Randomness

Things are moving right along here. I'm glad we're finally done with Christmas, I feel like it's the only thing I've talked about for the last month. So here's my very last Christmas-related blog post (hooray!)

I finally snagged Aileen (Julian's sister) and some girls from her section to make Christmas cookies. We had a fun time listening to music and getting our bake on.

We had so many visitors throwing parties for the kids this month. They ended up hording away SO MUCH candy

And they also got some really great gifts. Check out this bike donation. Only problem? 10 bikes for all the kids. Luckily, I'm not in charge of figuring out that sharing system!

The kids have come back from their vacation now. It's nice to see all their faces, I actually missed quite a few of them. It always cracks me up how similar kids are despite living thousands of miles apart in totally different cultures. One of the boys came back from visiting his dad in Peten, the northern most state in Guatemala (mostly humid jungle). Guess what he brought with him? A turtle he found in the woods. He thought he could keep it under his bed here as a pet. Through a series of events, I now have custody of the turtle. I'm trying to keep him warm enough to survive the winter here since it's a lot colder at night here than in Peten. If he makes it, he'll join another orphan turtle in the kindergarten classroom.

One custom that's really huge here is making really intricate nativity scenes. I wrote quite a bit about this last year. They built a whole addition to the Antigua market just for nativity supplies. Here is a quick photo I took. Check out the dyed sawdust, very pretty :)

Here was our Christmas breakfast. It's fried tortillas with black beans and cream. God what I'd give for a taylor ham, egg and cheese sandwich...

But that's okay because....

This is my favorite phone app! I look at it every day :) I skyped with Mom, Jeff and the girls this week for the first time in months. It was really great to hear from them and know that everyone's doing okay. I'm so excited to see their faces in real life!! :)

Feliz Navidad!

After literally weeks of pre-Christmas partying, it was finally time for the big day. Christmas can be a kind of rough time here; kids and volunteers miss their families, and without any Tios here, things can be a little tense. There were definitely a few tears shed, but for the most part people got caught up in the festivities and had a good time.

Christmas Eve is the big holiday here, not Christmas Day. We had mass at 4p, then jumped right into the annual Christmas play. Every year, the volunteers put on a play for the kids which is both exciting and horrifying. I'm not big on having a lot of attention drawn to myself, so imagine my excitement when I found out I'd have the lead role :/ I was secretly excited though, since it was always my dream as a kid to be the lead in the play and now I was living it out. I started getting nervous once I realized the play would be semi-improv, so I would have to rely on my loose grasp of Spanish to keep the play making sense, but it went really well! The basic premise was I was Santa and I was trying to discover the real meaning of Christmas. I did interviews with famous Biblical figures as another group of volunteers acted out what we were describing. It was actually pretty informative for me since I realized I only knew parts of the Christmas story, and the acting made it funny for the kids. They really liked it a lot :)

Here I am with my elf/Jose, interviewing an angel/Charlotte. I had a pretty sweet deal aside from all the talking. I got to just sit there the whole time :)

Interviewing Mary

She starts us off by talking about Gabriel's visit and her pregnancy. After telling Joseph, they then depart for Bethlehem. She goes into labor on the way and they need to find shelter, but have a hard time finding anyone to let them in. Here they are seeking "posada"

They finally find a dude who won't let them come into his house, but says they can sleep in his stable. Meanwhile, the three Persian kings see the comet in the sky which means a new king is born. They decide to follow it to see what's going on.

Closer to Bethlehem, shepards are out with their sheep. This isn't a great quality picture, but here are the shepards hanging out around their campfire. After a bit, angels come and tell them that Jesus was born and they need to walk to the stable to greet him

All of the shepards leave to find Baby Jesus except for a drunk one, played expertly by Katie

The devils find the drunk shepard/katie and convince him that Jesus isn't anything special and he should tell the others to turn back

The angels are obviously pretty pissed about that, so they confront the devils. The devils and angels duke it out. This fight was pretty intense. Notice Gabriel/Jack grabbing a piece of firewood to slap someone over the head with

The angels rip the horns off the devils and send them to hell. The angels celebrate their victory

The shepards arrive to visit Jesus

Visiting baby Jesus/Brendy in the stable

At the end I gave a little speech explaining that the reason we give gifts during Christmas is as a symbol of God's gift (Jesus) to the world. Then we all sang Feliz Navidad. The end. :)

Jack and Manolo hanging out after the show

The traditional Christmas food here is tamales. A tamal is a little pile of corn meal paste with red sauce and a little chunk of chicken or meat in it. It's then wrapped up in a corn husk or banana leaf and boiled. I'm not a huge, huge fan of tamales, but it was nice to be doing something traditional and the kids were super happy about them. AND I have to say that the two inch square piece of chicken that was in my tamal is by far the largest peice of meat I've ever gotten from NPH. I was actually quite excited about that.

The biggest "family dinner" I've ever had. There were three big tables like this.

It's custom here to stay up until midnight on Christmas Eve. I told the kids that in the States everyone needs to go to bed early on Christmas Eve. They thought that was wierd.

After dinner we went outside and had a big bonfire with a TON of firecrackers and fireworks. Christmas is the biggest day of the year for firecrackers. You know what's pretty stressful? Having 70 kids crowded around a bonfire as people throw firecrackers into it. Especially if you're the nurse on shift that day :/ Miraculously we only had one injury, and that was a kid who was burned by a sparkler.

