My new casa! Naked Chickens! 2 Tons of Honey

Editors Note: I know that my typing isn’t always wonderful. Most of the time I am missing punctuation or have added punctuation (or other symbols) because the keyboards here are slightly different and most of the keys except numbers and letters are in different places. Some keyboards I am never able to find the correct key.

# of Liters used to rid new house of spiders and other bugs- 2.5
# of kids that helped move me into my house- 5 (ages 4-11)
# of cement cinder blocks bought to make shelves- 8 ($.40/each)
# of feet of board bought for shelves- 30ft ($6.50)
# of hours worked cleaning/organizing house- 22hrs
# of friendly Mormons living in Tejutla- 2
Cost of new bed that I love!- $130
Cost of new gas stove- $50
Time it takes to walk from my host family to new house- 1min 16seconds
Time it takes to walk from new house to work- 4min-ish
Amount of time a pig is pregnant- 3months, 3weeks and 3 days
# of dead spiders I killed again (after already being dead, thought they were alive)- 6
Bought my first pair of used shoes- $4, Lands Ends slip on shoes. And they are purple!
First thing I made with my stove- Hot apple cider
# of TONS of honey to process and sell in this room- 2

Guess What! I finished reading the Bible! Only took 2yrs and 30days… I was very excited and the New Testament is A LOT easier to read than the Old Testament. Working on figuring out my next plan of study action. So now I am reading two books that I was sent here that are the type of books you read one page a day. “The One Year Book of Christian History” and “Voices of the Faithful”. Both I am enjoying. So my walk with the Lord is going well. I am thankful my host family here are believers because I can talk with them about God without hesitation. However, still trying to “Shine”.

Heard this quote on one of the sermons I was sent in the mail. Really like it.
“If you please God, it doesn’t matter who you displease. But if you displease God, it doesn’t matter who you please.”

So the big story of the week is that I moved into my house. Whoop whoop!!! So I am now living in a house that is entirely to big for me and is nothing I would have ever expected to live in here in Guatemala. It being my only option here I am (security reasons and lack of houses in general make it difficult to find a house). Here are some quick tidbits about the big move.
- I used the plastic wrapping from my bed to cover a hole in the wall that is about 2ft by 5ft to avoid the mice and spiders getting in.
- I used the cardboard box that my stove came in to make bulletin boards and to help hang my pictures speaking you can’t nail anything into cement walls nor does duck tape stick.
- I learned that when buying fabric to make curtains, best to hold it up to the light to make sure its not see threw..Opppsss…
- At one point, we (the kids and I) had a river going in the kitchen and a lake in my bathroom because we figured dumping water on the floor would be a good way to clean. It was working until the drain wasn’t draining fast enough.
- The kids (boys 9 and 11yrs old) were better at cleaning Guatemalan style than I was. I would say “how do I clean this?” and they would say some word I don’t know. So I would give them money so they could go find whatever I needed to use to clean. It’s hard cleaning when you don’t exactly have a grocery store to run to and find some windex.
- They use newspaper to clean basically everything instead of papertowels. Works pretty well.
- I have a traditional stove in my house and it is used by burning wood. It hasn’t been used in years probably so of course we looked in it with my handy elephant flashlight and yea..lot of spiders living in there. So we are going to have a fire this week and “take care of” the spiders living in my stove. - We took a break for lunch and ice cream. By then I was VERY tired but had to go back to get the flood out of my house.
- My host family called a local radio station and sent out a message saying “Good luck to Mrs. Olivia (yes…Mrs.) and moving into her new house.” Awww!!! They made me stay in the room until it came on the radio. Guatemala has radio stations that are basically nothing but people calling into say hi to other people. Who listens to those????
- I think I was having separation issues from my host family because even when all my stuff was moved in Saturday. I still slept at my host families house in my empty bedroom with my sleeping bag, showered there and had breakfast and lunch. My host grandmother told me she is expecting me to eat breakfast and lunch there every Sunday. Ok!!! I am fine with that. They also told me that any time I want to take a hot shower I can come back because there water is heated by fire where as my electric shower gives me goosebumps because its hardly warm.

Bible Verse for this Blog.. Going out to some of you in tough situations right now.
Luke 18: 27 Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."
Romans 15:4 ¨For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. ¨

No Guapa(Beautiful) today!- So my boss-ish guy from PC came to visit last week and a lot of my coworkers say “Hello Beautiful” (in Spanish) to me a lot which I am use to by now however my boss was coming one day. Normally when I am in the dining room eating they will walk in and say that. Well, this day they would walk in and they know my boss from his visits with the last volunteers. They would say “Hola……..Ooolllliiivvviiaaa” as if they are saying my name for the first time because there were having to catch themselves. It was pretty funny.

