Guatemala-Monday

First day of work. General confusion at the buses ends up with my group, which was supposed to go to the house with shade, ending up at the house with absolutely no shade. On a day that it reached the nineties. In the shade. Whatever. I didn't know the difference so I just went along with it.
My first job was to help scrape sand off the floor to make it even so the guys doing the actual cement work could... well... do the actual cement work. When that was done, I took turns with my father, Marc and Joe mixing the cement. They apparently do have cement mixers in that country, we saw one in Guatemala City, the folks we were helping out were just to poor to afford them. Which, you know, makes sense 'cause otherwise we wouldn't be down there.
It was freakin' hot but we retired to the local Lutheran school to eat lunch. The first day it was hot dogs and soda with chips. I don't think I've eaten a hot dog in at least a year or so until then. But I was hungry, so it worked out well.
After lunch, our group stuck around at the school to help get a wireless connection set up from the pastor's house to the office. The way the school is laid out is on a hill so it's kind of three tiers with the offices on the first tier, the school on the second, and the pastor's house at the top of the hill. Well, the guys were having trouble yelling from the first to the third tiers so I wandered to the second tier to be the go-between.
The second I walked into the gates, I was mobbed. At least six kids were hugging me. It was pretty awesome. I kept saying "Hola! Hola!" as I speak no Spanish whatsoever. They noticed my name tag and one kid said "Dessica" and I said "Yes, my name is Jessica" so they all started shouting, "Dessica! Dessica!"
One of the kids asked me a question and I replied (and forgive my spelling, all of my Spanish thus far has been from CDs and podcasts only), "Lo siento, no habla Espanol." To which they all roared with laughter. Yes, I suppose that it is funny that I told them that I can't speak Spanish... in Spanish. Well, then I remembered one thing, "Hold on, hold on, I know one thing in Spanish. Okay...okay, Tengo un hermano, ce llama Josh" (I have one brother, his name is Josh). They once again thought that this was hilarious and started repeating, "Dosh! Dosh!" Then it was time for them to go back to class so I reluctantly waved goodbye.
The internet mission was a success. I also got to sit in on Pastor Luis and his wife Nancy's English lessons which was pretty cool. They were boning up on their English and I got to pick up some more Spanish words.
After work at the hotel was pretty fun. We just all sat around and talked about one "good thing" and one "bad thing" that happened that day. The hotel owners, I think, were a little at a loss on how to deal with us. They set us up some benches in the street and just let us run amok until about 10 when we all finally made it to bed.

Sunrise from my balconyHanging from the van's mirror, loosely translated:
God is my guide, but I'm the driver

Working at the "country house"
Work Jessi! Work!
Mix that cement!

Finding relief in the only shade around


A group photo of the folks at the "city house"
The girl in front is actually the daughter of the folks who owned the hotel
Marilyn was awesome. She came out to volunteer and helped
translate and was really a part of the group. She's going to school to become
a chef and cooked quite a few of the desserts while we were there.
They... were... a


General confusion in the morning. Not an uncommon scene as the days went past.

Monday dinner. Chicken with sauce