Well, tonight it was time to pack up that huge suitcase again. I could hardly believe it.. feels like I just got here a few days ago. And yet, I also feel like I´ve been here for months and months. Weird. This also means that tomorrow I have to say goodbye to Ixi and Pablo for a while. I will see them the day before we leave to come back home in April, because we´re having a celebration dinner for all the families. But it will still be hard tomorrow since I´m leaving their house and won´t be spending time with them again like I have been. I have really grown to love and appreciate them, more than I thought I would. It´s ok to cry though.. that´s what I´m telling myself.
So yes, our group is leaving tomorrow afternoon at 3pm to travel to Tikal - Mayan ruins and jungle here in Guatemala, also REALLY hot there. We´ll be there for the weekend and then travel onto Cobán, in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala for a week of service. It will be rainy and very cold there. And we will be bathing with a bucket, possibly with warm water, possibly not. Our leader for the service trip, Rob Cahill, MCC, told us that if you tell them you have your period you get warm water because the Mayan have a belief that you shouldn´t mix hot with cold and when you are menstruating your body is hot. Weird, but if I have to pretend I´m ¨hot¨ to get warm bathing water, I´ll do it!
I´m anticipating this week of service to be a stretching and growing experience. I will be living out of my backpack, with only two different t-shirts and no beauty supplies! Also, they speak a language we don´t know.. but apparently it is easier to learn than Spanish, so maybe I´ll come back fluent in 3 languages! From the pictures we´ve seen the area is beautiful and I´ll be able to get lots of good photos. We´ll be walking among cloud forests and mountains. I am excited for a change of scenery and pace. Also, we will be eating some mixture of beans and corn/tortillas at every meal. I can´t say I´m terribly enthused about this, but I will survive. I stuffed some pringles and smarties in my backpack, just in case. : ) Also, us ladies will be wearing (and get to keep) a skirt made out of about 8 yards of fabric. Basically all the fabric is on a string and you just keep pulling it tighter and tighter and bunching it up around you. I think it will be very heavy. Rob told us that if we didn´t feel fat before, we will when wearing this. I´m pretty excited that I will finally look like every typical Mennonite girl doing service in a Latin American country should look like... native skirt down to your feet, sneakers (of course), a tshirt that doens´t really match the skirt, and hair pulled back in a bun. All I´m lacking is a covering!
Anyways, back to the present. We had our final Spanish exams today and I feel pretty good about how I did. I have now completed 6 credit hours of Spanish! Yay! Tomorrow morning we have our ´Clausura´ which is a party basically where every class has to present some humorous skit or song or story about their semester and what they´ve learned so far. I am excited for that.
Tonight 8 of us sang a few songs at Casa Horeb Mennonite Church for the 25th Anniversary celebration of Semilla, the Anabaptist seminary where we have been studying Spanish and spending all our days. It was fun and I got to wear the new dress I bought here! During the middle of the program (which was long, given that it was in Central America) Pablo came in and wanted me to come outside with him to play. I was glad to. Except that it was FREEEEZING outside. So at one point I told him I was cold, and he wanted me to pick him up and hold him so that I stayed warmer. It was cute. He wrapped his legs tight around me and was laying his head on my shoulder. I asked him, ¨Me vas a extrañar?¨ Are you going to miss me? And he said, ¨y tu a mi?¨ Will you miss me? And I said yes and he said yes. Then he just looked at me for a while, puckered up, and kissed me right on the lips! HAHA. It caught me off guard. I think I was probably his first kiss...
Well, it´s 12:19am here, and I had just finished packing and wanted to update this before I went to bed. Unfortunately, 6 hours of sleep will not be sufficient. Perhaps I can sleep on the bus or plane tomorrow on the way to Tikal, though this is doubtful. We´ll return to CASAS for a day March 9th to unpack, wash clothes, take HOT showers, repack and get ready to travel for a MONTH out of the same backpack (uh oh), so on that day I will check my emails and update this again, hopefully with some pictures from my week. I´ll definitely need and appreciate your prayers this coming week as I will definitely be more out of my comfort zone than I have been so far. But I am going to carpe the diem and make the most of this experience! Having a positive attidute is the only way I´m going to survive!!! Please pray I don´t encounter any strange creatures in my bed at night.. I actually don´t know if I could survive that. : )
Hope everyone enjoys their last two days of February. Seriously, where has the time gone? Today was day 50 so we are exactly halfway done with our trip. Looking forward to hearing from some of you!
Hasta luego until later,
Lindsey
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