Surprise!

Today is my day off so I decided to recap my eventful weekend, emphasis on FULL.

Saturday was a very good day. Maybe the best day I have had here so far. One of boys' sponsor parents, Nate and Rachael, are here visiting from Indiana with Nate's sister Christy and her husband Chris. The four of them have been around Casa Bernabé the past few days hanging out with the kids and taking them out to lunch. Saturday they planned a special outing for all the niños in Casa Samuel. We loaded the kids up in the van, drove them to the mall, and then in the parking lot we told them that they were going to see Toy Story 3, which elicited much excitement. For some of them, it was their first time at a movie theater. Another interesting first for many of them turned out to be escalators. Each adult had two children whose hands we were holding, and when I got mine to the escalator they just backed up and stared dubiously at it. I realized they did not know how to successfully board an escalator so I convinced them to jump on the count of three. They were only mildly terrorized. They also did not realize that after you get off the escalator you have to keep walking to avoid getting run over by the person behind you...oh the new skills you learn at the mall!

The movie was very good...I'll admit I got misty eyed at one point when Andy left his toys to go to college. I was starting to get a guilt complex that my toys might feel very neglected since I'm home so rarely, until Lauren convinced me that there are better things to be feeling guilty about. After the movie we took everyone to Pizza Hut and then McDonalds for ice cream. Thank you globalization.

After we arrived back at Casa Bernabé the kidlets went down for their siesta (the best invention ever) and I spent the rest of the afternoon with Nate, Rachael, Chris, and Christy, translating their time with Veronica and Jairo, the house parents in Casa Samuel. Because of our confidentiality agreements, we can't ask many personal questions about the children and their stories, but I got to learn a lot through being the translator. I heard Veronica and Jairo's whole story, and all about their work with the kids so far. Then Nate and Rachael explained that Rachael's parents want to start sponsoring one of the sweet little girls in Casa Samuel. She has no family except a brother who is a year older than her. Every day she shows me pictures of her brother. In all the pictures is an American couple who she calls her brother's family. But they are not really his family. From what I have been able to gather, they tried to adopt both kids awhile back and the adoption fell through. She was moved to Casa Bernabé and he stayed at another orphanage. She has no one to visit her and no one to support her, so she is the child in the house who I would have most wanted to find a sponsor for. When we told her they wanted to sponsor her she stood there looking at Nate and Rachael. We asked if she understood and she nodded, then went to hug Rachael. It was the longest hug ever, and when she lifted her face there were tears running down her cheeks. I asked her if she was crying because she was happy and she nodded. Finally she will have someone to support and love her.

The day ended with another trip to Hiper País for Cressia, Mateo, Alison, Ashley, and me. One lesson we learned today is that Matt and I should never be allowed to shop together...we encourage one another's compulsiveness, and as a result we ended up with a cart full of exotic fruits whose names we can't actually remember. We also decided to submit to our cravings and buy all the foods we've been missing: orange juice, fruit, whole grain bread (for happy colons:), tea, Nutella, chicken from McDonalds, and in Matt's case, chow mein from your friendly neighborhood Lai Lai Express. Despite its plethora of obvious drawbacks, globalization truly was our friend on Saturday. Its only failure came in our discovery that earplugs are not sold anywhere in the country of Guatemala. Not cool.

Here are the pictures from Saturday's outing...

This is all the kids in the movie theater parking lot when we told them where they're going

At the food court McDonalds waiting for helado!

Everyone at the end of the day

Sunday was Surprise Day for me at Casa Bernabé. From the moment I woke up, nothing was as I planned. I was supposed to teach 3 year old Sunday school with Andrea, so my morning plan was to come up with a lesson on obedience, this month's theme. I chose Noah, went to find Tonilynn to get the children's Bible and coloring pages, and found out that she had lost the Bible and that the room with the copier was locked. Surprise! So Sarah and I drew 9 pictures of the ark. We finished just in time for church, and I ran up with my supplies in hand. As soon as Jairo saw me he ran over to tell me that he would be giving the welcome and that I needed to translate for him. Surprise! I made him assure me that it would only be for the welcome part and I agreed. After the welcome I sat in my seat through the worship time and prepared to leave to teach Sunday school. Then Jairo came back and told me they had no one to translate the sermon. Oh no, I said...I am NOT ready to be doing that! I've never translated a sermon before, or anything else official on a stage in front of people! He searched for someone else, but against all odds every bilingual person was not in the room at that moment. So I translated my first entire church service today. Surprise! I was basically terrified, but Cressia and my team members were praying for me and it went pretty well. Afterwards I realized that it was probably good that I had no notice, no time to get nervous, and no option to say no. The day would probably never have come when I would have said, "Yes, now I know enough Spanish to be ready to translate officially," and I never would have tried. The only way to try something like that is to have no choice, to be the only option. One of my hopes in coming here was to get to use what I've been studying. The past two days have been an abundance of that. Even though I got tired of all the grammar classes, and even more so of the literature ones, the past two days have reminded me why I studied Spanish. There is really nothing as gratifying for me as the feeling of being able to make possible a conversation between two people who otherwise could not communicate. Or to make a church service understandable to a room of non Spanish speakers. This reminded me why I love languages and why I so wanted to be bilingual.

The final surprise came just this morning. I woke up and Cressia said, "They have more work for us." I have learned in the two weeks I've been here that routine is fiction and there is always something else to do. Coming here as a Spanish speaker means coming to be flexible and widely used. It turns out the nurse is leaving, the English teacher is becoming the nurse, and they need a new English teacher. I have never taught anyone anything in my life (other than 3 year old Sunday school last weekend) but I'm going to shadow her tomorrow and see if I can do it. Surprise!

The team from Kokomo, Indiana just left and we are really going to miss them. Their departure will also mean more changes as we all spread out to fill the holes they will leave.