Guat's All Folks!

Dear Charlie and Polly,

We have been so busy, I've had a hard time finding time to write this blog! In this post I want to give you an idea of what a typical day is like for us at the work site.

Each day we get up early and head to breakfast at the hotel around 6:30. At 7:30 or so we get on our bus, the Super Niña, and head to Chocolá. I think I mentioned earlier that many of the roads are very bumpy? The last half of the hour long trip to Chocolá is like that, but it's once you get into the village and begin to approach the work site that things get REALLY bumpy! This is a video of the approach to the work site. Warning: May cause motion sickness!

This is the Super Niña at the worksite. It is just like the school buses you all ride when you go on field trips.



Often when we arrive, we will see the people of Chocolá walking down the road, getting ready to begin their day.

This is what we see when we get off the bus. 

The dental team goes to their building to start seeing patients, while Meredith, Ana, and I begin making preparations for the children's activities. The construction team gets busy mixing and pouring new concrete and sometimes breaking up old concrete. Pastor Cliff's favorite saying of the week was "Concrete - I'd rather make it than break it".

Here, they are mixing up new concrete.

This video shows how they pour the mixed wet concrete into the wooden forms to make a column. This is the bucket brigade!

Meredith takes a break from kid-stuff to say "hi" to her dad.

We all break for lunch about noon. Everyone gathers in the main room of Dr. Sergio's house for sandwiches and chips.

This particular day our friend Felix was celebrating his birthday. Our group has worked with Felix for many years. He is the pastor of a Methodist church in a neighboring village and has also been a big help in the renovation of Dr. Sergio's house. We brought him a cake with candles that kept relighting. I think Felix thought that was pretty funny!

After lunch is when things get really busy with the children. While we were there, I took over a hundred individual pictures of them, printed them out, and helped them decorate frames. Polly, the little girls in Chocolá like the characters from Frozen just like you do!

Here are  some of my favorite photos of the children-

Mr. Backwards Hat

Chubby Baby Boy

Beautiful Mayan Princess

We helped the children put maps on the back of their frames. Here is an example.

The maps show Clarksville and Chocolá. We talked about mi casa and su casa, which means my house and your house.

Here are some of the children with their framed pictures.

This is me with Ana, my interpreter. She is an attorney, just like your mom! I would love for her to come visit us in the United States sometime!

About twice a year she works as an interpreter with English speaking volunteers. You can see her at work in this short video.

This is my friend, Sandy. I wonder if her parents chose that name because they liked the movie Grease? She is definitely a sweet Sandy, not a sassy Sandy!

One afternoon sixteen teenage girls came by to visit. They are learning to speak English so they can work as bilingual administrative assistants. They came to our work site to practice speaking English with Americans.

They enjoyed reading the bilingual version of The Three Little Pigs!

And look what each of them took home - an Austin Peay backpack!

Across the yard at the dental clinic, things are always busy! These folks are waiting their turn to be seen by Doc and his team.

Karlee is making sure the instruments are clean and sterile.

And here Doc, Brittney, Karlee, Ms. Amy, and José are all working together to help a patient.

On our last day in Chocolá, Dr. Sergio came by to thank Doc for coming and helping his people. Dr. Sergio and his family sacrifice so much for the people of this area - they are am amazing family!

Finally, it was time for us to leave the work site one final time. This is everyone involved with Tennessee Team '15 in front of the wall completed by our construction crew. The wall surrounds the house and will keep it secure. Can you find the people you know in this photo?

We all hope that by next year at this time Dr. Sergio and his family will be all moved in to their wonderful new home. And here is one last photo of Sweetie and Doc before we say "adios" to Guatemala.

We love you both very much and can't wait to see you SOON!

Love,

Sweetie and Doc

Guatever Will Be, Will Be

Dear Polly and Charlie,

I can't believe you all are still out of school because of the bad weather! Will you even remember your teachers' names when you get back? I have so many things to tell you, I don't know where to begin, so I'll start with what we did on Sunday.

Sunday was kind of a lazy day. We ate a late breakfast and stayed around the hotel in the morning. We ate sandwiches for lunch in the outdoor pavilion and then got ready for church. Church doesn't start until 3:00 in the afternoon, so we had all day to get ready. We drove to Pastor Manuel's church which is about 45 minutes away. We got there a little early, so he gave us a tour of his backyard (he lives right by the church).

First we saw the fruit of the cacao tree. Can you believe this is where chocolate comes from?

Pastor Manuel opened the fruit and this was what was inside. It looked like lots of seeds, each with a thick white covering. He took one out and popped it in his mouth, so I decided to try one too.

This is what it looked like close up. You eat the covering off and are left with the cacao seed inside. I thought it tasted like a green banana! Hundreds of years ago cacao seeds were as valuable as gold, and people used them for money. Charlie, maybe you should try to buy Pokemon cards with cacao seeds and see how that works in the U.S.!

