Tortillas and beans......

Christmas 2009

2010-01-27T15:25:00.004-06:00

Just some pictures from Christmas vacation!!! I haven't uploaded in a long time but here is a little preview of what I did over Christmas vacation! Spent a lot of time with the kiddos, did a first grade presentation over Guatemala, went to see Santa, saw LOTS of snow and had a wonderful relaxing trip!!!! Enjoy!

Mi Madre!

2009-11-29T18:46:00.002-06:00

It must be something in the water or something that has to do with the holidays all around that have gotten me thinking about family and so many people that are so close to me. I've been on a cooking craze lately, wanting to try new things and also wanting to make some recipes that I haven't made in awhile or that I've never tried to make. Of course, cooking always reminds me of my mom. I am thankful for my mom for so many reasons (we'll get to that later) but one thing I am so thankful for my mom is that she is a great cook and has tried to pass some of that down to me! I will never ever think I am as good a cook as my mom, but the funny this is that I hear her say the same thing about her mom about certain things she cooks! I just hope one day my kids will say that about me! So here are a few reasons I am thankful for my mom:

My favorite cookie recipe of all time, and of course I still don't think mine taste as great as my mom's. I think that's partly from the weird brown sugar we have here in Guatemala. :) Mmmmm, M & M cookies!

My Thanksgiving dinner, just my two favorites: turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy. My gravy will NEVER ever live up to my mom's but this is one thing that she says she can't make as good as her mom either. I don't believe her though! I miss good brown gravy so much! :) But I do have to admit, the mashed potatoes were pretty good. I hadn't made real mashed potatoes in a long time!

My favorite thing to wake up to on Christmas morning. Not sure if mom knows she has made it a tradition, but to me it is! I made one over Thanksgiving. It was great, but again, not quite as good as mom's! I gave a piece to the guard downstairs in my building and told him it was a family tradition to eat this!

Mom and daughter relationships are a funny thing. When you are really young, you want to do everything like your mom. You want to dress like her, you play "house" and say the things that she says, etc. Then you enter into the lovely preteen and teenage years when you tell your mom that you hate her and don't want anything to do with your mom. You don't want her to drop you off by the door in case anyone sees you. Those kinds of things. And then this weird thing happens when you get older. You start to hear yourself saying things that your mom says, you find yourself doing things and having the same mannerisms of your mom. At first, you're kind of like, "OH NO, I'm turning into my mom." And you go into a sort of panic about it. Then one day it hits you, "Wow, I'm turning into my mom." And you feel proud about it. At least for me, this is the series of phases I have gone through. And it feels so nice to be in the last one! :) I find myself wishing I could do things like my mom. For example:

-I still cannot tear saran wrap off the roll without making a mess of it. I don't know how my mom can do it. If she ever does have trouble with it, I sure have never seen her!

-I wish I could make brown gravy like my mom. I know I have mentioned this before, but it deserves to be mentioned twice.

-I wish I knew how to have everything hot at once for dinner.

-I wish I could plan meals for the week and make one grocery store run and get everything at once.

And I'm sure there are many more! I am finding myself more and more like my mom. I couldn't stand having a maid, because I came home and things weren't where I left them. I am anal about certain things, not quite as much as my mom, but I'm sure that's where I got it. At least from her side of the family (my grandpa was the most anal person I knew!). I think I got my stubbornness from my mom too. I like things done my way and if they aren't I usually choose to walk away. Not to make a scene or whine about it, but just to walk away. I fold my underwear, I keep my clothes in order or long sleeves, short sleeves, sweaters, etc in my closet. When I start making my bed before I leave in the morning, I will start to get worried! :)

I am glad I have a mom that I can learn so much from and that I'm now proud of myself when I find myself doing things "like mom does." :)

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-11-29T18:07:00.003-06:00

Thanksgiving was a little strange for me this year. I haven't been home with my family and enjoyed my mom's Thanksgiving dinner in at least four years. Since graduating from college, I've made it home for maybe one Thanksgiving. Even that year that I went home, I bought a cheap ticket and I'm pretty sure I flew back on Thanksgiving day. BUT, I've done some really cool things for Thanksgiving. Just a few examples:

Thanksgiving 2008: Spent on the beach in Costa Rica, warm weather, experiencing a new country, hanging out with two new friends, trying new beer

Thanksgiving 2007: Spent in Manila, Philippines, with my best friend from Korea, on a last minute trip change, I think we bought our tickets less than a week before, because they were cheap and our trip to Vietnam fell through. We had no idea what we were going to do in Manila, but we went and made some fun memories!

