The end.

One of the last things I was asked to do at NPH was write a testimonial describing my experience as a volunteer. I wanted to share it with you.

When I was in nursing school, a guest lecturer came in to talk about her experience in international nursing. While I can’t remember the specifics of her story, I do remember immediately falling in love with the idea of working overseas with under-resourced populations. I worked for ten years with adults and children with developmental disabilities, all while trying to plan my grand entrance into the international arena. I knew that a long-term volunteer experience would bolster my chances of getting into a Public Health grad program and give me the footing to start my career, and I frequently read up on different international organizations. Then, after years of finding excuses to push off my service, I found myself at a turning point. I was in a job I didn’t enjoy, my lease was about to be up and I had just ended a long-term relationship. I decided this was as close to perfect timing as I was going to get.

After extensive research, I applied and was accepted to NPH. Not knowing much about any countries south of Mexico, I decided to work in Guatemala based on the amount of interaction I would have with the DD population there. I moved to Guatemala in December 2011, unable to string a sentence of Spanish together and totally unsure of what I was getting myself into. After an intensive five-week language program that gave me some bare bones Spanish, I arrived at the home and was thrown into the midst of nearly 350 children. I was scared in the beginning, mostly of not being able to communicate enough to do my job effectively. The Guatemalan staff were kind and patient though, and as my Spanish continued to improve, I began to feel more and more like part of the team.

My job consisted of many parts. I worked as a staff nurse in the clinic and treated children for anything from stomachaches to stitches. I assisted the doctor with wellness visits and the rare emergency that we would have. Our resources were limited in the clinic so we took advantage of community doctors as frequently as possible. I was responsible for bringing the children to these appointments and acted as a liaison between our clinic staff and the specialists. I was also tasked with health education for the home. I would write and present in-services for the staff members and children covering topics such as sex education, alcoholism and seizures.

There are things that I expected out of this experience. I knew that I would grow professionally, both through exposure to new medical conditions and also the need for creative treatment with limited resources. I knew I would learn about a new culture and walk away with some level of Spanish fluency. I knew I would develop strong relationships with the children. There are several unexpected gains from this experience, as well. I’ve learned to navigate a very different medical system than that in the United States, one that relies heavily on networking and relationships. I’ve learned about the amazing culture here, but also about the culture of the fellow international volunteers. In our homes, we celebrate holidays from all over the globe; I feel that I’m walking away with a better understanding of the world as a whole. I’ve built relationships not only with the children, but also with the Guatemalan staff members and the local townspeople. I’ve gotten to know a society that thrives on kindness, generosity and patience; people who would spend their last dime on dinner for a stranger and count themselves as blessed despite their hardships.

I’m leaving this experience with an incredible amount of appreciation. I’m so grateful to have had this opportunity to volunteer, to have people both here and at home who supported me during the struggles and helped me celebrate the victories. I’m leaving with love for a country that I barely knew existed a year ago. Most importantly, I’m leaving here with relationships and memories that will continue to influence my life and career long after I’m home.

My year is over. I've been back in the United States for a week now, visiting friends and spending time with my family. I'm starting from scratch again, having to buy a cell phone, a car, an apartment and find a job. I've been here before though, and I know within a few weeks my life will be back to normal.

I miss the kids already, and I miss sharing my day with my fellow volunteers. I miss Tia Rosa and Ratatouille and even classes with Juan Carlos. I know I'll be back though. While my contract in Guatemala is up, my commitment and service will continue through my relationships with Julian, Aylin, Maria, Pablito and the yet-to-be-born cousin of Pablito.

I'm sad to be stopping this blog, it's really been my engine these last few months and knowing that you were reading it and cheering me on has kept me focused and motivated. My life will be far too mundane to write about now, but I'm looking forward to that. I want to focus on my next big life goal, settling down and starting a family of my own.

