Thanksgiving at the Finca

Our Thanksgiving day started with Holy Hour at 6am! My part of cooking...mashed potatoes or papas de pura...began the night before with scrubbing 30 lbs of potatoes. Thursday Morning we peeled and boiled them all in one large pot and I mean LARGE pot. Football game started at 10 but kick off didn´t actually occur until 11am! People take this game pretty seriously and the kids all think we are ridiculous, most of them have never seen Futbol Americano. Dinner was served at 4pm on the menu: Stuffing, most Hondurans hate it, two salads, sweet potatoes, garlic potatoes, veggies-green bean casserole wanna be, turkey, and gravy. The food was absolutely wonderful, plus we have apple and pumpkin pie!!!

 

I also had two`emergencies throughout the day, Mary Kate and I killed a rat in the Clinic, the first one wa-hoo!!! Then we listened to Christmas music and wrote letters to family, it was really nice. Though I definitely missed the fam. I thought about all the jokes I was missing between the uncles and all the beloved questions about school and what the younger ones were-are doing with their lives.

 

The oldies leave in less than a week and I am starting to freak out a bit since there is still a lot I don´t know about the clinic and where things are and what not. New exciting things I have seen include more pregnant women, eye injuries, and lots of allergies this time of year.

 

In less than a month Krista and Alyssa two good friends from Camp will be coming to visit and will be staying over Christmas, so I am very excited for that, and so is everyone else here. Tami literally marked it in her calender! This month I will also be traveling to get my residency card, wow, who would have thought!

 

Well I hope all is well back home with the snow and cold, I wish some of that would come our way! Love you all very much, Deirdre

Hello friends!

There has been many new and exciting things which have happened. I experienced my first Quincenera (a 15th birthday) last weekend, which is like a wedding! Everything here is celebrated with a mass. The girl gets a new dress, she has a court and then everyone makes a ton of food to share. She recieves a ring and her shoes are switched  at the party all of which are to symbolize the girl becoming a woman.

This past weekend I traveled to La Ceiba, about three hours away, to meet with Dr. Black a physician from Texas who has been here the last 10 years who we reference a lot. Beth and I also had some medications which we were not going to use that he could. Nothing builds relationships down here like "regalo-ing" them things, or gifting them things. Also one of the finca kids graduated from high school, one of the top three in the country, I didn't realize it was such a big deal till we got there and everyone was wearing their prom dresses and I was in my black capris and sweater and my chacos, oops!

I saw quite a few pregnant women in the clinic these past couple weeks, and I even saw a new baby, well a couple months old, but we share the same birthday! Things like that also bind you pretty close to families, who would have thought. I haven't had any other crazy machete stories since.

One story that brought tears to my eyes, lots of tears actually, happened this past week. A woman whom I know pretty well now, I have seen her each week, stop by the clinic the other day. She needed some money to get her grandson out of the hospital who had been in for 8 days, and also needed help to pay for the injections he would need for an infection. We had giving the last of our money to another man a couple days before for an x-ray he needed, so we didn't have anything to give to her. She also didn't have the perscription so I couldn't even give her medication. I felt terrible sending her away empty. She didn't even have money to get back to the hospital and I couldn't even help her there. I felt so useless, I felt like I wasn't or couldn't do my job. It was a terrible feeling: here I am, a capable body and I couldn't give anything. I know we can't do everything down here, but I think I also felt the reality of the situation of poverty our neighbors are in.

We have been busy getting ready of Thanksgiving, buying things we can't get in Trujillo in La Ceiba and what not. Two more weeks and it will be Thanksgiving, that is hard to beleive! It will give us all a small taste of home and the US!

An update about donations: if you would like to donate something or some way in any shape or form the best way to do so is to call Andrea McMerty-Brummer at (727) 475-4459 or e-mail at farmofthechild_usa@yahoo.com (more info about donating is on the website). She will let you know more of what we need and how to help as far as giving materials or money. Becasue sometimes if there is no one to bring it down and depending on how much is donated it is more cost effective to donate money verses materials. Thank you to all who have expressed an interest in helping, it is GREATLY appreciated!

