I'm getting used to the routine of heading to bed at 8-8:30 and up at 7. Belinda, you would be proud of me :) Chris and Donna had 3 of their grandkids over last weekend and by 8pm everyone except me, Bailey and Alyson was in bed! I finally did some work on my English course that night, since I didn't think I needed 12 hours of sleep.
Sunday we drove to church (9 in their 5-passenger XTerra going up and down muddy slopes). Church again was not what I am used to, but it was still good to be able to praise God with believers far from home. The only kind of "tongues" I spoke in were English and Spanish :) Pastor Juan's wife gave the message this time about how God sees everything we do and how it's important to maintain our spiritual health like our physical health. After church we went to the Mexican restaurant in the mall (still feels wrong, but what can you do?) I had a huge stack of nachos. Afterwards their family went to a birthday party and Chris dropped us off at the house and told us the powerful story of how he used to be a complete drug addict and God turned him around 180 degrees! God is truly powerful! I wanted to livestream Langley CanRC for the afternoon service, but the family only has a certain amount of bandwidth per month, so they don't want us livestreaming anything. Instead we watched some movies and made pancakes for dinner. Sundays are definitely the day that I do start to miss home. Oh, btw, Sunday night there was a small earthquake. No damage, just a shudder...felt weird. I thought a train drove by, but there are no trains around here.
Monday we went to Hermano Pedro again and set up some wheelchairs. Afterwards I was dropped off at my homestay family de Juan Carlos Silva, his wife Iliana and her sister Bety, and daughters Pilar and Valeria. They also have another student - Marie - from Sweden. She speaks English, but the family doesn't. The father welcomed me with the words: "You need to pay me $1 for every work you speak in English"! They also have a girl who does housework - Mira. The house is very small. My room barely has room for my bed and two small tables. It also has the tiniest bano that I have ever seen.
Tuesday I started school. My shower was only lukeward. I discovered two days later (after two cold showers) how to turn the temp up! School was good. Teaching is one-on-one in a beautiful building with a courtyard. We start out by chatting (somehow it's much easier to understand her than my Guatemalen family) and then she teaches me grammar. This week I learned muchos verbos in both present and past tenses. I went home for a lunch at 1 and then headed off to Hermano Pedro where I fixed a few wheelchair brakes and searched for footplates, etc. and met the Physiotherapy staff and did some range of motion (stretching) exercises. It's difficult to really do anything without knowing much of the language though. After the orphanage I went "home", did some homework, then had supper at about 7-7:30, then headed upstairs to my little room to do a little more work and go to bed. I'm thinking that the Mooney family's routine maybe isn't so strange. I guess it makes sense to go to bed early and get up early, seeing as it's light 6:30am-6:30pm.
The whole week was about the same. I had lots of delicious Guatemalen food - actually very healthy: lots of soups/stews made from fresh veggies, chicken/fish/beef, tortillas (with pretty much every meal), rice, black beans (mostly just for breakfast with eggs and tortillas), lots of plantains which I'm really starting to love, and salads. It seems strange that a country with so many natural resources can be so poor. They can grow virtually any veggies/fruit and have lots of other resources like lumber, jade, rubber trees, etc.
Today I took the girls from the family out for ice creams and walked around town a bit, then met up with Chris and the new group at Hermano Pedro, went to the market, and now I am at Chris's house again. The Internet is slow today, but I'll try to post more pics soon.
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