Last Saturday we went out to Bezaleel for the first day of vocational arts classes. The Saturday program is the main reason we are here. We are supposed to be giving support to the instructors and helping out where needed. There is a lot of other work we can be (and will be, no doubt) doing, but for now, this is our focus.

When we arrived, a general assembly was in full swing. We walked in and took seats. Before long, we were called to the stage to introduce ourselves. I did most of the talking into the echo-y microphone. Afterwards, the students were excused to go to their classes.

I sat in on the cooking class. For the first hour, the teacher, Iris, dictated notes to the students. Someone loaned me a pen and paper and I took notes, too. The lesson was on good hygiene. After the break, the class headed up to the kitchen and set about making a “salad,”—a hot vegetable stir-fry that they topped with a squirt of mayonnaise and sold to the other students at lunch time.

Between the 16 students, there were three knives and three cutting boards. While they took turns painstakingly chopping the vegetables, I wandered around the campus observing the other classes, checking in on the kids (who were hanging out with Wilmer), and meeting people.

In one of the kitchens, a group of teenage girls were patting out the tortillas. I asked them to teach me, so they did. We stood there, patting tortillas (most of mine fell apart, but a few turned out okay!), and visiting.

The carpentry instructor didn’t show, so my husband ended up teaching his first class.

The shop is located on the downstairs porch across from the kitchens and consists of a couple of wooden work benches and several dull handsaws. When I stopped by, my husband had them cutting up wood to make a toolbox (for the tools they don’t have…yet). The boys seemed to be having a grand time.

At lunch time, the students appear in the serving room, a bowl and cup in their hand. Lunch that Saturday was a scoop of greens in broth (I didn’t get to try it), a stack of tortillas, and coffee. There’s always a bowl of saucy hot peppers sitting out for them to scoop onto their food. Lots of kids opted to pay the 35 cents to get a serving of the salad. (The cooking class students were instructed to hawk it and about died from embarrassment—the money they earn will go back towards buying more supplies for the class). Afterwards, the students wash their own bowls and take them back to their rooms where they store them with their personal possessions.

A couple days before when we first visited the school, lunch was rice, a piece of chicken, and tortillas (always tortillas). My younger son adored the rice. He kept begging for more. We told him that there was no more. I explained that if he eats more than his share than other children can’t eat. It’s a simple concept, yet a hard one to grasp. In the States, when I say there is no more food and we’re done eating now, there is always more food somewhere, in some form.

We stopped by the school yesterday to talk with Virginia, the program director, and Manuel, the accountant. We discussed tools for the classes and the schedule. We plan to arrive again tomorrow to, once again, observe and learn to know more. But, we explained, our focus right now is in setting up the house and learning out to go about the daily task of living. As soon as we’re settled, we’ll be much more available.

Dear Readers,

Lots of you have been asking about care packages. Can you send them and how long will it take and what happens when they come through customs. Your concern and care, just in the asking, is hugely encouraging and supportive of us. Thank you!

Here’s the deal: right now we are going through culture shock. Everything is new and different and it all (or a lot of it, anyway) rubs the wrong way. This is normal. It is not something to run away from but something to work through. In order to do this, we have to slow way down, be flexible, and focus on the heart of what matters, i.e. being together, bed time read alouds, eating healthy, getting good sleep.

Perhaps this is one of the drawbacks of blogging. You get to see the hard stuff much more quickly and closer up than you would if I were corresponding via snail mail. (And if I was doing snail mail, I’d be sharing these details with only a handful of close friends and family.) So there’s that.

Also, maybe I am being too honest? I want to tell it like it is, but I don’t want to come across as a complainer. Transitions are hard for me, and they are super hard for at least one of our children (the one who just woke up and is informing me that she’s not going anywhere today).

What we are going through affects you—I need to be aware of that. No one likes to watch someone else flounder about like a fish, and for those of you who know us well, listening and watching without being able to do is a yucky place to be.

Which brings me to the point of this post: what you can do.

By far, the most important thing you can do is just listen and offer encouragement. Your emails and Facebook/blog/twitter comments are HUGELY encouraging. Knowing that you’re following along on our journey gives us strength, more so than I thought possible.
 

But some of you want to do more than that, something concrete, like care packages. I adore care packages, but in the name of honesty, let me be perfectly clear: we don’t need anything. Almost everything can be found in this country (if you’re willing to pay). I mean, Walmart is here (not that we intend the shop there). People live here all their lives and manage just fine. There are Twix bars and excellent coffee and rolling pins and whole wheat flour. There are drills and shoes and clocks and detergent.

True, at first glance many things are hard to find, things like baking soda, cocoa powder, forks (I found some and I bought a whole pack of 36 [they didn’t have smaller quantities]—let’s have a party!), long ignitors, easy-to-light matches, sturdy clothespins, floor mats, good DVDs, lactaid pills, etc. But that doesn’t mean those things aren’t here!

Still, if you want to send care packages (and I have no idea how long they will take or what will happen in customs or how much they cost), we will jump all over them.

Our mailing address is:

c/o Comite Central Menonita
19 Avenida 5-94 Zona 11
Colonia Miraflores
Ciudad de Guatemala
Guatemala

(Keep
in mind that all our mail goes to the capital, and once it arrives, it
might sit there for a couple more weeks until we get into the capital.)