Thanksgiving 2006: Went to Shanghai, China with three great friends from my school in Korea. It was my first trip after moving overseas and we had so much fun. It was my first Asian vacation experience and we laughed a lot that trip. It was great.

Thanksgiving 200?: Living in CT, got a hotel room with Allison and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade live.

Thanksgiving 200?: Cooked Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment in CT and invited over all my Latino friends there, attempted to tell them the Thanksgiving story in Spanish, and share in an American tradition with them.

Thanksgiving has changed, as to not necessarily always being with family and watching football on this day. It always fell so close to Christmas vacation that it seemed silly to buy two plane tickets so close together. It was never really that big of a deal to me. Not sure why it seemed like a bigger deal to me this year. I finally figured out, it was because I wasn't traveling and keeping myself occupied. Thanksgiving didn't really seem like Thanksgiving when you were in an airplane and then landing in another country. It just seemed like a four day weekend that was a great time off school and a great time to travel. This year, I had the opportunity to travel to a few different places, but none that were really jumping out at me and I put off travel plans until the last minute and it just wasn't happening. I was totally fine with it, actually looking forward to getting a lot of sleep, not having to deal with people for a few days, getting some things done around my house that I needed to, getting some shopping done, etc. I had a few invites for Thanksgiving dinner, but for some reason I just felt like if I wasn't celebrating it and having dinner with my family, I didn't want to celebrate it with someone else's family. Not sure what spurred this on, but it just felt weird. Like I was cheating on my family or something. I know, call me weird. It's ok. So I cooked my 3-lb turkey breast, made some real mashed potatoes and had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy on Thanksgiving night. By myself. And it was actually quite nice. Of course I would have rather been with my family, but since I couldn't, I just preferred to be by myself this year. Thursday was just a normal day here in Guatemala, no Pilgrims and Indians to be thankful for! I went to the COPA airlines office and redeemed my voucher that has been sitting on top of my tv for a year, bought a ticket to celebrate my birthday in May in Costa Rica. Went out to lunch at a fondue restaurant, felt some tremors, just a normal day here without working! Friday night, one of my friends who is engaged to a Guatemalan, invited me over for a Thanksgiving dinner with Guillermo's family. I wasn't going to go and she knew it, so she called another friend and told her to bring me! haha. So I went and it was really nice. Dinner was great. Before dinner we all went around and told what we were thankful for. I was second to go and attempted to do it in Spanish! Who knows what I really ended up saying but they all just smiled. It wasn't until then that a tear started to form in the corner of my eye really missing my family. I wish I was there with them. It was just really nice listening to all of them talking about what they are thankful for, getting some baby time in and being a tia for a few hours, and at least knowing that I will be home in two weeks!!!! It's always about this time of the year that home seems so close yet so far away! I can't wait to squeeze each of my little niece and nephews, eat some IHOP with them, get a slush at Sonic and a blizzard at Dairy Queen! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T13:55:00.006-06:00

Thanksgiving, being thankful. Things that we should be doing every day of our lives, right? Why do we always whine and complain 364 days of the year and give thanks one day of the year? OK, OK, so that might be a little overexaggerating, but so many times that's what it seems like. I want to live my life in much more of a thankful mode than I have been lately. I've never really thought of myself as a negative person or someone who looks at things half empty, but there is always room for improvement! :) So here is my 2009 list (although I'm sure it won't be complete) of things I am thankful for.

