All in a Day's Work

Pictures of mangoes and coconuts before they are ripe.  I thought that the papayas were plums.

Working at an orphanage that isn't yet done with a nutrition center and physical therapy clinic that is.  Apparently in the 1990's following the civil war in Guatemala people were coming in and literally taking babies from their families then paying whoever brokered the "adoption."  There was a freeze on adoptions from Guatemala for a time and thus large quantities of red tape that need to be cut through in order to build and operate one.

Spiders that surprise you on your way out of a river following a swim should NOT be this big!

During the civil war in Guatemala, people were fearful of the police, firefighters, and other public employees.  Now those in civil service professions are attempting to give back to the people, at the clinic we visited yesterday, the police personally escorted a grandmother and 13 year old girl from the mountains to the clinic.  The girl was born with spina bifida ( a common occurrence around here) and she was never treated, in early childhood she got a leg infection and her leg was amputated.  She was then taken from her neglectful mother and now lives with her grandmother.  Her visit to the clinic was for the purpose of evaluation by the physical therapist and prosthetic practitioner to be fit for an artificial limb.  Amazingly enough some of aspects of this system seem to actually be geared towards helping the child rather than the abusive parent. 

It is possible to play on a soccer field that is actually a field and play extremely well even in bare feet if you live in Guatemala, but the Americans out there today didn't do have bad in sandals.

 Swimming in a cold river at the end of a hot day feels incredible!

 In Guatemala, laundry is usually done by hand and then hung out to dry.  The hanging out to dry I get, who would want to run a hot dryer in a small house in this climate!  Our interpreter told us today that she has friends who do their laundry by hand even when they own a machine because they think that it is easier, jeans are said to be the easiest because they can be scrubbed with a a brush.  By the way, most everyone wears jeans around here.

 It may look like all that I do is sit around and hold cute kids and smile, but really I am working, trying to give the students as much experience as possible is one of the main reasons I am here.

I am here to personally tell you that three shots of rum in a large glass of pineapple juice ties the end of the day up in a nice ribbon of relaxation, ah....