I'm HERE!!

HELLO America!!
Well, I made it here!!! I still can’t believe I’m actually here. After the most insane week of finals and getting ready to leave the country, it seemed like it took forever to make it here. Word of advice: never plan to leave the country for two months the day after completing 18 units of finals. BUT after all the stress it all ended up working out just fine. It was the greatest feeling to be done this semester! And to be almost half way through school!

It was also so nice to see some of my friends and family the night before I left! Thank you so much for those of you that got to come by – even for those of you that couldn’t I love you guys too. I feel so loved and blessed to have such a supportive family and so many supportive friends. Thank you for always being so supportive with all the things I want to do in my life. I don’t know where I would be without all of you in my life. So thank you.

DAY ONE:

After getting 3 hours of sleep, I finished packing my entire room up and finished packing for Guate. It was really stressful getting the airport because we were so late. But we ended up making it just in time. The bag with all of my things weighed exactly 49 pounds – the one of all of the donated supplies was 52 pounds. Because it was a whole suitcase of donations they didn’t make me pay the extra fee. By the way: check out all the stuff I’m able to bring! I can’t wait to give everything to them next week!

I flew through Houston and met Jenna and Megan who are both from Idaho. They’re awesome – I haven’t seen them since December so it was really nice to see them. The flight was going okay until we had to circle the airport because of the disabled airport on the runway. After an extra 45 minutes to our flight we finally got to land. The Guatemala City Airport is so bare – as in white walls, white floor, no chairs, no people, nothing. We got to baggage claim and walked through customs. We walked out to the street where saw lines of people waiting and then found a young guy that had our names on the sign. That was the moment where I thought to myself “What the heck am I doing???” He suggested we hold on tightly to our carts or someone might push them away from us and steal our stuff. There were police everywhere – but everything seemed so chaotic. This other guy pulled up that worked for the school APPE to drive us to 45 minutes Antigua. He greeted us with a little hug and a kiss on the check - which for us Americans is so weird, but here it is how EVERYONE greets each other. After tipping the young guy we were on our way. By this time it was about 10:30 at night but there were still so many people out on the streets. The driver spoke a lot of English which was nice – but he drove like a maniac! He was going 100mph plus on this windy freeway and would slow down to about 80 around turns – luckily there were not very many people on the road. It totally freaked us out.
When we got to our host family house there was a bit of a problem because he thought Megan was a different person, which meant she couldn’t stay with us. We wouldn’t let her leave us though and ended up working it out with the host family. Our host family is named Flores Vella –Dolores and Alberto are this ADORABLE old couple that have been married 67 years! They not speak a word of English. The family lives in this adorable house all together –I’m not sure of all their names yet but I do know that they are all related. In many homes in Guatemala parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins all live together – or next store to each other. We were so exhausted and so hungry. We ended up all three falling asleep in the same bed around 12:30 we think.

DAY TWO:

We woke up with the sun and these singing birds – which we figured was about 5 am! We found out later that those birds were birds that our family raises. We got showers and got ready. Dolores and her daughter walked us to “La Capilla de Mormons” – I have to say I have NEVER been so excited to see a meeting house in my life! After a long night it was so nice to hear English speakers! The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Guatemala is exactly the same as the United States – it was so comforting to see something familiar in such an unfamiliar place. The people were so kind and were so fun to talk to – just like MANY of the people here. My favorite part about going was singing the hymns and seeing how music connects people from so many different countries. I knew the melody it was just in Spanish. The English speaking people also helped us find a bank, internet café, and a place to get water!
We went shopped and explored the city all day. The city is absolutely beautiful and the weather is so nice – especially in the evening. The rest of the day is hot, sticky – combine that with the deet smell we smell beautiful all the time. J We meet this group of college students today that wanted to interview us about what we thought about their country. We hung out with them for awhile (they were super nice) and then continued on with our shopping. Jenna, Megan, and I finally found a bank pretty easily once we got into part central - there are police men with huge guns standing in front of the buildings. We bought really cute Guatemalan bags and finally found more water. Our host family feeds us 3 meals a day, Monday through Saturday. BUMMER. We didn’t know where the safe places to eat were so we just survived off water, beef jerky, and trail mix. I know…so silly. We were fine though. We came back in the middle of the day and took a nap. We then meet our roommate Afra who lives in the other APPE Spanish School room. She’s from Holland and is very friendly. We ended up going back out that night around 5 and walked more around town. There was a huge Catholic Parade with a huge group of people marching in black. There was this huge float that only women were carrying with the Virgin Mary on it and this really depressing band following. We aren’t really sure of the significance but it was interesting to see. We came back to our house, talked, and went straight to sleep.

DAY THREE:

Today we woke up, took showers, and Dolores had breakfast for us – eggs with tomatoes. For those of you who know me you know how much I love tomatoes – ehhh not so much. It wasn’t all that bad though. Julio, the director of the Rose Foundation we’re working with, picked Megan up to take her to Momostenango. Jenna and I walked to the APPE Spanish School where we will be receiving one on one instruction for a total of five days. There are people from all over the world that come here to the school and who are also living with host families. We’ve meet people from Holland, Germany, France, Canada, Norway, and only a few from the United States. After class we went an had lunch at our house and then went back to school for a tour of the city. I love Antigua! It’s absolutely beautiful! There are so many more shops open then there were yesterday –so we’ll have fun today.

We have so many fun plans this week in Antigua! Tomorrow we're getting salsa lessons at school after our Spanish classes. Wednesday we're hiking up this mountain to see a view of the ENIRE city - so you will see LOTS of pictures from that soon. Thursday we're going to an active volcano that has been erupting the past two weeks! We might leave Friday or Saturday - we're not sure yet!

I hope everyone is doing well!