I am thankful for a mom and dad that love me no matter what, that have loved me for 30 years, that have always believed in me, that have always supported me, encouraged me, that have punished me and told me no when need be, that have sacrificed probably even more than I can imagine to give me opportunities that they never had, that still let me climb into their bed at night even though we don't really all fit anymore, that laugh at my stupid jokes, that come pick me up and take me back to the airport at odd hours so I can get cheap flights, that cook my favorite foods for me, that spent hours watching softball games, that have never once made me doubt their love for me. Thank you mom and dad for everything you have done and everything you still do for me.

I am thankful for four beautiful niece and nephews that are healthy, that make me laugh, that make me cry sometimes because I miss the everyday things in their lives, that make me smile pretty much on a daily basis. I love that they know who I am even though I have never lived in the same state as them since any of them have been born. I love that they call me Tia Kammie and try to speak "Spanish" to me. I love each and every one of them in such a special way and am so thankful for all of them, even when they wake me up early in the morning! haha

I am thankful for my two sisters, who have put up with their baby sister for 30 years, who have shown me lessons that I can learn from whether they were intentional or not, who have welcomed me in their homes when I come back to Missouri, who have cried with me, who have laughed with me through the good and bad parts of our lives.

I am thankful for the beautiful white sand beaches that God made. I think he had me in mind when He put these things together all over the world! Beaches are by far my favorite vacation destination. I've always said I wanted to have a destination wedding on a beach somewhere. I love the sound of waves crashing on the shoreline. I love the beautiful blue skies that are so often found at the beach. I love the smell of salt water and being able to forget about everything else and just relax in a chair and soak up some sun! Thank you for beaches!

I am thankful for airplanes. Airplanes are how I have gotten home to see my family for the last 12 years. Airplanes have taken me to some incredible destinations in the world. Airplanes have carried me to see friends and relatives that I have not seen in a long time. Airplanes have become a fairly significant part of my life these days. I am definitely thankful for the ease of travel in today's world and being able to fly to far off destinations without much stress!

My friends.....I am so thankful for my friends. It is amazing to me every time I think about the amount of people that have meant so much to me, even if just for a stage, of my life. Some of my friends have come and gone and some will be stuck with me for the rest of my life. I am so thankful for friends who have stuck with me through thick and thin, who have shared tears of joy and tears of sorrow together. Friends who have shared in deaths of loved ones, friends who have shared in new jobs, in births of young ones, my "aunt club" of friends. I have met some incredible, incredible people on my life's journey. I am thankful for those that have joined me for a short stint of that journey and those that have come later on the path and are still here. Living far away from home, my friends have literally become like family to me. I am so thankful for them!!!!

Not that I could by any means do justice and talk about all of my friends here, but here is just a quick sampling: Alexa-I don't think I could have survived two years in Korea without her. She is my soulmate friend if there ever was one. We are about as alike as night and day in some respects, but yet we mesh together like mashed potatoes and gravy. I am so thankful for Alexa and for the fun yet sometimes undesireable memories we made together. I am thankful for her amazing heart and her good spirit and optimistic attitude about life. Alexa is a huge part of my life and it's been one of the hardest adjustments about moving to Guatemala, no Alexa time.

Nancy, my fancy Nancy! I only got to spend one year in Korea with Nancy but we sure made the best of that year. I am so thankful for that year that we had together and for her heart for the little kindergarteners at our school. I love you Nancy and am thankful that we have crossed paths and may our paths continue to cross many more times!

Mike and Gretchen Miller, what great friends. Gretchen was my soul sister from the very beginning. We spent two years in Korea together and she and Mike really were my family there. I have adopted her kids as my niece and nephew and shared in good and bad times with them. So thankful for their fun spirits and loving hearts.

Wendy Fryatt, a lifelong sister/friend! She is like another big sister to me and more recently has become a friend to me! I am so thankful for friends that I enjoy traveling with and can travel well with. Wendy is definitely that for me!

Natalie B, my kindergarten buddy! I am so thankful for friendships that can cross paths time and time again and pick up like they just left off. Natalie and I have stayed on very close paths, chosen far away paths and have come back together on the same path! It's so fun to have a friend that you were in the same kindergarten class with! I am so thankful that Natalie has remained a part of my life, that our mom's have funny stories to tell about us together when we were 5. What a great lifelong friend I have to be thankful for!!!

