Howdily doodily fine neighbours!
Last you heard I was in Livingston, no? Yes, i believe so. Soooooo the next day we went to this awesome white sandy beach and walked up this river with all these little waterfalls and then to a larger one where we "cliff jumped." It wasn't big, but it was fun :) and the river water was WARM! how crazy is that? It was sort of cloudy that day, but we still swam in the Caribbean and lay on the beach.
The next day we were up super duper early for our snorkelling excursion! wohoo! It was a private tour (just like the day before) and our boat ride was an hour and a half into the heart of Belizan waters. SO blue and pretty! One of the beaches we landed on was COVERED in those huge conch shells. You literally could have taken them home by the dozens. So lots of tanning (through the clouds :)) and some shell searching (ooh, say that 12 times fast!) While we were snorkelling I felt something in my snorkelling bootie bite me and it HURT SO bad. I came up freaking out and yelling. I pulled off my boot (it wasn't a flipper) and looked at my toe, but I saw no blood or entry mark of any sort, so I shrugged it off as maybe a psycho big prickle or something. But then my foot started to feel numb, so I swam back to the boat and looked inside my boot only to find...
a SCORPION! more freaking out. but not really. I told the rest of the gang and held the boot closed at a distance. Our guide dumped him out and threw many rocks at him. so he's now dead. But I, my friends, am a-ok! my whole foot was numb for 24 hours, but no other symptoms at all. praise the Lord!
The next day we headed back to Jocotenango. We all met at the APPE Spanish school as we do every sunday in Antigua for Domino's. Very good meat lovers pizza and i usually hate meat lovers. mmm!
Monday and yesterday we had Spanish classes. Yesterday for the 2nd half of Spanish our teacher took our group (me, Geoff, Xena, Ben) to this small town called San Philipe to see some of the Semana Santa prep they've got going at the church there. It's really neat all that they do. A lot of the focus is on Christ's death, so all Thursday night no Guatemalteca sleeps because they are up all night making sawdust carpets with pictures of Jesus, flowers, trees, etc that are like 30 feet long in the streets. Then on Friday there are processionals from 6 am to 1 am the next day! The carpets get destroyed, obviously, from the parades, but it's such a huge thing for them to do all that work. Then Sunday is just sort of a nothing/clean-up day.
Next Thursday our site and site 2 are gonna make our own sawdust rug in Antigua! 10 meters long and about 3-4 meters wide. Our SPanish teachers are helping us, which is good, because it's all new to us!
Today was a culture day. We headed into Guatemala City at 7:30 am and went to a museum of ancient artifacts (think of the movie "Ice Age" and everything is so much funnier in the museum :) I swear that movie modelled its characters after the ancient Mayans during their cold times). It was neat! then we went to a HUGE cemetery... The people are all "buried" in very high cement walls that have square doors that are like 2 feet square. the remains are slid in. Apparently that cemetery is a huge make-out spot (I mean, come on, what could be more romantic than acres of smelly old, elaborate tombs??). Some of the richer families buy their own plot of land with their own huge block that is carved with pictures and painted and all fancy. Then the whole family can be "buried" together. And that way gangs don't steal the remains (apparently that happens lots too from the poorer sections of the "walls"). Anyway, that was really interesting.
Speaking of smelly, the cemetery backs up to the Guatemalan City Dump, which is 24 football fields big. We looked down over to it and it was super sad. There was one or 2 excavators in there trying to push the garbage around, but also tons of people scrounging around for anything salvageable. The wind blew dirt and garbage into our eyes and the "houses" that surrounded the place were horrific.
After lunch we headed to this ministry center right at the Dump called The Potter's House. There we learned that 10,500 people LIVE and work at the Dump and 6,400 of those are children. The average family income is $24 Canadian a month for a family of 8-9. We saw the dining room and the school and learned about the programs that The Potter's House runs. We were going to be able to go down into the Dump to hand out sandwhiches, but in January there was a huge fire, and since then the government has taken quite the control of the Dump and set up new regulations (such as, no one in the Dump without a working permit). So we just watched from a distance. If any of you are interested in the programs (there are 5 and all super neat) that The Potter's House runs, check out www.pottershouse.org.gt.
After that we went to Tikal Futura, the biggest mall in Guatemala City. Quite the extreme after the Dump. We didn't really do that much there... some people bought a few things, and there was a huge food court with American food, so we ate there. But that's about it. And here I am now! Tomorrow it's back to Spanish class. In the evening we have worship, but we also are having a big community discussion. I think the leaders are feeling upset with the group and many of us have expressed the desire to just get home asap. There's a real lack of good relationships and trust going on, and a lot of lost focus. So that's something I've been praying about. Hopefully after tomorrow night things will be cleared up a bit more. But yeah, so that's the scoop! I miss you all, and no, as much as I love you guys, I don't want to come home yet. :) Maybe when it gets a little closer to mid April I will, but for now, I'm loving it. Feelin' the community strain, but still having a blast. Thanks for all your prayers! Be so blessed...