Taking a road trip!

August 9th, Sunday.
Today we left our cozy casa in Guatemala city at 6:30 for the crazy highway that would take us to the city of Xela! The four hour ride was pretty crowded and bumpy, because a bunch of the roads that we were traveling on were under construction. The parents probably will not be thrilled to hear this, but the drivers here are CRAZY!!! One of the CEDEPCA leaders described the road-way policy here as "Cars ALWAYS have the right-of-way here, not pedestrians." And it is very true. Another thing is that drivers here apparently think that the stop sign means YEILD because I have yet to see a driver approaching a stop sign and come to an absolute, complete stop- especially if there is no traffic coming the other direction. But going on from there...

We had a delicious Guatemalan breakfast (with fresh, athentic corn tortillas!) and also had lunch out before we arrived at our hotel. After unpacking a little, a group of youth and adults decided to go for a walk to "explore!" and we ended up looking at some street vendors wares. One woman in particular was very persistant in her try to sell us her merchandise, and even braided one of her woven hair pieces into Nan's hair- which made it very difficult for her to tell the lady that she was not going to buy the hair piece.(It was beautiful, but it also cost 100 quetzalas!)

After we headed back to the hotel, we rode the bus down the crowded streets full of women walking with baskets balanced on their heads, skinny stray dogs, and bicyclists. We were a little bit late to the Guatemalan presbiterean church service, but the members of the church didn't seem to mind. They greeted us with "Buenvenido!" and "Buenos tardes!", and waved. The service and the singing (except for our singing, which was in English when they asked us to go up and sing) was in Spanish. I realy don't speak much Spanish at all, and none of the melodies were familiar to me, but I found myself humming along anyways. The atmosphere was very friendly and welcoming. It was heartening to listen to the sermon (which was traslated into English for our benefit) and the prayers. The pastor gave thanks for many things, despite the fact that Guatemala and it's people are generally poor and have little compared to the abundance of what we as USA citizens have. After the service, we talked (well, those of us who can speak more Spanish) to some other members, and it seemed like everybody wanted to shake our hands, or give us a hug and welcome us in their own language.
Dinner was much appreciated- altitude seems to have given us (well, at least me!) a never ending appitite. For the other part of the day, we also have been meeting in our small groups for devotions and listening to plans for tomorrow. We finished up our time with a custom of ours called joys and concerns, and just shared our highs and lows of the day. Although so far we have pretty much just been getting settled and such, I already think that we are all going to gain so much through this experience. It's a beautiful place, and we will be sure to take lots of pictures while we are here!
Until the next person writes tommorow-
Adios!
-Caitlin Fay