Important Life Lesson of the Week- No matter how much your have an itch, never touch any part of your skin after cutting jalapenos, especially your nose ( I know, I didn’t need to move this far away to learn that)

Guatemalan Question of the Week comes from an 8yr old girl- “Were your hands white when you were a kid to or did they change?”

“Wait..this is corn?”- So I bought the kind of popcorn that you put in the pan and shake till its done popping and made some for my family. It was a big hit except of course, it was missing butter, which I didn’t add. They couldn’t understand how it was corn when it doesn’t look like the corn they are use to eating, the big kernels….

Guatemalan Culture Lesson of the Week- So many of the families in the rural communities have these little mud huts that they use for bathing. They have rocks inside and they heat up the rocks, then pour water on them and it becomes a steam bath. So I hear its very relaxing but I just don’t see how that gets ya clean. This is a picture of the outside of one.

Ah man! I got one of THOSE neighbors!- So walking to my house these past few weeks across the street there is a guy that has a small shoe store. I get a lot of whistles and other sounds from him but one day I was walking to my house last week and he stopped me in the street and said he wanted to learn English. Knowing his past with whistling I stayed friendly (kinda), I told him to write what he wanted to know on a piece of paper and I would be back in a bit to translate. So I came back a bit later and he wanted to know 4 things. One of the things being “Where can I find a hamburger?” So he tells me he wants to go to the US to work, then not sure why, he started singing a song he wrote and told me that he has a better chance of making it as a musician in the US. Then he told me that my eyes are gorgeous and blah blah blah. I said “Every time I walk by here you whistle at me, Gringas don’t like this!” and he was very apologetic. However, a week later. We are at the point now everytime I walk by (about 5times a day) he says “Hello!” and then runs across the street saying something either about how he wants to celebrate me moving into my house, my eyes or something random. He asked if I was married yesterday. He is more funny than anything but I figure its better to befriend the whistler, instead of getting whistled at for 2yrs. Just no more talk about my eyes!

Woah! It’s in Spanish! Why am I surprised? So I was in Xela this past weekend for a get together with other volunteers and another volunteer and I went to a movie. We had the options of seeing Chronicles of Narnia, 40 yr old Virgin, The Fog, Brothers Grim and Cheaper by the Dozen 2. I think those are the titles, they were in Spanish so not sure if I translated them correctly. Anyways, we choose Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and all kids movies here are dubbed in Spanish and the adult movies have subtitles. Well, Cheaper is a kids movie, didn’t think about that. So my first movie in 5months was in Spanish. I got most of it so that was a good sign. Pretty cute movie for only $1.25.

Internet Etiquette- When I am using the internet from time to time kids come in and will stand right next to me at the computer and watch whatever I am doing. At first it was uncomfortable but I realized that they have no idea what I am writing nor doing. Most of the time they are curious at the pictures I am putting up or just curious of the gringa in general. However, my favorite moment was a couple days ago when I was typing a letter and going at my normal speed of 60wpm or so. Well there were about 5 high school guys waiting for a computer and were sitting to where they could see me. They were so amazed at how fast I was typing they would point and say stuff to each other about what I was doing and I would stop and look at them and laugh and they would laugh. Then I started to type again, this time I looked at them while typing and smiled and they were so amazed that I could type and not look a the computer nor the keyboard. Little moments like that provide a good laugh.

Item of the week being sold on the chicken buses- A man got onto one of the buses I was on and he was selling a medicine. Which usually comes with some practiced speech that lasts about 10min before saying it’s the most wonderful medicine in the world blah blah blah and this one had a few takers. Guess what he was offering to cure today… Freckles! For only $2.25ish you can have your freckles disappear in 2weeks by taking one pill a day. Hmm…not a bad deal huh? Everything in the world is sold on chicken buses. Mainly food like tamales, cakes, drinks and sliced fruit. But every now and then you get a person that sells medicine, watches, cheap toys and the occasional person that can’t work because he is missing a limb so he gets on and off the buses asking for money.

Sunflower Seeds- So I was sent a bag of sunflower seeds and of course decided to share it with my host family because sometimes their reaction to the food is more enjoyable than actually getting the item. So I shared the sunflower seeds first with the 4yr olds which caught on pretty quickly to the “don’t eat the shell” concept. However, I shared some with the older people in the house and first asked all of them if they knew how to eat these, of course they did (so they thought). So they all pop a few in the mouth and begin to chew. They soon found out, that they don’t know how to eat them, much less afterwards they told me that they have never even seen them before. Oh! And once they got the eating concept down, they continued to call them peanuts the rest of the time. I think I look like a hippie in this picture. Here I am giving “Sunflower seed eating 101.”

Every now and then ya see a naked chicken. I think its pretty funny.