A Day in the Life...

As of today, I have officially been here at Casa Bernabe in Guatemala for two weeks. While in the grand scheme of things this is a rather short amount of time, it certainly feels like it has been longer than that. Yes, my days here can be rather long sometimes, but I feel that this is a reflection of how different my life here is from what it was two weeks ago. In the weeks leading up to my departure from the U.S., my days were filled with job shadowing, graduate school applications and doing work in coffee shops with friends for hours upon end. I am now quite literally a world away from this aforementioned life. My day here begins at approximately 6:45, at which point I reluctantly pull myself from the warmth of my bed to get dressed and help get all 16 of our kids through the shower. After a certain amount of cajoling and the brushing and braiding of hair, we read a morning Bible story and eat breakfast. Breakfast (el desayuno) is generally one of the lighter meals of the day, often consisting of atol and cereal. I'm not sure that I'm spelling the name correctly, but atol is some variety of hot, hopefully nutritious liquid, sometimes containing rice. We eat a lot of rice. And I mean a lot. At least once a day, if not more often. But I digress. When getting up from the breakfast table, it is important to be polite and say a "Muchas Gracias" for your food, at which point everyone who does not currently have their mouth full will reply "Buen Provecho", which essentially translates to "Enjoy your meal!". This is also to be said whenever you walk into a room where someone happens to be eating. After breakfast, our mornings tend to consist of one or more of the following: Discovery Kids (in spanish of course) - Angelina Ballerina is the presiding favorite, playing with blocks and Legos, and enjoying the great outdoors either in the little play area next to our house (see pictures previously posted) or in la cancha, aka the cement basketball court at the top of the hill. Lunch (el almuerzo) is generally around 1 and is also the largest meal of the day. This tends to consist of rice, some sort of stew, and tortillas. I'm getting pretty good at just eating whatever I get, which I have to say is usually pretty good, if quite different than that to which I had been accustomed. After lunch, all the kids nap for around 2 hours. Now, I cannot tell a lie, this is almost always my favorite part of the day. After all the dishes have been washed and all the laundry folded, this is my time to spend with Jesus. A friend of mine here has been kind enough to allow me to use her coffee pot, and so it is at around 2:30 in the afternoon that I settle down outside my house with my large cup of coffee, my Bible, my prayer journal and my devotional book to spend some quality time with the Sustainer of my soul. I have come to crave this time, not only because it affords a respite from the craziness of being with 16 children, but because it is then that I truly commune with God. This time is often humbling as I study God's Word and He reveals to me truth about my own failings, but it is always refreshing. After they get up from their nap around 4ish, it's back outside again until dinner around 6, and then it's off to bed. When everything is cleaned up, I usually grab my gear and head down to my friends Sara and Edgar's house to talk, hang out with their posse of teen girls and jump on the internet. Then it's a quick shower and off to bed, hopefully before 11 so I can still cram in 8 hours of sleep. Now, keep in mind, this is only a general description, but I hope it gives you my lovely reader a slightly better picture of what my life here is like. Each day brings new challenges and joys, and I rapidly learning that it is far less overwhelming to take this experience one day at a time with Jesus than to attempt to think about the next 7 months as a whole. I still feel like a total rookie here, but I'm learning. And above all, God is good.

So for now, goodnight! If anyone has a particular question they would like me to answer here, by all means send it to me and I will do my best to answer it promptly :)