Even though I won't be sending you updates on all the NPH kids, you can still keep up to date on what's happening at the orphanage by visiting www.nph-guatemala.org. Consider sponsoring a child. You would become a Godparent to a child and given the opportunity to send letters back and forth to them. There are office staff who will translate all your letters, so you don't need to speak Spanish to talk to your kid. I can't begin to describe how important this relationship is to the kids. I've seen kids carrying around photos of their Godparents in their pockets, kids who run up to excitingly tell me about what's happening in Florida or Minnesota, or wherever their Godparents are writing from. It's one of the few opportunities that the kids have to be connected to the outside world, and to feel individually important to someone. Please consider becoming a Godparent through the Padrino Program. You can find more information on the website.

Thank you again for all your love and support! I promise to keep everyone updated through facebook :)

Ugh.

Well, I knew eventually my excitement for going home would fall under my sadness for leaving, and that day has come. I spent my morning saying goodbye to a crying Tia Rosa and it just about broke my heart. It's so hard leaving knowing full well it may be a year or two before we have any contact again.
As I was walking back to my house with a lump in my throat, I couldn't help but want to stay. I remember when I first got here to NPH, how hard I struggled to be accepted and understood. I couldn't connect with anyone because of my language issues and I felt so alone. Now here I am a year later, loved and respected, a valued member of the family. I can't walk to work without hugs and smiles from passing kids and employees, and now it's time to rip up my roots again. Of course I'm super excited to get back to my friends and family, but it means leaving other friends and family behind which is so hard.
This day is only going to get tougher, but less than 24 hours from now I'll be at the airport heading towards more happiness. Until then we'll have a day to dwell on the pain and sadness of leaving everyone behind here.

Saying Goodbye

Shit's getting real. The new volunteers have gotten here and are in the process of getting trained, and we've been busy doing our final evaluations and reports. I feel like I haven't really had much time to sit and think about the fact that I'm leaving because I've been super swamped with stuff to get done before the week's out. Now that I'm down to the very end, I keep surprising myself when I have reminders of how close I am. Tonight I'll be cooking my very last dinner here because we're eating out tomorrow. I just washed my very last load of laundry and rode on my very last chicken bus. Things are really coming to an end now, and while I'm still incredibly happy to be getting back to the States, I'm starting to feel a sense of loss at what I'll be leaving behind.

But I won't be cutting ties completely. It's official, I'm now the happy godparent of three NPH kids, Julian, his sister Aylin and Maria! We'll write back and forth and I'll be able to keep track of them as they grow up. I'm really excited to be their penpal and after seeing how important this relationship can be for the kids, I fully plan on coming back to visit them soon.

I will be saying goodbye to my life here though. This last week has kept me busy with work for the volunteer coordinator, so i haven't been in the clinic much, but I'll miss the nurses a lot, especially Tia Rosa who was like my Guatemalan mother here. They threw a going away party for us this week. Here's the clinic all decorated

I'll also be saying goodbye to the volunteers who have filled the roles of my coworkers, my friends and also my family for the last year. We spend every minute together and while I'm not super close to all of them, they all play a part in my everyday life and it'll be hard to not have them anymore. Last weekend I put some time aside to say goodbye to my best friends here, Charlotte and Stephanie. We went to El Tennedor, the fancy restaurant/art gallery in Antigua. We've been there before and the food is wonderful. It's expensive, but we treated ourselves as our final outing together. I know I'll visit them in Chicago soon, but it'll be hard not having them to talk to everyday.

My delicious lunch

And of course I had to have a Gallo as a shout out to Guatemala

Enjoying my fancy lunch

The girls waiting for their gourmet pizza

My last chicken bus ride! It actually turned out not to be, but it was my next to last, so we'll count it.

Holger was the first volunteer to leave, he's already in the United States having a nice vacation before heading back to Germany. It was hard to watch him go, it was the first break in our family. Before he left, all the volunteers went to the capital to watch him give mass at his church. His whole section of boys came to support him, it was really sweet.

