I have been in Guatemala for 11 days now, and am already talking with Elisabeth about our return trip next year to continue our study! Yes, I love it here, and I am so blessed to have such a great church and super fun friends.
Today I'm starting my second week of classes... I can't believe how quickly the first week went by. Time flies when you're having fun, and I suppose even faster when you're learning so much! I love my teacher and I’m loving every minute of having someone who can teach me so well and answer any questions I have. She gives all of her instructions to me in Spanish, so for the first couple days I didn't understand very much of what was being taught… but now I get practically everything, and this progress is very encouraging! Whenever I'm trying to figure out how a word is pronounced (or something of the like), I have flashbacks to the times when I was sitting at home teaching Nathan how to sound out words with the “silent e” and so on… and now that I am now doing the same thing of trying to understand basic concepts I’m reminded how “simple” things can be hard at first and how I need to be patient when teaching others!
For the afternoon portion of class last Friday, we took a field trip to an organic macadamia nut farm. The farm has 400 trees (and 350 different varieties…. who knew there were so many different kinds of macadamias?!) Each of these trees produces 700 pounds of nuts each year. It was such a beautiful place… totally environmental which I always love! And this farm also helps people in more rural villages to grow and process all natural trees and nuts.
Every Friday night there is the young adults gathering at church, and this past time I learned a super fun new game that I can’t wait to teach it to my family! I realized, though, how much I really need to starting running again…. After about 10 minutes of running around playing this game, I was totally out of breath. The day I got here marked three weeks of my cast coming off, so I've only been able to run this past week, but haven't yet because of how busy I've been getting used to everything and into a routine. Antigua will be an enjoyable place to run, though, so I look forward to finally getting back into it!
Oh, and also on Friday we felt THREE earthquakes! The first one I slept through at five in the morning (but now I remember waking up before the sun came up and I heard loud rattling outside and my door was shaking a little, and my only thought was "hmm... those workmen are here early and they are really loud!” Obviously I've never felt an earthquake before) but second one I felt when were at the church cafe for dinner! Elisabeth looked it up to see how strong it was and it was a 5 in Guatemala City, which is about an hour away. And the third one was around midnight when I was going to bed. It’s a pretty cool experience and it’s not often that you get more than one quake in a day!
This past weekend Elisabeth and I also went to a Lake Atitlan and stayed at the fun little Hotel Chinimaya near the beautiful lake…and we got to ride a tuk tuk (a three-wheeled taxi).... It was by default, though, because our driver was supposed to take us to the hotel but he dropped us of nearly 25 minutes walking distance away!
And we went ziplining!!! I have done this once before in Nicaragua and once in Costa Rica, and I was expecting this to be similar..... well, were we in for a surprise! This was the most amazing zipling adventure ever... we were flying (it told us 59 feet per second) WAY over the trees with amazing views of the lake and waterfalls... I recommend this place to anyone who wants an unbelievable zipling adventure!
Really, the coolest part of the weekend though, was this: Elisabeth and I were across the street at a little convenient store waiting for a taxi to come. We both decided that we didn't want anything so we turned around and before we even took a step, Elisabeth looked up the street said, "I know that guy." I thought, What guy? We're two hours away from Antigua and have never been here before! She said "right there." And as he approached us she said "do I know you?" And sure enough he recognized her and asked what in the world she was doing here. She asked what in the world he was doing here, and he told her that he lives here.
Well, Elisabeth knows this guy because she and some friend had seen him several times at central park in Antigua, totally drunk and high. They had shared the Gospel with him for the past couple months, and they hadn't seen him in a couple weeks... now we just "happened" to run into him on the street here. He told us that he has been sober since the last time she saw him and is going to church and doesn't want to drink or party any more. He said he's done with that because "I need to change." We were so shocked and happy to hear this, that we just kept talking about it the rest of the day... Praise the Lord! We were just so unbelievably thankful how God worked out this meeting. We told him we would keep praying for him and he and asked us to please do so. This was a pretty awesome day for us!
And in other news, the first day that I came to Antigua I was walking around town with my friend Grace Evans, and we stopped at the pet store. She took one look at the tiny kittens and when she found out they were only 35 Qs (about $4) she decided that she was going to buy one without even asking her parents... she figured it was safer to just give it to a friend than ask for permission first (she's either braver than me or has much more relaxed parents! :), so we came home with this....
and sure enough she still has him!
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