april was quite a month for me! my mom came, and i was able to share my experiences with her in person... it was so great for her to see and feel where my heart has been for the last 4 months. she brought lots of goodies from friends and church, and it was so great to see the kids' faces light up when we passed out chapstick, lotion, hair ribbons, suckers, toy cars, etc.
after my mom spent a few days at the orphanage, we headed to antigua, guatemala for holy week. it was quite a site! i think the entire country's population was crammed into the little city. there were big processionals with "floats" of different scenes from Jesus's last days. the streets were covered in ornate carpets made out of colored sawdust or sand... each took hours of work and it was gone in seconds as the procession walked over it. kaley and i even got to help make one! and one of the biggest highlights of antigua was that we ate a lot of really great food! one of the lowlights was our terrible hike up volcano pacaya... everything that could go wrong did... our bus broke down... twice... rained... cloudy... dark... really difficult hike... and NO LAVA!!!!! we were bummed, but glad to be alive... seriously.
after a week in antigua my mom flew home, and kaley and i headed to a small town on a lake surrounded by volcanos for 2 weeks of language school. it was such a great experience... we had class for 4 hours a day... and by class i mean sitting by the lake, drinking coffee and getting one on one teaching from a guatemalan. we also lived with a family in the town, which was an incredible experience... we were able to live life with them instead of just being a normal tourist in hotel. :) they even dressed us in their traditional clothes for our last day of class... we were a hit if i do say so myself. :) the town, san pedro, was also oddly enough a hippie town as well... real hippies from all over the world, being hippies and living among guatemalans dressed in traditional mayan clothing... it was a strange site. and, of course, since we embraced the traditional mayan clothing, we also had to embrace a part of the hippie lifestyle as well! one of my favorite things we did in san pedro was take a painting class from some locals... after 6 hours of painting we have a really great memory of our visit to san pedro that we can hang up at home! :) so, san pedro was so great... i highly recommend it for anyone wanting to take language school or just escape for a little while and live out your inner hippie.
so, we've been back at the orphanage for a little over a week now, and i'm actually leaving tomorrow to go to costa rica for 5 days... my visa is about to run out, and i have to travel to belize or costa rica to renew it. please pray for my safety... i'm traveling alone, which i'm looking forward to the alone time, but i'm also a little nervous to travel by myself in central america.
i will post some pictures soon of my time in guatemala because they describe things much better than i can... and i'll have some pictures from costa rica to add to it!
buenas noches!!! good night!!!