I had a chance to say goodbye to my kids too. First I had a going away party with my older boys in San Gabriel. A few of them came to the clinic and helped me cook enough baked ziti for 40 people. In true Guatemalan form, we chopped up hot dogs and put them inside. When we got down to the section it turned out a large part of the kids had already left to the house for the high school kids, so everyone got double portions. They were quite happy with that ;) I borrowed a projector and we watched a few movies on the big screen. It was a lot of fun with them and they all came up one by one to thank me. It was very sweet.

With the especiales, Steph, Vroni and I are all leaving so we took them together to a park and did a bonfire. Katie was nice to come and help us out. The kids loved it, but who doesn't love hotdogs and marshmallows over the fire?

Me and my buddy Juan Carlos

Leo cooking his salchicha

Emmerson with Vroni

Who needs to wait for food? Here's Carlitos cooking a salchicha and two marshmallows at the same time. It didn't work out so well.

Me and Juan cooking

Group shot! I'll miss these guys.

When it was time to leave, the house sent a pick-up truck for us instead of the minivan. No one had any energy to walk the two miles home, so we piled all 20 of us into the pickup. Dangerous? Definitely. But also memorable. We laughed like crazy.

It's been hard saying goodbye, but tomorrow will be the hardest. Tomorrow all the kids will put on dances for each of their volunteers and give us cards to say goodbye. I almost cried watching the older groups of volunteers go through this so the chances of me getting through it without crying are looking slim. After that we're heading to Ratatouille for a final dinner, and then to La Familia for drinks and music to say goodbye to each other. I'll be posting my final blog post sometime in the next few days!!

Dan visits

After an agonizing wait, my friend Dan finally came to visit me! I've been looking forward to it for months; not only do I miss him like crazy, but it also gives me a great excuse to cross off my last must-see site in Guatemala, the Mayan ruins of Tikal. We knew it was going to be a whirlwind trip, but we were willing to tough it out.

Dan got here late in the evening so we crashed early and woke up at 4:30a to do our first trip: hiking Pacaya. Marlene came with us which was really cool, we don't spend enough time together. I've done Pacaya a few times now, but this was the first time we climbed it from the back side of the volcano. It was a really nice trail through the woods instead of the rocky trail I've taken before. It was really steep though, I had promised Marlene that it was an easy trail :/ She was a trooper!

Here's a view of a lake at the base of the volcano

Three gorgeous hikers

After we walked for a little while, it started getting super cloudy. It was kind of spooky, which I liked. Sadly, it made for shitty overlooks

Dan stands in the mist

Luckily as we got to the top, the clouds parted and we got to see the great views of Agua.

We were exhausted and dusty after Pacaya, so we headed back to NPH to shower and get ready for our big overnight trip to Northern Guatemala. I had booked our transport with a travel agent we use a lot. He had suggested we take a luxury bus that had beds for everyone. I had been hesitant because of the extra cost, so he said that he'd upgrade us for free because of the buisness we'd given him. We were super excited to check the bus out, but once we got to the bus terminal in the capital we relaized we'd been given tickets to the economy bus. It was a coach bus for a seven hour ride. It could have been a lot worse (a chicken bus) but it was super hard to get sleep on it and we ended up arriving in Flores exhausted.

There was no time to dwell on being sleepy though because our tour guide met us at the bus depot ready to go. We piled into his van and headed to Tikal, about an hour's drive away. I felt like we were entering Jurassic Park, as we pulled up to the park there was a huge gate that we had to drive through and jungle everywhere. There were signs warning about jaguars which was cool to see (I had little fear of actually seeing a jaguar because they tend to stay as far away from people as they can).

The park was great, and I realized something that had been missing from my Guatemala experience: animals!! I've hardly seen any animals since I've gotten here, aside from hordes of stray dogs. We made up for it here though.

A green parrot

A turkey! Super pretty (for a turkey)

This is a Coati. It's like a hybrid between a raccoon, a monkey and an anteater, super adorable but highly venomous. Nah, just kidding. It's just adorable.

