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