Week 2ish

I haven't taken too many pictures this week, because I have mostly just been at Hermano Pedro orphanage (where we're not supposed to take pictures) and at Chris and Donna's house (the missionaries). Anyways, my week has been as follows.
Tuesday was relaxing. We stayed at Chris and Donna's, did laundry, attempted a 3000 word puzzle, but were missing too many pieces on the outside, so we quit, played some Uno, etc. In the evening the whole Mooney clan came over (17 in total, including us) and we had an amazing feast in honour of Ben's (and Bailey's) birthdays. We had bbq'd chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, fresh buns, creamed corn, cukes garnished with lime juice, fresh limeade and lots of desserts: angel food cake (imported from USA), home-made ice cream in rootbeer floats, and cheesecake. Almost right away after dinner everyone left and we all went to bed.
Wednesday was our first non-Campero-breakfast-day and we 3 girls went with Saul to the workshop and picked out wheelchairs that would be suitable for people at the orphanage, and then went to the orphanage in Antigua and set them up. They were quite complex, so we only completed about 1 1/2 that day. We got back, had a delicious sweet-and-sour stirfry made from fresh pineapples and Horchata tea (made from hibiscus leaves and cinnamon sticks boiled). Oops - it sounds like all I talk about is food, isn't it? Well, I find it interesting! :D Again, we were in bed by 8:30-9ish
Thursday we again went to the workshop and orphanage. Our first chair required a carved back b/c the person's back was so twisted sideways and needed support. The other boy had one leg 4" longer than the other b/c his hip was out of its socket.
At lunch in a very north American bagel place we met a girl from New Mexico who needs to get out of the country to renew her visa, so Alyson will probably travel with her now next week.
Friday was pretty similar to Thursday, and the grandkids came over for the night too and we watched Karate kid. When we went to bed I had to put my earplugs in b/c the rain was coming down so hard on the tin roof right above my head.
Saturday (today!) we went to Antigua. It rained most of the day (usually it just rains for an hour or so around lunch and we wandered around. I signed up for Spanish school and we went to the markets. I bought some nice leather sandals for 100 quetzales ($12.50).
Since this is a "shorter" update, I'll give you an idea of what it's like here in Guatemala:
1. Driving is a big game of chicken. There are no traffic lights. Apparently they tried it one time and there were too many accidents!
2. Riding in the back of a pick-up truck is illegal and so is riding a motorbike without a helmet, and not using seatbelts, but cops do all 3 of those things...
3. You legally don't have to pull over for cops unless there are at least 4, because of corruption of the authorities.
4. Guatemalan food is flavourful, but not hot spicy like in Mexico
5. Women's traditional dresses cost about $100 and they wear the same one for a long time (years and years) because they can't afford a new one
6. Lime goes on every dish
7. Bananas, pineapples, plantains, limes, avacadoes, coconuts, etc. are all very delicious fresh!
8. Land crabs exist. I'd never heard of one until I saw it in the garden at the hotel
9. Beans are grown using corn stalks as poles
10. Bimbo is the name of a bread company.
11. Teachers at the schools will tell their kids that they will be sick (the following Tuesday through Thursday, for example) and the kids will just have the day off. No subs.
12. I definitely haven't done much on my English course... :P oops...

You might be interested in my schedule: Next Tuesday Bailey leaves and Alyson goes to Belize with a friend and I will go to Antigua for Spanish school in the mornings and volunteering in the afternoons. The week after I will join a new couple from USA and we will go to an orphanage in Xela to work on wheelchairs. That weekend I am going to go on a sailing trip on a catamaran on the Rio Dulce to the Caribbean with Alyson and her friend http://www.sailing-diving-guatemala.com/sailing-rio-dulce.php . Then I will participate in another distribution on Oct 12 and fly home on the 13th. Busy, but exciting.
Okay, so maybe not a short post again, so if you made it this far I'm impressed! :P

Finally made a blog after week 1 :)

Hi everyone,

It feels like I've already been in Guatemala for a long time and now it's been a whole week! 9 members of our team will be taking off in an hour! It has been good though. Very interesting and different. Tuesday was very long – up at 4:30am and arriving at our hotel at 11pm Guatemalan time (1 hour east, so actually 10 for me). Driving from Guatemala City airport to our hotel in Chimaltenango was interesting because Wednesday was going to be Independence Day so everyone was already celebrating. They ran up the streets with torches – mostly kids probably aged 5-18. Lots of people were on motorbikes weaving in and out of traffic which was really slow (usually more than one per bike) and lots of people in pick-up trucks and in old, American school-buses which are decorated and serve as city buses.

Our hotel is quite nice. I'm sharing my room with Heather Lawrence (the PT that I did a project for when I was in RA school) and we have two double beds and a bathroom. The shower even has hot water!...usually :) It doesn't have Internet though, so I have to go to Pollo Campero for that (chicken fastfood restaurant that we have been eating at a lot).