I wish I could be with you all over the holidays! Thank you for all your support! Much Love, Deirdre

Month One

It has been almost one month since we all arrived at the Farm and much has changed within me already. All the newby´s have their jobs and have been shadowing mostly over the last two weeks or so. My full time job is being the nurse in the clinic, while my small jobs include: study hour (helping one of the houses two hours a week on school work), PAVI (a work program for the adolescents which I can kind of self design, I hope to do a lot of gardening with them), and Personel Committee (we review applications of volunteers plan retreats and orientations). I am very excited for all of these.


I have had two weeks in the clinic now and have seen quite a bit, everything from pregnant women to colds, to skin infections, to machette cuts to complet fingers cut off (yes that is right, we brought him into the ER, it was a close one too he had lost a lot of blood). Last week with a 24hour period we have taking four trips into Trujillo for emergencies and other clinic related work! I also had my first solo "emergencia" on the Farm; a patient we had seen before with asthma needed another neb treatment, and Beth the other nurse was in town, so I was the nurse. The mother of the child was asking for Beth and wasn´t sure I could do it. But then when she came back the next during clinic hours she was including me in her explanations instead of soley Beth as she had done before. Things here takes lots of time and having the neighbors feel comfortable with me is no exception.

I am part of the Thanksgiving committee which means I help decide what we want to cook and then how we are going to cook. We do not have ovens here like we do in the states. We have a fagon which is an outdoor sloid stove top like a big grittle, as well as a clay oven, which is extremely difficult and frustrating and time consuming to cook with. So I am interested to see how it will all go down. I guess Thanksgiving is a pretty big deal to the vols here and is an amazing day filled with food and american football, which I heard is amusing since the kids here know futbol or as we call it soccer.

Lately I have been missing home and actually have thought it would be nice to be in school right now! The weather here is getting to me. Yesterday and the day before I literally let the sweat drip off my face all afternoon while Beth and I did inventory in the Clinic! I don´t know what I will do when it actually gets hot-now it is rainy season aka winter so it is "cold".....

Thank you again to all those who actually read this and are praying for us all. I literally do pray for you all everyday in chapel at 6am!

Much love for the Farm,
Deirdre

What we need....

I know it is quite early to be thinking about Christmas, but the Farm could use any and all help. I know most people like to do the giving tree at Church but I would ask you all to think about giving instead to the Farm. We have 38 kids from the ages of 4 to 18, and all of their needs are provided solely through donations. The school also uses up their supplies of notebooks and pens very quickly. I will have more specific information coming later but I would like you all to start praying about it.That is all for now, TQM (Te Quiero mucho: I love you much!)

The Finca

I made it safe and sound with the rest of my crew! It is absolutely beautiful here and everyone has been really welcoming. I have been able to see the clinic and already go to the hospital with a young girl who reopened a pretty deep cut on her knee, hiked up the mountain for some Blood pressure and blood glucose checks, and filled some medications for some patients in the clinic. I am learning a lot about my self during these first two weeks of orientation. I go to bed each night in my room with 4 other girls listening to the ocean waves and watching the geckos eat the bugs on the walls! The food here is wonderful and I can tell I will really miss it when I return home. My spanish is being challenged as well as a lot of my views about where I come from what I have been taught about others and how I view myself in comparison. It is quite humbling actually. Right now I am living with about 30 people in the house which in two months will decrease to 16 or 18. Then I will be on my own. So please pray for me and the others as we need to have very steep learning curves in the next several weeks. Thank you for all your prayers so far it is really evident how God has been working and moving here everyday! Much love to the States from Honduras!

Last Day in Antigua

There has been a whirlwind of events in the last week or so. We all finished Spanish School. Mary Kate got several friends in her tummy aka parasites and was deathly ill but after about two weeks, several doctors and almost Q1,000 later she is doing great! I also had my own doctor visit for a cough I had for four weeks and a cold for two weeks. Only Q150 got me my consult, exam, and three different meds. I am on my way to being completely recovered, yeah! Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30am to about 1/2 an inch of water all over our bedroom floor- the toilet overflowed! And the boys had to be rescued by a tractor on their way back from the beach (glad I didn't go) but that night we found an excellent ice cream shop so we were ok :D Tomorrow is our last full day in Antigua and then Wednesday morning we will be off to La Ceiba to buy last minute things for the Farm and Friday we will finally be at the Farm. Word on the street is we have two weeks of "profound" question asking and community building and then the real work as a nurse for me will start! But I am not sure when I will have interent connection next once I get there. So pray for safe travels for us all and a great start to Finca Life!
Much Love to you All!