Next we saw an entire field of pineapple growing. Can you find the small pineapple in this picture?

Finally, it was time for church! Donnie Mitchell said a few words to the congregation. His interpreter, Jose, translated everything he said into Spanish so everyone could understand him. There was a lot of music in the service. Our team even got up and sang Jesus Loves Me! 

At the end of the service, all the children sang for the congregation, just like you all do in children's choir. I thought you all might like to hear them.

We all visited in front of the church for a few minutes before we headed back to the hotel.

The children were so friendly! They love to pose for the camera.

You all would have made friends with them right away!

Monday morning we got up very early and boarded the bus to the worksite. It takes about an hour to get there from our hotel, and it is a very slow, bumpy ride!  The worksite is the hospital in Chocolá where members of our group are renovating a house for Dr. Sergio and his family. Do you remember at the Super Bowl party when you had the Queso for the Casa nacho bar to raise money for the house in Guatemala? Well, THIS IS IT! Unfortunately, it's hard to get a good picture of it because it is behind a very high wall.

Donnie Mitchell, our team leader, walked through the house with me though, and this is the video we made.

Do you recognize this guy? It looks like Pastor Cliff to me!

Here is Cynthia Mitchell working hard on the wall.

This is what the house looks like from the street.

This little video shows you the main area where we work. There are seventeen of us on our team. 

Most of the team works on the house, but Doc, Brittney, Karlee, and Miss Amy work in the dental clinic, and Meredith and I work with the children. Both Doc and I also have interpreters that work with us because very few of the residents of Chocolá speak English.

Here are Miss Amy and Karlee getting ready to get started for the day. Jose, their interpreter is in the yellow shirt. This little girl is getting ready to have some of her teeth pulled, and I don't think she is very happy about it. Unfortunately Doc pulls teeth from many of the children because they eats lots of sugar and don't brush and floss!

Meredith and I worked with the children outside the hospital. These little ones are working on learning their colors in English. They study English a little bit in school, so most of them did very well! 

We also did an activity about dental health. They watched a video on the iPad showing them the correct way to brush and floss, and then they made paper teeth with dental hygiene instructions on them.

These three are working on their tooth project.

The finished product!

I'm going to have to stop for now. We love you both and miss you very much! I sure hope we can bring some of this warm weather back to Tennessee with us!

Love,
Sweetie and Doc

Guat's up?

Dear Charlie and Polly,

We made it safely back to guacamole, I mean Guatemala! We got in Friday night, and we were very happy to leave the snow and ice of Tennessee behind us. 

Saturday was a very big day. We got up early and ate breakfast and then boarded our bus about 8 AM to travel to Quetzeltenango, a city about three hours from here. We saw this smoking volcano on our way there! 

Quetzaltenango's indigenous, or native, name is Xela (pronounced shella), and it is the second largest city in Guatemala with a population of about a quarter of a million people. Right before we got into the city, we stopped at a glass factory. They take recycled glass from all sorts of broken bottles and turn it into beautiful glassware. Everything here is made by hand.

The workers will go through all this broken glass by hand and sort it into different colors.

Doc is standing beside one of the ovens they use to melt the glass so they can make it into beautiful recycled glassware. 

Our next stop was the oldest church in Guatemala which was founded by the Spaniards in the mid 1500s. It was beautiful!

Across the street from the church was the house of a weaver/winemaker. We got to visit with him, taste his wine, and watch him weave.

This is the fruit they used when they fermented the wine. The wine was delicious but very strong! At the very top of the house was the weaver's loom. Here's a picture of Brit and Karlee climbing the VERY steep stairs to the top of the house.

He was weaving a traditional Guatemalan woman's skirt. It takes him about eight hours to weave one skirt.

There are about 130 different communities in Guatemala, and each one has its own distinct weaving pattern. Women wear the woven fabric in their community pattern as a skirt during the day, and then they use it as a blanket at night. 

Next we had lunch and went to an underground market near the city square. We met this little girl who waved and said "hola". She became a little camera shy when I tried to take a video of her!

We also visited the city cemetery and learned about Verushka. She was a beautiful gypsy who lived in Guatemala many years ago and fell in love with a wealthy Spaniard. They planned to get married, but his parents were not happy about it so they took him far away. The legend is that she died of a broken heart. People come and place fresh flowers on her grave every day. 

Then we went to a family owned chocolate factory. The family lives in a small house where they turn cacao beans into delicious chocolate. We dipped fruit into a chocolate fountain, learned the history of the cacao been, and had wonderful chocolate milk.

On our way home, we stopped at a beautiful resort to have dinner. All in all, it was a wonderful, educational, and delicious day.

Hope you are staying warm! We miss you and love you very much!

Sweetie and Doc