But this isn't adorable! Tarantulas live here and there was one just chilling on the ground when the maintenance crew was sweeping up. Apparantly they aren't too afraid of them since the dude just scopped it up to show us. There was also a highly venomous snake sitting next to it, but the dude was a lot more wary of that one. It was small and I was afraid to get to close for a good photo, so there's no visual evidence of that one.

FINALLY MY DREAM HAS BEEN REALIZED!! I've been looking for monkeys for the last year and there were plenty here to keep me entertained :)

Can you spot the monkey?

Dan's camera got a much better picture.

For those who can't read the sign, it basically says that the cute little spider monkeys are great, but to beware of the howler monkeys because they'll scream and poop on your head if you go into their territory. I didn't see any, but we heard a ton of them. They sound like a mix between a dog and a velociraptor. I'll load a video of it as soon as I have a better internet connection.

The jungle was really cool to walk around in.

Here's a huge tree. The Mayans felt that these trees were holy because they were able to bridge the underworld (with their deep roots) and the outerworld. They definitely looked impressive.

Our guide was actually studying botony in school, so he knew a lot of really cool stuff about the plant life. This plant has spikes growing out of the side of the trunk. He told us that they're poisonous and the Mayans used to use them to prick their tongues and genitals in a form of self-sacrifice for the Gods. The upper bark of the tree can be chewed as a natural remedy to malaria.

The temples were amazing. Some of these were built in 400 BC. That's absolutely crazy to comprehend.

The temples have been conquered

This is the original wooden plank. Amazing that it's lasted so long

A carving of their symbol for the rain god

Cool carvings of Mayan rulers

Here's a root cellar that the Mayans used to keep their food from spoiling. Hooray for root cellars!

Dan and I standing on top of one of the temples.

After all our fun, we had lunch and got ready to head back. We had a few minutes to kill, so the three of us crawled into these hammocks and immediately passed out. God I'm going to miss hammocks.

The hostels in the city of Flores outside of Tikal were a little expensive, so we stayed in one just outside. Flores is an island in the middle of a lake, so since our tour started and ended there, we needed to take a boat to the other side to get to the hotel. Our boat ride over the lake

Flores from the water. It was a super cute town, I would have liked to spend a little more time there exploring

Here's the view of Flores from our hostel.

The hostel we stayed at was actually pretty cool for a hostel. The dorms only had four beds each in them and they were in a little raised cabana that was screened in. The cabin had electricity and an overhead fan, pretty luxurious for a hostel. Sadly Jack got super sick with parasites that night and had a pretty miserable time. We suggested that he stay in Flores for a few days to rest up and then head back to NPH, but he was determined to stick it out, so the next morning we piled into another shuttle for the eight hour ride to Semuc Champay.

Because of all the bullcrap we went through last time at Semuc, I decided to stay in a new hostel called Utopia. It was a little further away from the park than the others, but still within a mile of it. The river went right through the backyard, so it was nice. The hostel itself (though still going through a bit of construction) was really awesome! It was basically a big barn with a bar/restaurant, dorms and private rooms. Everything was open to the outside air, but it was nice at night and bugs weren't an issue.

The impressive dining hall

The dorms were right above the bar, but it actually worked out fine. People were never really rowdy and being the old man of the group, I never had a problem when I went to sleep early

God I love Semuc. It's my favorite place in all of Guatemala

Something that went right over my head the last time I was there: the river actually has two levels. The roaring part goes under these limestone plates and comes back into sight after a quarter of a mile. A small amount of water flows up on top of the limestones making the torquoise pools. Here's the roaring part going underground