Home in Antigua

Rojos! Rojos!

Well it has been an exciting last couple of days. Yesterday was El dia de independencia for Guatemala, wa-hoo! So on Tuesday night we went to an international futbol game-Guatemala vs. Mexico-so it was pretty intense, we rooted for the Rojos or the reds. Lily, one of the volunteers is Mexicana so she wore her Mexican jeresy and the school told her she couldn't wear it because she and the rest of us would get harrassed pretty bad. For $20 we got our transportation there and back plus our ticket. I learned all sorts of malas palabras (bad words) as the guy next to me was pretty umm shall we say passionate about the game, we all enjoyed him, really. At one point all of us girls went to the bathroom, there was music playing and I said to Amanda, "doesn't this just make you want to dance?" and so she started to dance and then literally the whole section started to hoot and holler and exlaim something about American women! So now the inside joke is Amanda are you sure you don't want to dance? It was a great cultural experience and fun to see how Guatemaltecos get into their sport.

Then on Wednesday for class my teacher and I watched the desfila or parade, all FOUR hours of it! All the schools in Antigua have a band and all schools participate. It is very different than the states though: less focus on the formations and more on feeling the spirit of the music. The last "float" was a representation of "rock" music where the jovenes dressed in 50's dress and danced a number to Elvis Presley.

For dinner on Wednesday Lily made us all her favorite Mexican dish because today is actually Mexico's independence day. It was wonderful, plus all the tostados and frijoles you could ever want, and chocolate caliente for dessert with banana bread from our favorite Panadaria (bread store) Dona Luisa.

We have two more weeks here and then we will be in Honduras! On the bucket list of Antigua still to do is: climb Pacaya (a volcano about 2 hours away), visit the coffee farm, investigate some other well know panadarias, and meander through San Fransico's Ruins of a meer $0.75, the prices here boggle my mind!

All the vols are wonderful and we have been having such great conversations. They are aldready my family and I just want to take them home to meet everyone! Here is a small introduction to those here in Guate:

Jacob & Rachel: They are like our mom and dad away from home. They are here with their three boys, Jonah is five, Isaac is three and Ruben is one! They are a bundle of joy and energy and have a adjusted really well to Guate and practice their futbol skills all the time.

Lily: Is from Southern California and is Jonah's Godmother! She is our mexican ganster as she says. She is very faithfilled and LOVES Mother Theresa, as well as Negritos, a chocolate filled hot dog bun, much like a Little Debbie treat in the States.

Tami: A teacher from Southern California as well. Her sister and Lily's brother just got engaged beofre coming. Her and I have had many great conversations about life experience and I feel like we will be life long friends.

Mary Kate: My travel buddy and now roommate here in Guate. She recently graduated from Notre Dame and loves Notre Dame and sports which is quite the understatement. She is our talker of the group and is trying to drop her "gringa" accent which is very thick.

Betsy: Also recent grad from Notre Dame. Loves to read and has been the instigator of most "book discussions", travel trips, and evening events. She has really challenged us in our "bible studies" by asking whatever is on her mind.

Amanda: Is very quiet like myself from University of Illinois. Her and I spend a lot of time studying since we are the least farthest along in our spanish! She is excited to hopefully use her teaching degree at the Farm.

Phil: He is our crazy member, we can always rely on him for a good laugh as well as saying some of the most profound things. Ironically he reminds me much of Jesse and his manurisms. Phil is from Washington state and went to school in Southern Cali as well.

Nils: Recent grad of University of Portland with like three degrees, and originally from Spokane, WA so him and Phil naturally agrue all the time about being from the wrong part of the state. He is a mere 6 feet 4 inches and works as a nice body guard on our late night walks through Antigua.