Rebekah has been such a solid rock friend for me. Rebekah came into my life in the 6th grade when her family moved to our church at the time. We always went to different schools, always lived far away from each other, yet had a special bond that kept us very close together. Rebekah is such a dear friend that I can't imagine not having in my life. I am so thankful for my childhood churches and the lifelong friendships that were created there!

My Rona! I lived in Connecticut for four and a half years after graduation, went through several jobs there, and finally settled down with a homeschool teaching job for three years. In those three years, I also settled down into a church family, a small group Bible study during the week, and made some great friends there. I have wonderful memories that were created with several of those girls, but Rona is so dear to my heart. I am so thankful for her. This was a period when I was really searching myself out in a lot of ways. Rona was a friend that helped me to have fun, yet keep my feet on solid ground.

Just writing these descriptions of my friends makes so many more come to mind. Allison, who helped me out of so many pickles when I had first moved up to the northeast. I was such a mess in so many ways when I thought I had it all together. ha. She helped me find my way around Westchester County when I was lost, she helped me find jobs, she gave me a bed/pullout sofa to sleep on when I needed a place to stay, she fed me, she helped me to stick it out when I really didn't think I could.

Mary and Michael, my roommate(s) in Korea. haha. Not really Michael, but what great solid friends they are to me. So many many many laughs that were shared in Shin Dong A apartments. Not enough hok doks eaten together and too many pizzas ordered from our apartment!

So thankful to my Ouachita girls, Wendy, Emily, Susan, who have been there through so many things with me. Wendy showing me around Africa, Susan getting tearful phone calls when I didn't want to call and shed them to my mom, Emily being there to listen and talk through the loss of my nephew.

I mean the list could just go on and on. I really have so many people and THINGS to be thankful for as well.

I am thankful for my job, that I have a great work environment, a great boss to work for, that I get a paycheck every month.

I am thankful for a beautiful apartment, although a little scary during tremors, but having a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in at night.

I am thankful that I have food to eat at every meal. I probably have enough food in my house to last me another six months without going to the grocery store.

I am thankful for so many things and I hope that I can continue to see those things day in and day out for this upcoming years and many more. Thank YOU for reading this! :)

Spanish Classes

2009-11-05T18:22:00.003-06:00

This year our school has started offering us Spanish lessons on campus. It's great. It costs about $100 for lessons for the entire year, two days a week after school, right on our campus. It's awesome. I'm in a class with about six other teachers, we have a fun, easy to understand teacher and I get to work on understanding and speaking Spanish for an hour. Quite the deal. I have really enjoyed it so far. We just started a few weeks ago and had our third class today. So, I get to class, exhausted, sit down, am talking to my friend, we start class, our teacher is telling us what we are going to do at first, he tells us to write one sentence in our notebook answering his question, and we're off. He takes off his jacket to settle in, I look up as I begin writing, and lo and behold what is he wearing??? A Kansas City Royals t-shirt!!!! I couldn't believe it! The Royals!!! I of course asked him about it! I said, "Royals, verdad, los Royals???" He said, "oh, si, de Kansas City." I said, "Yo se, es mi cuidad, es mi equipo!!" (I know, it's my city, my team!) I couldn't believe that I was witnessing someone with a KC Royals t-shirt on in Guatemala. So of course I had to take a picture of my teacher, Juan Carlos, and I in his Royals shirt! Too funny!

