Day of Firsts






Today we had a day of firsts. At 5am we experienced our first temblor, a small earthquake. But enough that we woke up in the night. There was one again at 9am at school. My teacher took me outside. It is strange to not have sturdy ground, but we are glad to have that out of the way. We also experienced our first "chicken bus" ride. They got their name because they are known to transport chickens on top of them, and today we noticed that they also are brought on board. They are painted school buses that are very cheap and kind of crazy. We went with the school up to the mountain pueblo San Andres. To get there, besides the chicken bus, we also had another first, we were packed like cattle in the back of a pick-up, riding up the mountain standing the whole way. That is something you don´t do in Calgary too often. It had an amazing view and a very old colonial spanish Catholic Church there. It was incredible. So we are getting more accostomed each day "cada dia" to la vida aqui. We are starting to speak a lot of Spanglish and hopefully we will soon be able to speak closer to actual Spanish. That is all for now. I think we went over our half hour free internet, so we will donate a few Quetzales now. One Canadian Dollar is about 7 Q. We are able to have a coke now and again for about 35 cents which is a nice treat. In the cool glass bottles too! Adios.

Amy´s Note

It is 1pm on monday. Jeremiah and I just finished our first day of class. My teacher name is Vilma. She is nice, but intense. It takes a lot of patience and attention to make it through class. I am very tired now. This is going to be a very interesting time for sure. Our flights went quite well. Connections were good. Our lay over in Mexico City felt like forever. But we played lots of crib and walked around, even splurged on a starbucks. 44 pasos. On our flight to Guatemala, there were so many young kids from Quebec on a humanitarian mission, so we were surrounded by french the whole time. Not what we expected. But seeing all the young people made us feel like we could survive this trip if they can! We stayed in Dos Lunas the first night. Victor picked us up. It was dark and we were terrified. Our hotel seemed so ghetto in the dark and we could not picture where we were. Jeremiah eventually fell asleep, but I couldn´t so I felt lonely, but eventually I fell asleep. The next day we had a nice breakfast there and things seemed a lot more cheerful the next day. I didn´t feel as scared. We were met there by Jose who took us by taxi to the bus station. Drivers are crazy here. The bus trip went well, but was very curvy through the mountains. I am happy we didn´t get sick. We arrived in Xela at 2pm, and went to the school. We met our host family and then walked us to their house, it is only 2 blocks from here. When we entered the house we immediately were surrounded by so many family members because it was Sunday. It was intense. So much spanish and little kids! But we survived. We walked down to the central parque. It was quite nice. We took out some money for tuition and we terrified of getting robbed but it didn´t happen so that is good. We will pay for this week´s tuition and do the same next week. This city is very different from anything I have ever seen. I am still just trying to take it all in. It feels very surreal. It was so interesting learning about the history of Guatemala today. So eye opening. I think this will be a very positive and challenging time for us both. I couldn´t ask for anyone better to share this time with!

Mom, thanks so much for all your little notes in our stuff. it is very encouraging. Thanks everyone for your prayers and support. We will enjoy getting your emails and messages. Email and facebook will be the best tool for communication. We will try and figure out a way to phone too. This week there are a few planned trips so we are now moving forward from being terrified to being excited, which is a good thing.

I enjoyed reading a verse in the bible last night that ël Senor is el Senor de todos¨ it made me feel an instant connection to the people here even though in so many ways I feel very disconnected from them. It was a pleasant reminder to me.

Love you all and we will write more later. Adios!

Jeremiah Note

Hola familia, ¿como estas? Things are going pretty good here. We arrived late to guate city and things looked a little scary. When we arrived we stayed in a little hostel type place with barbed wire surrounding the yard. From our bedroom we heard lots of shouting and I think there was some sort of party because we heard that creepy vampire-club music in the background. But next morning we caught a bus with a guy named Jose who helped us get to Xela. Yesterday we walked around the city square and took out some money from a sketchy bank machine, making sure that no one was watching us too intently. There was a crazy festival going on yesterday where many of the roads were blocked off and there was a parade going through town with guys in purple robes. It was pretty interesting. The woman I am staying with told me that it was how they celebrated corpus Christi here in Xela. Things are a bit lonely here at times as no one speaks your language and you have no distractions (accesible internet, tv, etc) but I think we will get used to it. Thanks again for taking us to the airport Josh - I know it was early. Hope you are all well. Love you guys

Jeremiah