Sunburns at Christmas

Day Three in the Guatemalan Jungle.

Life is still amazing in this place.

Even now, the hard work we're doing is paying off. The school that the Casa has made over the years has been repainted, as have the stairs that lead up to it. Today, three of our guys and I put up the walls to a shed, which (believe me) is a whole heck of a lot harder than it sounds.

PAUSE. Yes, those of you who decide pick at my word usage, I know that the previous statement is not grammatically correct. However, it was the best that I could do.

Now, back to what is going on down here. We just got through working for the day; therefore, I'm now blogging. Usually the trend is work until lunchtime, take a break for a little bit, and then go play with the niños ("children" for those of you who have not taken Spanish).

I was told that tomorrow we will be traveling to a nearby village to check up on the pastor there, and we will most likely be giving food to the residents there. Before I go on to some humorous portions of this trip, let me first say that I am amazed at this group of people that I'm with. There are only eleven of us, all of which (exept one) are 19-20 years old. Not once have any of these people complained about this work nor have they had to be motivated to do anything. It truly is awesome what is happening here.

As I said before, it is day three of jungledom; however, we have been together as a team for about four days. Shortly after my last post, I, as well as everyone else staying in the lovingly named "gringo house", found out that one of our team members did not know what my name actually was because he yelled "Hey, Mike!" in my general direction. So, after much laughter, we told him that he was wrong. Problem fixed, yes? No. It turns out that my dear team members have now decided to abandon my name given to me at birth and have now all started calling me Mike. What's even worse, though, is that I'm now responding to it.

We have also been split up into cooking teams. Not a bad idea, naturally, because who wants to cook every single night for ten nights? Not this guy. No way, no how. Not my chair, not my problem. That's what I always say. Sorry for that tangent. I hope someone that reads this knows what I'm referring to and maybe, somehow, possibly that person will laugh. Anyway, cooking teams. Awesome idea. Poorly executed. I'm on a team with two other people that don't know how to cook either. I'm sure Rachel Ray would have gladly jumped off of a cliff if she saw what was taking place in the kitchen two nights ago. We made spaghetti. SPAGHETTI! There is no possible way that spaghetti can be hard to make. But it was. Nonetheless, we struggled through and, in the end, were complimented on our dinner. Thursday night, we are up again for dinner, and are supposed to make Santa Fe soup. Hopefully, that will go a bit better. I mean, how bad can you mess up soup?

I'm glad some of you are actually checking in on this. It makes my rants seem a little less pointless. Here's another saying that is probably a little more significant in your lives than John Wayne. "Get busy living, or get busy dying." It's from The Shawshank Redemption. And yes, Tyler, I did happen to steal this off of your facebook page.

Time to go get my play on. Take care.

-Matt


Quick update. After posting this initially, I noticed that I never referred to the title. It's Christmas time. I have a sunburn. I am not entirely too sure whether I'm amazed, excited, or sad. You decide. Vote on it. Somehow. Maybe. Or not. I'm stopping now. Until later.