Tuesday night into Wednesday

Otter with John and Sam.

In the kitchen at El Yalu, cleaning rice and singing songs.

Otter serving lunch at the medical center.

He has learned how to say "are you all done?"  "do you need help?"

Our 3 translators climbing trees, right before the ran out screaming because Oscar said watch out for snakes, or something like that....

Burbujera!  Bubbles! The one on the left is 6 years old - malnourishment is a huge issue here.

aahhh one of my favorite moments, finding the women in the kitchen doing needlework.

Carrying wood and the next picture shows the young kid also lugging the firewood.

The ladies men outside the church.

Teresa:

Tuesday night EFL was even more fun and rewarding. We taught our lessons on emotions “I’m good, I’m sad, etc.”  Otter led a full segment of the class by himself.  If anything, he would rather Kristy, Krysta, and I be gone completely so he could do the entire class himself.  After the class, a few students stayed behind and taught us some more Spanish.  It is so inspiring to see women in their 70s putting in such great efforts to learn English.  It was also fun to be on the receiving end of language lessons.  We met a young gentleman, Tony, who works in the fields during the day.  His company grows, harvests, and packages blackberries, baby corn, carrots, squash, and lots of different types of beans.  On Wednesday night, he brought in a brochure from his work to show me his company and he also had taken lots of pictures of the vegetables and fruits for me to see!  I asked him if he snacked while working at all, to which he laughed and made the motion of someone getting their toosh smacked if that happened.  The way those blackberries looked, I wouldn’t mind getting my toosh smacked for a snack here and there!

Wednesday at the medical center we met a couple (Brendan and Maria) who were the directors of the place.  They had originally come down to help build feeding centers and children’s homes throughout the Sumpango area.  They met the founders of the medical center (the couple from Seattle).  Unfortunately, the husband from Seattle died and this couple then became the directors.  Oddly enough, Brendan graduated high school with the brother of one our team members, Peter, up in northern Wisconsin!  What a small world!  At lunch, it was neat to listen to Brendan and Peter talk about the different things to think about when moving down here (I forget if I mentioned then Peter and his wife, Krysta, will be moving to Sumpango with their 2 kids, Bennie and Mariana, in February).  Small things like paying the bills can become daylong events. 

As my shoulder had finally decided it did not like how I was using it, I stayed behind on Wednesday with the kitchen crew.  We chopped veggies for the lunch and cleaned rice again.  We also learned some songs in Spanish so we could sing some more with the kids.  Otter went off with a group to work out in the village.  He initially wanted to go with the 2 younger boys on the trip, John and Sam, but I decided that he probably needed just a tad more supervision.  He went with Bill and Peter.  When the group returned, Peter came to me with his camera to show me pictures of Otter with a machete.  Hmmm…that idea about adult supervision might have been slightly off J  He was actually working with the machete though, chopping up bricks and declumping the clay to be used in the ovens.  I think he enjoyed his time thoroughly.  Otter was very excited to get back to the medical center to feed the children and play soccer again. 

Our afternoon was very similar to Tuesday, feeding kids then playing with kids.  It was so great to see a bunch of little girls come seek me out and saying my name.  We sang some songs, made some paper airplanes, and played with the bubble machines.  When it was time for us to leave, I was able to let them know I would see them on Friday in Spanish.  There were also a few girls who I knew lived in the house where we were building our first stove, so I told them I would see them tomorrow! 

We had the chance to see the land Oscar’s church, Los Olivos, had bought to build on.  We also went and saw some land that Kids Around the World was planning to build a playground on.  Kids Around the World is another nonprofit organization that goes to impoverished areas where children do not have a safe place to play.  They raise the funds for the playgrounds and have groups go out and build.  One of the challenges, as with the stoves, is keeping the playground available for the children to play and at the same time closed off from the people who steal pieces of equipment to sell later.

Morning meeting time again – more later J

Otter:

On Wednesday, we started to build the ovens. This time, I went to a different group. I got to use a machete. With it, I cut up clay, and slashed bricks to correct sizes. There were two boys that were at the place that we were building. Also, there was a small blond, brown, and black dog with a bloody scratched up ear. Cautiously, he cam and nestled into my leg, then laid down. I sat down, and stroked him for a long time.

On our way to the fire pit, Krysta, another missionary, and me spotted three puppies on the side of the road. There were two yellowish blond ones with black mouths and on white one with black patches. I sat down and held my hand out to them, and they gently tugged on my gloves.

At the feeding place, we fed everybody pasta. Adam and me sat out front with a bowl of vitamins and handed them out to everybody that passed the clean hands check. Once everybody was inside, we also fed them their vitamin drink. I walked around with a huge black bowl and collected all the cups that the drink was in. once I was done with that, I handed out bowls of the lunch. Adam and me were done pretty soon after helping clean, so we went outside and played soccer. After a little while of soccer, I decided it was time to try something else. I went and got a basketball, and formed the group of kids that wanted to play in a single line. What was the game? Uno, Dos, Tress, tap shoot.

When we were done with that, we went back to Oscars to get some dinner to eat. We had some stir-fry. With it, on the side, was a bowl of thick red liquid. I scooped it up and spread it over my stir-fry. Apparently, I t was really, really, really spicy sauce. Sam grabbed a piece of meat from my plate top try it. I was fine with that. Then, when it was about an inch from his mouth, I. noticed it was smothered in red, thick liquid. “ SAM! WAIT! THAT’S COVERED IN…” but it was to late. He recovered pretty easily, actually.

When we were done with dinner, we went and taught English.

After we were done teaching English, we headed to Oscar’s sister’s café. It was a small little shop, with an area of probably not even twenty square feet, with no doors. We all got fruit smoothies, and me and Adam even split a plate of fries. Sam had some too. The ketchup was very different from the USA’s, and, in my opinion, better. As soon as I was done draining my papaya smoothie thing, I was very hungry. My mom said in order to get more fries; I had to guess the currency of Guatemala. Now, I know it was Quetzales, but than, I didn’t. in fact, I thought it was the currency of Costa Rica. Colones. As soon as my mom let me go get some without guessing the currency, peter was paying. To bad.

After we to were done with the café, we headed back to the hotel to retain some very well earned sleep.