Hopefully this gives a breif review of teh vols so you kinda know who I am talking about when I mention them. Off to study more espanol. Hope all is well with everyone, thank you for sending me emails and your love I really appreciate it!! Deirdre

On the Move

Day 11 in Antigua: all of the volunteers are here! It has been great getting to know everyone and hanging out around el centro. Today another volunteer and myself are moving into a VERY NICE house to hopefully speak more Spanish then where I am right now in the student house. There is an older woman that lives there by herself, she does have a younger woman help her with chores around the house but I think she is very excited to have us. I feel like we are her grandchildren!

My typical day now looks as such: I get up and have breakfast and get ready for 4 hours of speaking Spanish from 8-12 (which by the way is coming along much better!). Really it is only three and a half because everyone gets a break from 10-10:30am for coffee/tea. Lunch is at 1pm and then we all meet up around 2pm, usually at Bagel Barn a very Americanize cafe with free Internet. Even though it is one of the more expensive places I can get excellent Guatemalan hot chocolate and large cinnamon roll for Q20/twenty quetzales or a little less than $3! Then dinner at 7pm and meeting up with the volunteers again in the evening. We discovered this great cine (movie theater) where you can see the movie for "gratis" or free but you have to buy a drink. So for Q15 or a little less than $2 I saw Avitar in Spanish while sipping my moka (mocha). I know this is the life of luxury! Not to mention how beautiful the city of Antigua is, surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, bright colored houses and tiendas/stores, and old ruins makes me feel like I am walking the streets of Europe! Most days I think how lucky I am to be here.

We are all anticipating our arrive to the Farm and trying to be patient while enjoying the last few weeks here in Antigua. Raul, a former Finca Volunteer (FFV) has come to spend a week with us here before he heads to the Farm to help them get ready for us. So we have been asking him tons of questions about jobs, what things look like there, etc., so we learned very quickly that life on the Farm will be much different.

Today we were going to hike up the el Volcan Pacaya with a guide of course but yesterday a tropical storm started to pass through Antigua. It rained in the morning, which is never does, and stopped this morning! But buses going out and coming in were cancelled and my maestra said it would be very dangerous to go up the volcan because of the rain. These storms are know to cause mudslides as well as damage just from the large amount of rainfall in such a short time period. So we decided not to go. There is un festival de maiz, a corn festival, today which is put on by the high school kids and is supposed to demonstrate the importance of maiz in the Mayan culture, which we will check out instead.

Even though I have only been here for a little over a week I have already felt and seen myself change. Life here is so simple and there is nothing for me to worry about. The more you have the more you worry, or the less you have the more you have, those frases are so true. Each day I am here I like it more and become skeptical of the way people live their lives in America. I am going to be challenged in many more difficult ways but I can tell this is just the beginning!

Three more weeks here and then a 10-12 hour bus ride to La Cieba, our welcoming and then to the Finca/Farm in Trujillo! It is hard to believe I am actually here now, it is so amazing! Thanks for all your prayers and words of encouragement, I am praying for you all daily!

First Stop Antigua, Guatemala!

Welcome to my Blog! I hope you will follow along with all that I am doing over the next couple years. Please feel free to comment, add things, or send me a message I would love to hear from you as well. Enjoy!

I made it to Antigua Guatemala safely and am starting to find my place here for the next 4 or 5 weeks. Today was the first day of language school which went really well, my teacher is impressed by how much i already know and is helping me with the "medico" terms I should know. I am going to tour a hospital in town to see if I can volunteer/shadow there in the afternoon when I am done with school. It will help with my Spanish and will be great for me to see how things are done in suramerica. The whole volunteer team is here now in Antigua and we all mesh together very well. We had a great discussion last night over "coffee cake". I really like where I am staying now because three other Finca volunteers are there but they will all be going to host families next week. The food is wonderful for lunch today we had papas and guacamole, though very different from what we are all used to. Hopefully this weekend I will get to see more of Antigua, yesterday after getting in the other volunteers showed us around but the roads here are very uneven so I spent most of it looking at my feet! Most of my fears are dwindling regarding the school, meeting the other volunteers, and safety. I am getting ready for the Finca and am excited to start my job there! After 4 or 5 more weeks here (once we have learned our Spanish) we will all head to Honduras together and start our orientation at the Farm. Please keep us all in your prayers.