Good Times in Santo Domingo

The past 10 days for me have pretty much been spent in Juan Calvino, the school where I'll be teaching in a few weeks. The school was started a year ago with help from a church in Wisconsin and my church here, Monte Hebron. It's definitely a work in progress, but last year the school won a lot of awards, and I hope that this year the school will grow and learn even more....I've been getting to know the teachers pretty well. There are 7 full-time teachers and 3 part-time (me for English and computers, another for religion, and another for gym). This pic includes some of them, on a day this week when we were making Quetzal birds as part of teacher-training. It was really fun! They seem like good people and I should know because I've spent about 30 hours talking to them in the past week while we were supposed to be having meetings for planning (I've been really annoyed that the director schedules meetings for 8am and then never shows up until at least 10:30, but he averages 11:30. It's RIDICULOUS!) Then this week we had meetings to learn how to teach math. I'm not sure why I had to be there since I'm not even teaching math, but let me assure you that learning about something you don't need or want to know in a foreign language by a teacher who is not even telling you anything helpful, is about the most boring thing you can possibly be made to do. In the name of not going crazy, and actually doing something that needed to be done, I gracefully bowed out the last 2 days and worked on trying to upload some new programs into the school's computers.

My first day of teaching has been changed to the beginning of February. School officially starts this Monday and I'll just be observing classes for 2 weeks, which I'm really happy about. It will be good to see how the other teachers handle their classes and meet the kids that I don't know already. It also gives me 2 more weeks to practice telling the kids to behave! haha. Migde (the guy on the right, who is my boss' husband) is the one helping me to get all this school stuff straight, as he's played a large role in getting the school started, as well as keeping it going.

So this past week, a group of 10 came down from Wisconsin to work with the school and our church in Santo Domingo. This is the fourth year they've come here, and they have awesome relationships with the people. I've realized more and more lately how important it is for groups to come here and spend time getting to know the people, and not necessarily just completing a project. It really makes a difference when people know each others' names, have visited each others' houses, and have shared meals and experiences- whether they be funny, sad, exciting, or whatever else. This group does both tasks very well! In the past, they built 7 houses for women of the church and their families, so this week, they came back to install electricity. It was great to see how much it meant to the women! The group really maximized their time by doing a 3-day bible school, a workshop for the teachers of 2 schools, and a workshop for pastors and other important members of the churches in our presbytery, Suchitepequez. We had a lot of fun, too, including a night of fun in Mazate for the younger ones of us! Another fun thing that happened this week (although I wasn't actually there) was when one of the male members of the group's pants tore. Alba (a woman from my church), insisted on taking him on a "shortcut"-aka dirt path-to her house, made him take his pants of and lie in a sheet in a hammock in the living room, and sewed his pants up while he waited! I also got to make dinner for the group one night- tuna salad sandwiches. haha. Hopefully I will marry a man that can cook real things! But they seemed to really like it....It was really great to spend the week with the whole group because they each had different things to offer and different ways to share, and it definitely brought more life to the church, school, and all of the people involved.... They also brought down my Christmas packages! Yay!! I was so excited to get stuff from friends and family :-), and I even got 2 Christmas cards in our post office box in Quetzaltenango (although I'm still waiting on my Thanksgiving cards). Funny how the mail works here. But thanks CeCe, Derrick, Mom, Dad, Grant, and Rob for all of the great stuff!

So one of the greatest things that's happened to me lately was driving my host dad's truck. He is in Xela recovering from eye surgery (he is doing well though!) and Dina needed to go to Mazate to buy some things for the group. No one in the family can drive, so she asked me to. I told her I'd like to practice, since I haven't driven a standard in a good 6 years....so she let me back out of the driveway, and then everyone hopped in the truck bed and we were off to Mazate. So much for practicing! I didn't have my licence with me and when I asked if I'd go to jail if I got caught driving, they told me not to worry because money can get you out of anything, and they never see policemen anyway. So I chanced it and AS SOON as we were leaving Santo Domingo, a police truck pulled up behind us. While trying not to panic, I couldn't get the truck to go into 3rd gear, and the policemen wouldn't pass me! They rode behind me for a good 5-10 minutes before I guess they decided I was an ok driver, or maybe they got tired of following someone driving SO SLOWLY in 2nd gear! When we finally got to Mazate (it's about 25 minutes away), I realized the parking break had been on the entire time. GENIUS! Luckily the transmission is still in tact and we made it home fine- and with all the gears functioning this time. Needless to say, I don't plan on driving again for awhile. And yes, I do realize this was a bad idea for many reasons, but let's just let that go since it turned out ok!

....I've been thinking alot lately about the problems Guatemala has had to face that have kept it as a developing country. Some of that thinking is due to some really great books we've been reading about the influences of other countries (cough, cough- The US!), religion, and other factors... but also just knowing the people here and understanding a small part of their culture has made me see so much (and of course, I still have SO MUCH more to learn!). For example, the way people go about getting things done here can sometimes make me crazy. Suppose there's a meeting at 10AM. NO WAY is that thing gonna start at 10, because NO ONE will actually get there on time. It will MAYBE start by 11 if you're lucky, and then each person will want to stand up and give a mini-speech about how thankful they are to be there and how they got there "with the blessing of God." I'm not saying being thankful is a bad thing, but all this formality and being late in the first place, is WASTED TIME! I have also rarely left a meeting here that actually accomplished an objective. Usually, another meeting is just planed to talk at a further date. It makes it really hard for anything to get done!....
Another thing that's really been bothering me lately is this: When you walk down a street, you are likely to see at least 1 (and usually more) bread store, cell phone store, and used clothing or shoe store ON EVERY STREET!! I understand why competition is important, but this much competition means that no one is really making money. EVERYONE here seems to be selling stuff, and I wish that someone could just make enough money to buy all the bread stores in 1 area for instance, and make it a chain. How can there even be customer loyalty when you are selling the exact same products that are sold in 100 other stores in a city? It just makes no sense to me! I'm going to continue to contemplate how to fix the economic situation here because I'm pretty sure my idea of buying bread stores or having more productive meetings isn't gonna do it, so I'll let you know how that goes! :-)

Well, I'm now back in Xela for a little relaxation time and also to take advantage of the free Internet in our office. I didn't think I was ever going to get here because on the bus ride up the mountain, the driver kept turning around and asking me questions like, "Will you take me to Louisiana with you when you go home?" I told him of course, if he would just keep his eyes on the road!! Buses are nuts. There were all kinds of things going on- the driver was not only talking, but eating too, and there was a DVD player with only about a 6 inch screen mounted in the front of the bus for everyone to watch. If you weren't in the first 2 rows, you would have needed binoculars to make out anything, but let me assure you that EVERYONE on the bus could hear it. I think they had sub-woofers attached to that thing! Ok now I've gone off on a very random tangent so it's time to switch to a new activity!

I miss you all! Prayers for no worries,

Julia

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33