First Days

The first few days here have been great! I have really enjoyed seeing the kids, meeting the new interns, and catching up with the staff. My friend Carrie from Eastern was able to travel down with me and will be staying for a week. When we arrived, there was a large team from Texas here, so I have just helped out with whatever activities they had planned, giving me time to catch up with people. They left this morning and I am now ready to jump into things. I've already had about 20 requests to make cookies! In a lot of ways it's almost like I never left (except for the stumbling over my verb conjugations and lack of remember vocab). I have been able to spend a lot of time with Rony, the 14 year-old boy that I sponsor, which has been great.

Here is a little story about getting to church yesterday that is very typical of life in Guatemala. After sitting in three different cars for an hour due to lost keys and other problems we finally left. Half way there, we had to turn around because of a large accident and travel 40 minutes longer than usual in the opposite direction through the city all the while with our gas needle on empty. Part way there we found out that the school bus with all the kids had broken down and that they were walking the rest of the way to church. We all made it safely and were able to laugh about, but I think it was then that it hit me that I was really back.

Today is unpacking day now that the team has left, so as soon as I find my camera, I'll post some pictures. Hope all is well with you guys in the US. Thanks for reading!

--Danelle

As inspired by Pastor Steve and others who are studying Spanish, here are my words of the day: bulla (boo -ya) is for noise that people make and ruido (roo- ee- doe) is for noise that objects, animals, etc. make. so, you would say hay mucha bulla for there is a lot of noise in, for example, the dining room at dinner, but you would say hay mucho ruido if cars were beeping the city.