Traveling Adventures: Day 1

Teresa:

It’s 3 p.m on Sunday and we have just arrived in our hotel. We left the church at 1:30 a.m. this morning in a nice chartered bus headed for Chicago. While walking in to the bus, Otter stated that he needed to talk to the school about getting this kind of transportation. Good luck with that one buddy! We drove the bus for 2 hours to Chicago airport and our plane took off at 5:30 a.m. The first flight was gorgeous as the sun was just rising in the clear sky. Thankfully, our other flights were uneventful and traveling went smoothly. We arrived in Guatemala City around 1 p.m. One of the first, most immediate and obvious cultural differences was the family bonds in Guatemala. There were families, from grandmothers to little babies, lined up outside the doors of the airport waiting for their loved ones to greet them. There must have been over 300 people waiting for travelers. The clothes of everyone were colorful, again, from the grandmothers down to the babies. Bright colorful skirts and shawls worn by the women and colorful hats worn by the men.

From the airport, we loaded onto a “chicken bus,” which is a school bus painted with bright colors. They were originally named chicken busses because they would transport farmers and their chickens, a sight that is still common today. We had just our group on the bus, no chickens unfortunately. We drove through Guatemala City, which was crowded and busy with people everywhere. We spotted plenty of Chuck E Cheese’s, Pizza Huts, Taco Bells, and even ACE Hardware that reminded us of what an influence (at least economically) our culture has. We drove through many villages and up a couple of mountainous roads until we got to our hotel. Along the way we were able to see some of the gorgeous volcanoes of Guatemala and lots of different farms that had various types of maize (a Native American type of corn), lettuce, and other veggies growing. We also passed several villages. When driving past a gas station, we saw a gentleman standing outside of the gas station with a machine gun. Apparently, the crime in the evenings requires some drastic security measures. Armed guards and barbed-wire happen to be 2 of the most commonly employed security measures.

We met our host, Oscar, who gave us some of the “rules” while we are here; 1. Don’t drink the water. 2. Don’t give toys or gifts away to the people we work with – let the church do this so the villagers do not learn to associate anyone working with them as someone who is going to give them free things. 3. Don’t flush the toilet paper down the toilets because their systems cannot handle it. We were then shown our rooms and given about an hour to rest. Otter found Fairy GodParents (in Spanish of course) on the TV and has not moved since then. He keeps asking if there are subtitles for English. I think this week should be very eye opening for him. I debated between a nap or staying awake for the hour. With less than 2 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours, this was definitely a hard choice, but, I figured I would fall asleep better tonight if I skipped the nape. Besides, there is a blog to keep up!!

Otter:

Today, I woke up at one o’ clock, as planned. I didn’t have any breakfast before I hit the road, so I was very hungry and ate a lot on the plane. I also read a lot. After we got of that plane, we boarded another. We got really high in the sky up there. Again, I read a majority of the time. Then, we got of that plane. We had to walk a long way-lugging luggage till we came to our bus to take us to our stay with the other missionaries. Then we got to the hotel, and our rooms, which is where I am now, typing in the bed.