I chose 20 of my 100 pictures to post for you here. If you want to see them all, you'll just have to hang out with me.
Here I am Wednesday afternoon when I arrived at the Mission House. These were the only clothes I had with me, except for a purple skirt. The airline was so thoughtful and lost 33 pieces of our 76 bags. Four of them were my dad's and mine. The were delivered on Thursday afternoon though!
On Thursday we made our first trip to build houses in Zaragoza. Well, I didn't build anything. I played with the children in the street and talked, as much as I could, with the people there. The kids were so excited to see us. Well, everyone. Florencia showed us that she wasn't too old to jump rope. She was quite the character!
There was a little girl Antonia who had to show us her house. It was one that was built on a previous trip. She introduced us to her little cousin, Catalina Esmeralda. They called her Catali. (This just might be in my list of top favorite names.) Catali was 6 months old and her Grandma let me hold her.
Roberto, Jose Lorenzo and Diego were like the three musketeers. The were always together. They called Roberto 'Gringo'. Diego loved the little plastic car I gave him. He tied a string to it and pulled it around all day. Later in the afternoon the kids were getting tired, and so was I. I didn't mind that they just wanted to sit around with us. Here I am with Vatti on my lap and Caterina de Pilar next to me. Usually I was crowed with kids, so just these two was pretty empty!
The children there are all just so beautiful. (I also couldn't help but notice that my sister is the cutest Guatemalan, ever.) We built a house for the family of these two little girls.
Here's a sweet little girl on her mom's back. She had the cutest little dress on and the wrap that was holding her was just gorgeous! The meat in the markets was a little less than desirable. I guess there's a reason why we brought our own meat with us...
Katherina was one of my favorite little girls I met there. She seemed to like me too. Her parents go to the seminary in Guatemala City, but they had a week off while we were there. Mario helped out on the worksite and Amuy helped in the kitchen. Katherina was just everywhere in the mission house. Amuy knew English well, Mario knew some and Katherina spoke none, but I'm pretty sure she understood some of it.
There were tons of adorable kids at the orphanage. I could have taken 12 (at least) of them home with me. This little boy gave me the best hug ever when I was there. He basically run and jumped up on me, holding on as tight as he could. The kids seemed to like my dad too -- he gave them rides on his shoulders.
The houses that we built were 12x12. Here is our group (Team Fast) putting up the back wall of one house. We were on the top of a hill and there wasn't much breeze that day. It was pretty warm and lovely.
There was a volcano in the view from the Mission House. On most mornings, there was quite a bit of cloud cover, but I saw all of it a few times. One morning we even saw steam coming out! (Look above the clouds on the second picture.) If you're asking the question all my students asked, no, there was no lava spewing out later.
The kids loved the little toys, hats, stickers, shoes and candy we would give them. Another favorite activity was looking at pictures on our cameras after wee took them. What they found the most funny though was me trying to talk in Spanish. The loved that I could talk to them a little bit. There were two girls at the orphanage that laughed so hard at me saying "siete" that they were rolling on the ground laughing. I knew I was bad, but I didn't think it was that bad!
Katherina would run up to me everytime I walked in the building. Her favorite thing do was to comb my hair. She told me she was going to "make my hair beautiful." Mostly, she made snarls, but I didn't mind.
I loved shopping the markets in Antigua. In one little booth that I was in I bought two skirts. This experience was probably one my favorite of the entire trip. I walked in there because I noticed that they took credit cards. That was just too cool to begin with. Yeah, I paid for them with my Visa card. While I was looking at the skirts, the boy working there told me to try it on. It was a wrap skit, so he tied it around me. While he was doing that, the other boy working there turned on their cd player. It was one of Kizie's praise song cds, except that it was in Spanish! While the 10 year old boy was running my card through we had a little conversation, in English and Spanish, about the cd. We talked about how it was a pretty cd and that the songs had good meaning. So, I was in a market in Antigua, I used my credit card and bought skirts from a little boy who was a Christian. Pretty freaking awesome.
Those are just a few of my stories. I have a ton. I missed you all tons though, more than I thought I would.
love you,
amber lynn