Writing Course/Therapy

2009-11-03T23:05:00.002-06:00

Tonight I just finished my sixth master's class out of nine in my program. This was one of my favorite classes. We had an awesome professor which makes a world of difference but also I loved the course. It was called Teaching the Writing Process. And boy did we write. It was great. We wrote from picture prompts, we wrote from story starters, we wrote from our heart. Writing for me is kind of like therapy. I can dig deep and write and possibly share it but it is more for me to just get some feelings out and let those things off my chest. I really used this class for that! :) Just trying to get my money's worth! We also talked a lot about going through the whole writing process. I am definitely a "I like to write one draft of something and turn it in" kind of writer so it was kind of hard for me to actually go through the whole process, but it was great. Conferencing with other colleagues, revising, revisioning our papers, getting other's opinions, making me dig deeper. Tonight was our last class. Our professor had asked each of us to write a piece, go through the writing process with it and share it in class tonight. I decided to write a letter to my nephew, Noah, who we lost almost three years ago. I wasn't sure I could read it in class without crying so I recorded myself reading it and put it to music and pictures. Despite my quick and nervous reading, I was pretty proud of the way it turned out. Just thought I'd share! Hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed remembering our precious Noah and getting to write to him.

Ready to Go Home!!!

2009-11-02T13:19:00.002-06:00

It's always about this time of the year that I start getting really ready to go home!!! Christmas tickets are bought so early and I kind of forget about it for a little while! Then I make it all the way through October and all the sudden November is here. Wow, it's November 2 today! Crazy. Then I start thinking about Thanksgiving and needing to find something to do for that long weekend and then suddenly I realize that after Thanksgiving there is like two more weeks left of school before I will be leaving to come home for Christmas break!!! When it's so close, it makes it hard to wait!!! I just saw all these really cute pictures of my niece and nephews dressed up for Halloween and it made me really miss being home. They are getting so big and sometimes I feel like I am missing so much of the day to day things. I came across this picture from the summer and it reminded me of how much I love each one of these little lives. They are so precious to me. I can't even imagine what it must feel like to know that this life is actually a part of you. I can't wait to go home and spend every minute spoiling them and loving on them. And of course to see my parents and my sisters and brother in law too! :)

As I was looking at this picture, it reminded me of a conversation I had with Sam this summer in the car.
Me: "Sam, I don't want you to grow up. I just want you to stay small forever and be my little Sam."
Sam: WHY?
Me: Because when you get big, then when I come home you won't want to do things with your Aunt Kammie and you will just want to hang out with your friends and not spend time with me when I'm home in the summer and for Christmas.
Sam: (Crazy laugh) No I won't Aunt Kammie. I will always invite you to my birthday party.

Awwww, the innocence of a young child. I hope he always wants to hang out with his crazy Aunt Kammie! :) I am so ready to be home and to see all of them and give them all a giant hug!!

Work Group

2009-11-02T13:14:00.003-06:00

Last Sunday, I went to Antigua to work with a group from Blue Springs, Missouri that was here. I met Emily last year when she and her husband were here adopting their son. I knew them through a few different connections and met up with them to have dinner one night. I found out that Emily was bringing a group from her church to come down here for a missions trip. Then I found out that an old old lifelong friend and her mom were also on the trip. I have known Lisa and Amie for pretty much my entire life! Amie is a year younger than me but our parents even go way back. I grew up with them. I hadn't seen either of them in several years but it was really fun to reconnect and see them in Guatemala!!! I met their group on Sunday morning and helped them out with construction at a small school outside of Antigua called Kairos. We mixed and carried buckets of cement for the good part of the day. It was hard work but it's always nice being able to serve with one another side by side. It was a hard day but as always good fun was had as well!

Roatan, Honduras

2009-11-02T09:52:00.005-06:00

I'm going to try to get back to blogging. I do the same thing time and time again. I get so overwhelmed at everything I feel like I want to blog about and then just don't do any of it. Baby steps, baby steps. I am taking a writing course right now in my master's program so it has inspired me to start writing more. We'll see how it goes.

We had a four day weekend in October for Revolution Day here in Guatemala. About three weeks before, I got an email from a co-worker that said, anyone interested in going to Roatan Honduras (a beautiful Caribbean island with white sand and clear water beaches...aaahhh)? She said, we are going to charter a plane there. I was like WHAT?!?!? A chartered flight. Well, when it came down to it, it was cheaper if we could find 19 people to go to fill up the seats on the flight than it was to buy a commercial plane ticket. And the flights on TACA airlines make three stops and take about 5 1/2 hours where our flight made no stops and took an hour and 15 minutes. Oh and we could pick our departure times for coming and going! So I signed up, and 19 of us were headed for paradise for four days! Chartered flight and an all inclusive resort, doesn't get much better than that in my opinion!