Another option is that MCC has opened a personal drawing account (PDA)for us. This account is for our personal expenses like vacation, ice cream, clothing—all things we need to pay for ourselves. You can write checks to MCC and put our names in the memo line and the money will go into our PDA. Contact MCC to confirm the procedure. Also, money gifts (in this format) are not tax deductible.

Yet another option is that you can just give money to our church (Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia) with “Guatemala Project” in the memo line. This money will help cover unanticipated expenses, give us some funds to work with at Bezaleel school, help pay for child care and Spanish studies for the children, cover our medical costs, etc. This money is tax deductible.

And yet another option is to donate directly to MCC. This will not help us outright, but it will help the agency we work for. And it might be a healthy outlet for your care and concern for the people here and in many other countries where MCC does relief and development work.

Much love to you all. You guys rock.

Love,
Jennifer

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon. Luvia just left. The chairs are sitting upside down on the table and the floors are still damp from her vigorous and repeated moppings.

My husband and all four kids just left to do some errands. They have to go get more minutes for the phone, stop by a sewing shop and drop off some fabric to be made into curtains. The children are also expecting a treat. Maybe they’ll bring home some sweet bread for a bedtime snack.

There is granola in the oven and some potatoes. We’ll have fried potatoes and eggs for supper.

I am sitting in my bed, propped up by two pillows, the computer on my lap. Next door (on the other side of the wall), the carpenters are tapping away on their project (an addition to this house, but not for us). A bus just roared down the road. The fan in the far room is whirring loudly as it attempts the impossible—to dry some clothes. I am eating Wilbur Buds and fighting to keep my eyes open.

This is the second time I’ve made granola. The first time I used oatmeal that I got out of a bin in an upscale grocery. There were a few dried beans in the oatmeal (from the bins next to the oatmeal), but I thought nothing of it and just picked them out before proceeding with the recipe. However, when we sat down to eat our much anticipated meal of regular granola mixed with cornflakes, we kept biting down on something hard.

“There are rocks in this granola!” my older daughter exclaimed. She spit out a piece into her hand and we studied it.

Rice! Bits of rock-hard rice were all through the granola! I had to throw it out, much to my dismay. I’m not used to ever throwing food directly into a trash can, but here there are no chickens to feed…yet.

I mixed up a second batch of granola today and then burned a small bit of it. I’m still working out the kinks of the oven. It has some pretty violent hot spots. Luvia asked permission to take home the burnt parts.

“Do you have chickens?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ll grind it up and turn it into a drink.”

She also took two of our empty milk jugs home with her. For carrying coffee, she said. I’m glad things aren’t going to waste, but it’s awkward, having our trash be someone else’s treasure.

The rainy, cloudy, cold weather continues. Someone told me that here the cloudy days aren’t as oppressive as they are in the states, but I beg to differ. Here, they are equally oppressive. The difference is that here the streets are crowded with people walking everywhere, regardless of the weather.

I am so glad I brought my twinkle lights (yet to be strung up), little lamps, and votives. Also, we bought two lamps to reduce the strain on our eyes—the bare, overhead light bulbs don’t provide sufficient lighting and we’re constantly squinting.

The inside of our house is very wet. Water seeps in through the concrete walls and runs down. They are wet to the touch. We can’t hang anything on the outside walls because of the moisture. I asked Luvia if this is how all the houses are and she said no. This house wasn’t built properly. Houses are supposed to be dry inside. Which is both encouraging and discouraging.

(Note: I said that we can see our breath and that is true. However, I’m figuring out that it’s not because of cold—though that may be true sometimes—but because of the wetness. It’s so wet that in the act of exhaling, steam is created. At least that’s what I think might be happening.)

We are looking for another house to live in. I actually really like this house—the size and layout is quite nice—but the lack of outside space, privacy, and natural light, not to mention the leakiness and mold, constitute some pretty big drawbacks. We are going about fixing this place up, buying furniture, putting hooks in the (inside) wall, though, because it may be a little while before we can find another place (if we can find another place).

A couple days we walked into town to do some more shopping. We do this almost every day. We buy what we can carry, get some groceries, discover a few more shops (oh, they sell chicks here! here’s a carpenter’s shop—let’s order some chairs! here’s where I can get flats of eggs! here’s the ATM machine! forks! I found forks! etc.) Some kids had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at a hotel.

While we were waiting, I suggested to my younger son that he burn off some of his energy by racing to the far end of the courtyard and back. So he did…several times. And then when the littlest one was at the far end, my older son asked if he could run, too.

“Fine,” I said, “just keep your head up and watch where you’re going.”

The boys took off, running at breakneck speed towards each other with their heads down. At the last minute, they realized they were going to crash, so they both swerved. But, oh horror, they swerved not around each other but into each other—BAM, they hit head on and both went down. My younger son bounced off his brother, spun around and smacked the pavement, nose first. My older son landed beside him, gasping for air and whimpering.

The older boy was fine, but the younger one had a bloody nose. The bridge of his nose had a red-purple mark, and at first we wondered if it might be broken. (It’s not, we don’t think, and though it was still a little swollen and sore in the morning, he didn’t complain about it anymore.) What a fiasco! (But at least I got to meet the hotel owners and learn the prices—it’s a nice place to stay. Visitors, anyone?) (Actually, if you come visit us, we won’t put you in a hotel. We’ll hold you hostage in our house and show you all our crazy and never let you go.)

PS. The granola turned out perfectly. No rocks. Yay.