Wednesday we were up at 7:30, went to Pollo Campero for breakfast and then were given a tour of the workshop which you probably saw pictures of. I stayed there and worked on chairs while most of the women went on a food distribution and to Hermano Pedro (orphanage in Antigua).

Thursday we got up earlier at 6:45 and had a wheelchair distribution at a church next to the workshop. It went well, but was very different from anything in Canada. First of all, half the people setting up the wheelchairs had no formal training. Second of all, the equipment and standards of what is acceptable are quite different.

In the afternoon we went to Hermano Pedro and had a tour of the place. We weren't allowed to take any pics so that's why I have none. It seems like a hospital you could have seen 75 years ago in Canada. The nurses are the former cleaning people who have had a couple weeks training (besides all the ones that come from US and Canada as volunteers). Standards of sanitation and medical treatments are very different as well and things are slow to change. There are also conditions that we would never see in Canada because it would be treated much earlier (contorted bodies due to high tone (constant squeezing, essentially) in the muscles that we would treat with medications so that the joints wouldn't be twisted.) We went throughout the hospital/orphanage and saw the malnutrition ward with kids that I would never have guessed were their age. One 11 year old boy was around 16 pounds! They all looked several years younger than their age and many had cleft palates that hadn't been treated yet, because they had to gain some weight first. The orphanage is both horrible to see and beautiful because so many of them give such beautiful smiles.

Thursday evening we went to Dick's house and had a pizza party with “his kids”. I played a little bit of soccer with the kids outside and of course I managed to stub my toe pretty good. :P It bled lots but wasn't actually too bad.

Friday we were up even earlier (we're worried about this trend!) at 6:15 because we had to drive for a couple hours to Rio Bravo for a wheelchair distribution. It was a beautiful drive though through jungle pretty well. The roads were decent except for one section that had washed out and another where we had to swerve around oncoming traffic because our lane wasn't moving. They were waiting for the bridge that had collapsed to be repaired, but we didn't have to cross the bridge. We were actually supposed to be along the coast at that point, but couldn't because we weren't sure if we'd make it back in time for flights on Tuesday (due to roads and possible hurricanes, etc). The weather has been pretty warm/hot so far and rain has been spotty. I haven't gotten wet yet. Rio Bravo was a very poor town, but the people were very friendly and in appreciation for the wheelchairs, they all pitched in and served us a real Guatemalan meal of chicken and beef with kind of a cilantro salsa and a baked potato and black beans and tortillas and tamarind juice. It was really good.

Saturday the men built a house out of tin corrugated metal in a matter of hours. The therapists and I went to Hermano Pedro to work on some specialty wheelchairs, and the other women did a food distribution. We took a few of the kids from the orphanage out for lunch, through Antigua's cobblestone streets with wheelchair tires that really needed pumping up. (note to self!)

Sunday most of us went to Pollo Campero again for breakfast. I had tried to buy bread instead, but the shop was closed by the time I got to it. Afterwards, most of us went to Chris and Donna's church. It was a lot different than I am used to. For one, it was in Spanish (although Chris's son translated the sermon for our sakes). For another, it is an evangelical church, so they had a worship team at the front leading the music and some people were dancing and clapping and raising their hands. It was much less formal as well. It was still really neat though, because the people were very friendly (we were all asked to bring our offerings to the front and to find at least 10 people to hug and kiss on the cheek and say that we were glad they were there today) and the message seemed pure. After church we all went to Antigua to a really good Guatemalan restaurant and then wandered around the beautiful, colourful city. There were a lot of people selling their hand-woven scarves and other handicrafts. Some kids swarmed us, trying to convince us to buy things, and I have a really funny picture of two women next to Jake and John. For supper we went to the food court in the mall (another weird experience for me on a Sunday) and I wasn't very hungry so I just bought a small burrito from Taco Bell. Yes, they have a lot of the same stores: Aldo, Payless Shoe Source, The Gap,Yogen Fruz, McD, etc. I haven't tried the shoe stores – don't think they'll have size 10 women's!

Monday we went to a very poor area to distribute food and clothes and finish off the house that the men had worked on on Saturday. We had to all pile in the back of a pick-up because the road was very bad and the van couldn't go down the road. The kids flocked to us (great intercom system from kid-to-kid!) and we tried to match up appropriate clothes for the child's size and gender. A lot of the kids had no shoes and it had just finished pouring really hard. Their clothes were tattered and dirty too. There were a few young girls that were pregnant as well. On the way home Chris thought he saw Dick's truck (that was supposedly at a repairshop and taking a while to get fixed) for sale at a car lot. Interesting country...

Today (Tuesday) the team left and now Bailey and Alyson (2 new OT's) and I are at Chris and Donna's. They have a beautiful place out in the country with horses and dogs and big gardens on 3 acres of land. It's not extravagant or fancy (the dirt road leading up to it is barely passable) but still nice and homey.