time for the dancing. I have to say, I was really impressed by all the groups, especially Merengue. They really were great and everyone remembered their moves
This was some kind of western dance. They made little boot tips for the kids in the metal shop. So cute!
I have no idea what half of these dances were. Here's Holger's group. I'm kind of glad I didn't get roped into being topless
And Jose Louis pretended to not like his dance, but I know he secretly did.
Here's the winning group for the dances: Rock and Roll. Check out this video. It's a bit long and it starts slow, but I think it's pretty impressive, especially the end. They made their skirts from black and white garbage bags and all their props were made from things they found in the garbage. It's Grease Lightening!
I have to say, even with a shortened celebration and virtually no budget for a party, anniversario was a huge success. I had an awesome time :)
Last Saturday Landsey had an emergency C-section (still hazy on why) and now we have an adorable new baby to play with! He's been sleeping every time I go to the restaurant, but since that's kind of what babies do best, I'm letting it slide. Look at this little guy!
Chubby cheeks!
Hannah practicing for our future children
I love that the guys I volunteer with are as baby crazy as I am. Holger, Jose Louis and I all went down the day after the baby came home to hold it. Here's Jose Louis
And Holger
I have pictures of me too but I'm afraid I'd break the internet with our combined cuteness.
As I may have mentioned before, my friend Ruben (the dude who owns the restaurant) and his wife Landsey are about to have their first baby any day now. They decided to throw a baby shower and invite only the volunteers! (We're all super excited about the new edition, mostly because we'll be able to get baby cuddle time in while scarfing down on our chicken burritos). They really went all out for the shower, check out the decor. We segregated ourselves into Americans and Europeans.
Ruben cooked us some bruchetta-type stuff and awesome chicken spring rolls. The spring rolls were gone before I could get a picture.
And the very traditional Guatemalan punch. I continue to uphold my no-edibles-in-my-drinkables platform. Looking forward to unchunky juice when I get back to the states.
Pretty traditional to what I imagine baby showers to be like, we played a whole bunch of baby-related games. In an added Guatemalan twist, some could have resulted in loss of life or limb, such as this "balloon race" where we had to blow up the balloon as quickly as possible. First person to cause the balloon to EXPLODE IN YOUR FRIGGEN FACE wins! They didn't explain the rules until I was already up there or else I never would have agreed to it. As you can see, I braced for impact the entire time I blew it up. Totally traumatizing. I won though! In yo' face, Charlotte!!
Staying on the balloon-popping theme for a moment, there was also another game where two team members needed to blow up balloons, then pop one between their backs and another with their stomachs. Much safer, though still anxiety provoking. God I hate popping balloons.
Then we had a banana eating contest. I was able to watch this without once making a snide comment to Holger.
This one was my favorite. We each had to tear off a length of toilet paper that we thought would fit around her stomach. I came pretty close, only shy by a square.
Then we made Landsey dress and change a baby while blindfolded. She actually did a really good job
Ruben had a harder time but it made it entertaining
The soon-to-be Mom and Dad with their pile of loot
Group shot! Aside from the volunteers, on the left of the shot is Landsey's mom, her sister Jackyln, then Ruben and Landsey, and finally her little brother Jerson. (I apologize for what is most likely the butchered spelling of those names)
It was a really great night. Hopefully I'll have some baby pics to put up here at the end of the week!! :)