This was our plane that took us to and from Roatan. Just us and two very young pilots! :)

Here we are getting on the flight! No going through security, no getting to the airport two hours early, nothing. The company did all of our departure taxes and passport checks in Guatemala before we left. We just showed up about 6:30 and were in the air by 7. Oh and they even have a parking lot where we could leave our cars right by the hangar.

Because of our early departure time, we got the resort, had breakfast, and were on the beach in paradise by 10 am!!! It was awesome. The beach was absolutely beautiful, not too crowded. Maybe partly due to the political turmoil in Honduras, but we didn't mind at all!

Where I spent a lot of my vacation!

What more can you ask for, even the ice cream man walks up and down the beach?? :)

So beautiful, I couldn't get enough!

Cold beer, waiting for us at the all inclusive!!!

Each night, the resort had an "activity" that you could take part in. On Saturday night it was a beach party! It was so fun, they had fire spinners and then dancing in the beach bar with a dance off and all. So we were dancing and the girl with the microphone was calling out different places and getting you to cheer if that was where you were from. There were three of us girls there and we were cheering for Guatemala. So the girl says, hey there are some more friends from Guatemala back there, come up here and dance with these three girls. So these two guys came up, Steph and I were dancing with them. I asked him what he was doing here, for the holiday? He said no, for work. I said, oh so you live here? He said no I'm just here for work. I asked how long he said he arrived that morning and was leaving Tuesday. I said, oh me too. I asked what he did for work and he said he is a pilot!!!! They were our pilots!!! haha. It was too funny. So we hung out with our pilots for the weekend too! They were fun! Then one night was karaoke night. They only had songs in Spanish so a few of us tried them out. Yes I even sang! haha. They had wigs and all for us to wear. Here is our pilot in a different uniform. haha.

The beach bar where we spent most of our time. It started storming on Sunday afternoon and rained all Monday and the rest of our time there, so we spent a lot of time here playing games, cards and hanging out. Dance lessons, games, drinking, so fun!

Even in spite of the storm, we still managed to get a little more beach time. Here is my famous feet on the beach shot! :)

We had five kids in our group of 19, so I had fun being Aunt Kammie for a few days. They were so cute and so fun to watch play and interact with each other. They had a blast playing in the sand.

Playing cards on the beach!

And of course I always enjoy getting to know the locals a little better! :)

Flying back home. We met some other people that were stuck on the island. TACA was not flying any planes out of Roatan when we were scheduled to leave. People were stuck in the airport for a few days. Because we had our own plane and we did not have to make the stops in the places where the visibility was also bad, we were able to wait until the visibility cleared in just our area and then we ran out to our plane and took off! It was only a little bumpy at first for like ten minutes and then we were in the clear the rest of the way to Guatemala.

So on our plane ride home, I really had to use the bathroom. The small plane had no bathroom, just a place in the back where the luggage goes. I knew I wasn't going to make it the hour more that we had in our trip. So I ended up having to have one other lady stand in front of me while I dropped my drawers and filled a cup and a half up with pee in the back of the plane. No shame here. Then I was in another dilemma, what was I going to do with two cups of urine for the rest of the plane ride. No fear, we had a couple empty bottles that I had to dump my pee into. It was quite the experience and I can now say I have peed in the back of a plane. haha. Something to be proud of. Right...... So here I am with my bottle and a half of urine. Never would have guessed that I could pee that much in one sitting. Over 20 ounces. :)

Deep Breath

2009-08-28T00:09:00.003-05:00

Here I am, back in Guatemala, finding myself having to stop and take a deep breath now and then. It has been a non-stop whirlwind since returning August 11. Wow, just about two weeks, it feels like about two months! Which is strangely enough about the time elapsed since my last blog entry! I have so much to say, so many pictures to share, yet so little time and energy to do it! So my summer in a recap, which hopefully I will get some pictures up soon to show you what I did.

