Day 2

I am so sorry for the delay. Wed-Sat we did not have any internet access at all. Sunday and Monday have been so crazy I have not had time to write anything. The ironic thing is, I started this post on Thursday and finished it officially today. Even though days and experiences have passed I opened and closed it the same (without realizing ...) with the word "wow".

First official day “on the field”. All I can say is … wow.

The day started at about 5 AM. We left the hotel at 6:30 and once again were able to experience the amazingly frightening drive through Guatemala City. Our destination was only 45 miles away however it took us over two and a half hours to reach our destination.

The mornings drive took us to a Baptist Church in San Cristobal. At this church we prepared to give out the shoes we collected (we collected over 200 pairs just at CVBC, we had over 900 in total) Once we were given the green light we brought in families and washed their feet and presented them new socks and shoes. Never in my life have I seen smiles quite as big as I did that day. They were not smiles of laughter, or smiles of comedy … they were smiles of true joy. They were genuinely happy to have new shoes on their feet.

There are countless stories I could tell from those few hours we handed out shoes at the church. Stories of ecstatic children, crying mothers, and grateful fathers. All in all we handed out over 800 shoes during those first few hours. Sadly our time there had to end and it seemed it ended much too quickly. Luckily we would get to hand out more shoes later that day.

After leaving the Church we stopped for a quick lunch at “Loco Campero” a fast-food restaurant comparable to Chicken Express. I had high expectations for this place considering Bill had been pumping it up since Tuesday night!

After lunch we journeyed to a school in San Cristobal for a block party. A block party here consists of mini-games (toss the balls through the clown mouth, throw the football through the squares etc ..), cotton candy machine, giant bouncing inflatable, face-painting, balloons, music, clowns etc.. The party lasted three or four hours and I, along with Mary and Judy, worked the cotton candy machine. I have worked the Cotton Candy Machine at Canadian Valley during events and I can say – this was very different. For one, the line not only never ended, it never got shorter. There was therefore no way to ahead. You were always playing catch-up. Second, the health conditions we would hold dear in the US quickly flew out of the window.
About twenty minutes in, all bets were off. The objective was to get the cotton candy inside of the bag for the niños as fast as possible. This meant grabbing it with your hands and getting nice and sticky. I know this is a term I have used a lot already, and will likely use A LOT more but I cannot stress how amazing it was to see the kids face as they got Cotton Candy. I especially enjoyed giving the kids the scraps off of the side of the machine while we were refilling the sugar.

After the block party we made the dangerous drive back to Antigua. Sadly when we were halfway there we had to turn around and return to the block party so Bill could return the keys to one of the cars he accidently took with him. Our driver, Jorge, was amazing especially considering cars (and buses) here swerve in and out of lanes without notice or reason.

The day ended with the group of us site seeing some more of Antigua. This of course means many pictures and an extremely full stomach.

Wow, what a day!