Thursday already?

Hi friends,

Not sure how much time I have now... the woman from the sponsorship office is coming to speak with us in a few minutes, but wanted to quickly check in and let you know what we did the past 2 days.

Yesterday morning I was on construction again, and we delivered the wall and roof materials to our 2 sites, which was a quick couple of trips. After that since we finished early, the crew took us on a tour (from the back of their pick-ups where we've been riding all week) up to San Mateo, which was several miles up a mountain on the sharpest hairpin turns I've ever seen. At the top, they told us that Chicho, one of the crew members, rides that route regularly on his bike. We all laughed, assuming they were joking. They were not. Chicho es muy macho. Today we also saw him bang in a 5-inch nail in about 5 swipes. It took all of us about 87 bangs, not including the ones that hit our fingers.

In the afternoon yesterday, we got a tour of another organization called Transitions, which builds custom wheelchairs out of bikes and other local materials. Their staff are all in wheelchairs themselves, and all had incredible stories of how they narrowly escaped death before finding this organization and getting their mobility back. We also saw Faith in Practice, which brings surgical services to the people here... and then finally we toured a hospital full of special needs people of all ages which really might have been one of the saddest places I've ever been. There's a Franciscan monk who has been here for 35 years (thru the civil war) and the stories he told of their patients were heartwrenching. I thought I was volunteering where we are... this made me feel like I'm away at summer camp.

Today is the big construction day, so I signed up for both the morning and afternoon shifts. This morning we went back to the house where I started on Monday and constructed the entire house except the roof. Had we not had a few delays (the electricity went out for a while, and we were missing the huge nuts and bolts that were needed to fasten the walls together) we would have finished, but we'll be able to wrap it up in an hour this afternoon, they say.

Tonight we'll celebrate with dinner in Antigua. We were going to go all out to the Santa Domingo, a 5-star hotel, but we have a number of teammates who have fallen ill, so we thought simpler would be better tonight. So far I'm doing OK -- not feeling 100% fantastic all the time, but am listening to my innards and keeping fingers crossed.

Tomorrow we get to attend the dedication ceremonies for both houses. The families who live there will be keeping the single room shelters they already have. These will be new, sturdier 2nd rooms that have concrete on the floor instead of dirt, windows and walls and a real roof -- and most importantly we have learned, a real door to keep out robbers.

Since we all spread out during the day for different duties, we come together at night and share experiences. One of the most astounding stories we've heard was on one of the social work visits (I go on mine tomorrow morning). In Guatemala when you finish high school, you owe the government about 1o,000 quetzales (about USD $1K) in order to finish and be able to go to college. We weren't able to get the whole story on why this is, but my teammate was listening to the mother talk about how her husband had died recently, how she had found out she has breast cancer (thru the clinic here) but then, the thing that made her completely break down, was that her son had been saving up for FIVE YEARS to pay this fee and it had been stolen out of their house. The people here don't believe in banks so it was hidden somewhere in their house that has no doors. We are going to talk with CH and see if there is a way to help the boy make up the fee without just giving him a handout. If I haven't mentioned it before, CH makes their affiliates work for their homes and services however they can, since everything means more when you earn it, and also since their ultimate goal is for them not to need CH in order to survive.

A few more random things... we were awoken at 4AM by fireworks and church bells that went on for about an hour. We learned this morning that that means there was a wedding. Also, today is the celebration of the Patron Saint of Bus Drivers (St. Christopher), so all the public buses (aka chicken buses) are covered in balloons! They are so cute.

I've just given my camera chip back to Krista so maybe you'll see me on film...

Hasta luego!