We did all the usual adventurous stuff in Semuc. We started with the candle-lit water cave that I did last time. I have to say, I didn't feel quite as scared this time as I did before, though some people were definitely a bit rattled by it. We did the same path through the caves so I had an idea of what was coming up. The only part that really shook me up was when we got to the waterfall. If you remember, last time I had to swing through the waterfall in order to avoid having to climb a rope. Well when we got there this time, the guide told us that the ladder was too slippery so we HAD to climb the rope. I immediately went into panic mode and was instantly humiliated by the thought that I would be the only one who couldnt climb it and the group would have to turn back because of my physical inabilities. I tried to talk my way out of it and explain to the dude that my little arms didnt even begin to lift up my girth, but he wasn't interested. He sent me up and I was determined to give it a go. You know what's hard? Climbing a rope. You know what's harder? Climbing a rope while a waterfall hits you directly in the face. But I did it!! I was so proud of myself. On our way out we went down a different narrow corridor. The water here was running faster and flowed out of a whole in the cave floor. The guide told us it was a water slide and we could fall through it (into the pitch black) and land in water underneath. Stephanie had told me about this slide and how she had refused to do it when she was here, so I was a bit nervous but i decided to go for it. I watched the girl in front of me position herself and whoosh down into the darkness. After a few seconds, the kid after her went flying through as well. Finally it was my turn. I positioned myself and looked up at the guide nervously. He finally gave me my cue and told me to let go. I hesitantly lifted up my hands and realized that the hole was exactly the same size as my belly. Instead of rushing through the hole, my body slowly eased itself down inch by inch. I kept smiling at the guide and giving him the thumbs up as my body creeped down. I was plopped ever so gently into the water below, it was the most pleasureable water slide experience ever, haha. So the caving experience was a success.

We did the crazy steep hike to the overlook next, which was beautiful and well worth the exhaustion. Our bodies were really feeling it at this point, we had climbed a volcano and all those pyramids the last three days.

Jack huffing it down the trail, parasites and all

The three of us at the vista

After the hiking we did a bit of swimming and then headed for an hour and a half long tubing trip down the river towards the hotel. We had been looking forward to this all day. After days of running around and being active, we wanted nothing more than to sit in an inner tube and float down the lazy river. We grabbed our tubes and headed in. I was a little nervous at first because the guide was way behind our group and I had no idea where we were supposed to be heading (obviously downstream, but I didnt know if there were obstacles). He eventually moved to the front of the pack and told us to follow him. Within a few minutes we started to see rapids. I swear the dude was trying to lose us, he would paddle all the way to the left side of the river and then, right before we hit the rapids, he would quickly paddle all the way to the right and we'd frantically be trying to get over in time. The current was surprisingly strong at times (other times it was dead and we would sit perfectly still in the water until we paddled further downstream). It was hard to control the tube when we came up to the rapids and after successfully navigating a few of them, I met my match. I was the last in the group to go down and I hit a wave the wrong way and was flung from my tube. I fell under the water and was thrown around the rocks. The current was too strong for me to get up, but after a minute I was through the worst of it and I was able to brace myself against a rock. The guide seemed annoyed with me, and I was pretty pissed at him, but all in all I was just happy to be okay. The rest of the trip was stressful, I was focused on trying to plot out the best way through the rapids. Jack also had a rough time in the rapids and slammed his head on a rock. The gentle lazy river ride we had imagined actually turned out to be the most dangerous thing we did. To make things worse, it was getting dark and I was worried we wouldn't get back to the hotel before the sun went down completely and we'd have to try to navigate the river in the dark. Luckily we finally got back to the hotel and we all jumped out and ran to safety. Despite it being scary, it was a gorgeous ride. There's a big community of indigenous people around the river and as we floated by we could see them bathing and washing clothes in the river. It made me feel incredibly touristy and uncomfortable, but I can't deny that it was interesting to see.

After Semuc we headed back to Antigua and were finally able to relax a little. Dan flew out the next day and I started focusing on the fact that I leave in two weeks!! It was awesome to have Dan here, and though we ran around like mad men the whole time, we were able to see everything we wanted to in a short amount of time. Next time I see him will be back in NY!!