I took a lot of pictures of Juan Carlos tonight, but he was being particularly cute. Here he is enjoying the bonfire.

Juan Carlos, Katie and Gustavo. Gustavo can be a bit challenging at times, but I've dealt with way worse when I was at WGA so I like him a lot. For Christmas Jack bought him a Pandora hat. I think it's awesome.

Liz and Jimena having some Christmas cuddle time

Prince Jordy enjoying his sparkler

This Christmas was definitely a nice (though very different) experience. I missed everyone at home, but I was happy with the kids. Also, I was happy because I've been telling myself for weeks that I just needed to survive through Christmas; everything is going to fly by after this! We have a week off, then my friend Dan is coming so we can travel for a week! After that, I help train the new folks and then I'm outta here!! I'm actually starting to get little pangs of sadness about leaving, but for now I'm still much more excited by the prospect of being home!! Hope everyone back in the States had a great holiday!

Fair

Wow, remember a year ago when I went to my first fair in Guatemala and had churros and was so excited?! Well it's here again!! Every night we were taunted by the music and fireworks going off in Parramos. Lucky for us, my friend David sent us a lovely Christmas donation, so I wrangled up some willing kids and treated us to a day out.

Walking through the food stands

Really shoddy looking rides

Teletubbies from HELL

Group shot

Leo and Alvaro happily gobble up some churros

We played some games with the kids too. They had fun with this one. I dont really understand what you're supposed to do here, but the lady told us if we could get the balls in a hole, she would give them a prize. Thankfully that was within my skill range

And Leo's!

Brendy gives it a go

This play medical set was being offered as a game prize. I was a bit offended. What the hell is this supposed to mean??

The kids had a really good time. We're planning a trip with one of the boys' sections, and they'll definitely get a kick out of that. Thanks for thinking of us David!!

Volunteer Christmas Party

I have to say, it's pretty damn depressing not being home for Christmas. I got through last year feeling a little sorry for myself, but I was still new to Guatemala and even laying in bed and watching Spanish TV was exciting to me. This year I'm feeling it a lot more. I've been here for 13 months. I miss being home, I miss my family and friends, and since Christmas is a time for being with your loved ones, everything is just intensified right now.

Luckily the Volunteer Coordinator Erika was well aware of this, so she organized a nice "family" dinner at her house. There was plenty of gayity and merriment, I had a really good time. There may have been some slight inebriation to help with that ;)

Look at the pretty set up :)

Me, Jose Louis and Alejandra

Jack and I looking good

There's a rumor going around NPH that Charlotte is my girlfriend. I've decided to do everything I can to perpetuate that. Aren't we a handsome couple

Katie tried to steal me away with her fancy linked elbow drinking trick, but her seductions failed.

Gorgeous people

We all did a Secret Santa type thing. Everyone picked a name out of a hat. You had to buy that person a present and wrap it in a way so that they could choose it as theirs from a pile without seeing a name. The boxes were decorated with country flags, different drawings, various inside jokes. Here was mine!! I chose it right away. (For those who don't know, I love the X-Files and have been watching the series from the beginning for the last few months). And those are my presents! Luckily Stephanie got me and she knew exactly what I had been looking for: a Guatemalan tree ornament! I love it! She got me a cute little painting of Antigua with a very ominous, erupting Agua in the background. It's unintentionally apocolyptal, so I like it even more because of that. Hooray for parties!

Water Park

At the end of every year, NPH does a big activity for the kids and staff. They were a little worried that with all the financial problems this year, they wouldn't be able to afford to go anywhere, but at the end they decided that after all the stress and staff layoffs, a trip was exactly what everyone needed. Everyone was loaded up on buses and we all went to a water park in Esquintla, a town about an hour from Parramos. It was a really nice place, and despite the cold weather (and even colder water) we had a really great time!

The pools were really nice, they were virtually empty!

Gustavo looking slightly demonic, but happy

Linda having a good time

Edgar and his brother, two super sweet kids

The two cuties

Brayan striking a pose

We had a special snack for the kids: sugar cane! Sugar is one of the biggest crops here (after coffee and corn). The canes are ground down and the sap is refined to make granulated sugar. A popular snack here is for kids to cut pieces of cane and chew on the pulp inside. You cant eat it, you kind of just chew it and spit it out.

Here's a pile of canes

I've been wanting to try it out, so I was pretty excited to get the chance before I left.

I asked Julian to show me how to eat them since I was a little fuzzy on this. He told me I could just chew right through the bark. He has no poker face at all.

Here's me pathetically trying to peel my cane with a machete. The little kids were rocking it out with their machetes and I was just hacking into the side of mine repeatedly. I finally asked for help :/

They made short work of it

The taste test. Not too bad, kind of tasted like under-ripe watermelon. It felt like chewing on wet wood though, so that was kind of weird.

Then we had a ton of fun on the water slides. I was asked to take a hundred pictures of kids on here before I was able to create a diversion and escape. Here are some of the best

Alejandro

My buddy Julian

Gustavo, who went down backwards on his belly everytime.

Hannah was there too. Sadly this was her last day in Guatemala! After traveling around for months, she was finally ready to head back to Austria. We'll miss her a lot, but I'm glad she got to do something fun on her last day!