Summer 2009, probably one of the best so far:

*Spent two weeks at home getting to see old friends, new nephew, three other precious niece and nephews, sisters, parents, shopping, eating American food, "enjoying" heat indexes of over 100 degrees, "enjoying" Missori humidity in the summer.

*Left for Madrid, Spain June 30. Had a 10 hour layover in Atlanta, so I spent the day in downtown Atlanta, touring the World of Coke, the CNN headquarters, walking through Olympic Park. Fun times. Made a new friend on the plane who kept me entertained. He was going to Pamplona to be a tour guide during the running of the bulls. Interesting guy.

*Arrived in Madrid on July 1 in the morning. Took the subway to meet up with Laurie (colleague, neighbor, and friend here in Guatemala) at her daughter's apartment in Madrid. Spent about 24 hours with them. We walked around, Maggie introduced me to some really great Spanish food, which I really enjoyed.

*Left for Rome on July 2. Spent two days getting spoiled by Rebekah and Jared with amazing pasta and pizza, Italian style. Really amazing. I am usually not one to go on and on about the food in a place, as I am a really picky eater. I usually prefer to find the McDonalds in foreign countries. Rebekah's lasagna was AMAZING. I am not even usually a huge lasagna fan. I like it but would never brag about it. This was AMAZING. It was so fun getting to hang out with her kids, read books to them, spend the day just chatting with Rebekah and really enjoy my time with her and her beautiful family.

*Left for Kenya on July 4. Connected in Cairo and really want to go there for a visit. Arrived in Nairobi about 4 am. Made a German friend on this flight. He was visiting his brother who worked for the German embassy there. His English wasn't great but he was cute as a button, as this was his first time flying. He looked like he was in his early 20s. He asked me if it was safe to leave his bag under the seat. Spent a week in Kenya visiting my friend Wendy from college. It was so fun to see her there and to experience Africa. WOW. I got to see the campus where she teaches, hang out with some babies at the local orphange, see lots of animals, go on a walking safari on Crescent Island, go to an elephant orphanage, to the giraffe center, drive to a game park, experience a car breaking down, visit a tea farm, and do some shopping at the Masai market. Wow, what a full, fun week.

*Flew back to Rome with Wendy on July 12. We spent three full days touring Rome in full tourist style. Rome was incredible. There was nothing that I did not like about Rome, except maybe the heat. :) I mean, it was just so cool. Saw the Coliseum, the Pantheon, went to the beach, sat on the Spanish Steps, walked down the Via del Corso, ate pasta, ate pizza, ate lots of amazing gelato, saw the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City museum, St. Peter's Basilica, hung out in some piazzas, threw a coin in the Trevi Fountain so I can return one day!

*Went from Rome to Belgium on July 16 and got to see Laura and Ian for a week!!!! This was such a relaxing part of my trip, getting to catch up with Laura (it had been over a year), enjoy time with Ian, and seeing this beautiful country I had heard so much about from Laura! Belgium is an absolutely beautiful country with some amazing waffles, frits (fries), and chocolate of course! While there, I took a day trip to Paris, we took a cruise down the Rhine River in Germany, went to Brussels for a day, went to the town of Brugges for a day (a beautiful preserved medieval cities, saw cows in Laura's backyard. This was a wonderful week of my trip.

*Left Belgium July 25 to head back to Madrid. Spent three days seeing the sights of Madrid, spent some time with Laurie and Maggie, met some of their friends, drank the best sangria I've ever tasted, enjoyed thee last few days of my vacation.

*Left Spain on July 28 to come back to Missouri. Got upgraded to First Class and it was absolutely amazing. I've never gotten upgraded on a long flight like that before. I slept so good, ate some good food (for an airline) - New York Strip, ice cream sundae, fresh bread, fruit plates. I watched a few movies and enjoyed being all stretched out! It was the best news I could have gotten getting onto the plane!

*Spent two more weeks at home, shopping, time with family and friends.

