Woke up bright and early Saturday morning to the sound of fireworks being set off by the local shamans (or as our church so lovingly calls them, "witch doctors"). Those of us from north of the border are so damn jumpy. We're all screaming, ducking to avoid gunshots that aren't there, and flinching at regular intervals, which in turn yields looks of inquiry from locals who have grown immune to the continual explosions. Embarrassing. So I gravitated towards the amazingness that is Guatemalan coffee, and eventually reached a state of full consciousness. We feasted on eggs, the best french toast ever, bacon, frutas, tortillas, and oj. After breakfast, we headed over to Serrapio's church in Chulumal. Serrapio is such a g. Unfortunately the event was a bust. We invited all the families we were going to be helping this week to come and hang out with us and no one showed.. everyone was working. There were two families there, and all 44 of us swarmed at once. Yikes. We sang a couple of songs, including our theme song: santo, santo, santo. Santo, santo, santo might actually be a pretty song, but none of us know the lyrics, and more importantly no one knows the tune. So it comes out as a cacophonous jumble of broken and mispronounced Spanish and is miserable for all parties involved. For some reason they want us to sing it ALL THE TIME and we still aren't getting better. No bueno. So we peaced out after our little fete and headed back to Casa del Rey (yeah beeotches that's the king's palace to you. represent.). The muscles of the group left us to go schlep concrete bags and check out all the sites for the week, leaving the rest of us to set up for the scholarship dinner. After every table was set with centerpieces, place cards, beanie babies, and gift bags, we were dismissed. Me and the roomies went down to the cocina for snack time. Emily and Morgan wanted guacamole, but the staff said they were out. NOOOOOO. So they got french fries instead. After snack time came nap time. Obvi. We were supposed to go help Deb Shep with VBS at 3 but went ahead and slept through that.. oh well. After a long and glorious nap, we slowly rose and donned our sweet tees for the dinner. See sweet tees below.
For the scholarship dinner, I was a greeter because my mom was making claims that I am "fluent" in Spanish. I suppose that I am indeed fluent relative to the woman who replied "Lisa" when asked "como esta?" in C Rica, but to the native children of Guatemala I am far far from it. Whatevs. So children come in by the busload, and there are three of us at a table with everyone's names and seating arrangements on like 20 sheets of paper. Luckily, they were all wearing name tags so we could push em through to the ushers pretty quickly. Once all the kiddies were seated, I found my table and grabbed a seat. I was with a bunch of 17-year-old girls from Quiche. They were straight up gs. I loved them. We chatted about school and what I was studying and how their recent slew of exams went and all that then we started discussing boys and the distinct difference between using "calor" or "caliente" when talking about oneself, which Geovanny taught me in C Rica. They all said that they weren't allowed to date yet, and that their padres forbid them from doing so until they were at least 20. The conversation turned to me, and they were asking if my parents had to approve of boys I date. I told them no, and they were shocked, so then I thought I had misunderstood and quickly assured them that my parents had to approve if I was getting married. Then one girl made a joke about slowly removing a few items a time from your parents house to move out without them noticing. I love understanding jokes in Spanish! So we laughed a lot, and I ended up with a novio by the end of the night--the lone boy at our table stock full of girls. His name was Jeffers and he was cute as a button and probably about 14. Go me. The girls selected some boys from the room, and so I went and got them to come take pictures with them. My favorite was when they started asking for Chaz. Chaz, on the complete opposite end of the room, almost out of sight from our table. Almost, but apparently not completely because they were definitely demanding Chaz. At the end of the dinner, they all made me give them my email address, but only one of them had an email address to give me. The rest assured me that they will def send me an email as soon as they get an email address. Ah love them long time. I was sad to see them go. We were all exhausted, but it was time for another rousing devo courtesy of Tim. After devos came pb&j, and it was our first night introducing the "special request list". We were just asking for divas with that one. Trey diagrammed out a sandwich for us to construct for him tomorrow: wheat bread- crunchy peanut butter- white bread- strawberry jelly- white bread- creamy peanut butter- wheat bread; squish to fit bag. Our pb&j krewe was sub par. Last night, it was Paul and a bunch of his friends so the noise level never went below 1000 decibels. Tonight, though, was a different sort of flaw to the team. The flaw that was growing teenage boys.. These kids had just eaten a huge dinner, but were trying to eat everything they could get their grubby paws on! They'd make a sandwich, and then deem it "inedible" because it was made with an end piece, or an "extra" because that category's quota had already been filled, and before me or JLo could say otherwise they would shove the entire thing in their mouth. Cooooool. After pb&j we tried to organize another round of charades, but ran out of time. So off to bed. Ta.
peace love and caliente