*Came back to Guatemala August 11 and have hit the ground running! I played in my slowpitch softball game the evening I arrived. My plane touched down at 7 pm, I was on the field playing at 9:30 pm! I had one day without work, hung out with some friends, got unpacked. The next day I was back at work, as the new 7th grade coordinator. I had five days at work before the kids came. I was so not ready for the first day! I had coordinator meetings, then trying to get everything ready for our team for the beginning of school, my classroom preparations were a little on the lacking side.

Ready or not, the first day of school came and went. It was so fun to see all the faces from last year returning and knowing the 8th graders this year. I loved seeing them all again. We have a great group of new 7th graders this year and I am really excited about getting to know them and teaching them this year.

We just finished day 6 of class and tomorrow is Friday!!!!! Woo hoo. I am awake at almost 1 am, due to falling asleep around 7:30 tonight and not making it through the night! I tried to stay awake but I couldn't! I will post pictures soon, maybe this weekend I will muster up some energy! I am starting to get things a little more well planned in my classes. We do have Open House to get ready for next week!

Home Sweet Home

2009-06-27T22:03:00.005-05:00

There is a reason for the saying, "Home Sweet Home." Besides it being blazing hot here in Missouri, it has been nothing but home sweet home. I have spent oodles of time with my sister and my niece and three nephews and it has been wonderful. It's a little crazy around their house, but what more can you expect with four kids under the age of 6?? :) I love it though. I have eaten at IHOP already a few times with them, we've played glow in the dark mini-golf at the mall, my nephew thinks I'm really good at Scooby Doo video games, I've gone to his t-ball twice, we've played outside in the small pool, we've gone to the neighborhood "big" pool, I've spent countless hours holding a sleeping sweet precious baby boy, and on and on. I am seriously enjoying every minute of it and soaking it all in. My niece and nephews are all getting so big and so funny.

Grace just finished kindergarten and her little mind works 24 hours a day. She is very observant and takes note of every detail, especially when you get something wrong, she loves to correct you!

She likes to take pictures, so this is her attempt to take a picture of us together!

And she likes to cut coupons! (Especially for candy or gum!)

With Mimi and Poppy at the play area at the mall!

Sam just turned four and he is quite the little character. His favorite phrase now is "You're not the boss of the car.....or of the couch......or of the basement." etc etc. So I finally said to him, "Sam, I don't want to hear you keep saying that to me or Aunt Kammie won't take you anywhere." Now he likes to remind me often, "Aunt Kammie, you're the boss of the couch. or Aunt Kammie, you're the boss of us right now." ha ha. He's so funny. He loves to 'play' video games. More, he really likes to watch someone else play them. Well, since I am quite the mature 30 year old, I still enjoy the video games. So we get along great. He loves to watch me play the Scooby Doo game. I do think I've gotten my name on most of the top scores so far. ha ha.

Getting ready to hit at t-ball!

Not sure if he's relaxing or waiting for a ground ball!

Sam loves his little baby brother and is a good helper!

Nate, who is 2 1/2 amazes me more and more every time I see him. He is growing so much and looks so much bigger and older to me each time I am home. I know that obviously he is just growing up, but coming from his little micropreemie status, it still just amazes me each time. He truly is a miracle to our eyes. He is jabbering now all the time. He will say "Tia" but not Kammie! That's ok, I'll take tia. :)

He insisted on having his goggles on in the baby pool in the back yard!

Gotta love those big blue eyes!

Just looking so big!

And little Preston, he is just a bundle of love. I am so in love with him, it's unreal. We missed out on a lot of the typical "baby" stuff with Nate, so it's so much fun to have a snuggly, cute, sweaty baby to love on!!! I just love letting him snuggle up on my chest and love on him!

Even though I love letting him sleep on me, I sure do love him even when he's awake too!!!!

Love the snuggly time!

Love it!!!

There's just something to be said about knowing my way around town and where things are and where to find things and feeling "home" again. No matter how long I've been gone and how much time has passed that I haven't even been in Missouri, I still feel somewhat at home here. Of course things change and it feels weird that I don't live here, but a part of me will always feel home here.

I've gotten to see some old friends, some people that I normally don't see and others that are my regular people to see! I have hung out with friends that I have known from kindergarten, friends from high school, and friends from junior high. I know it sounds stupid and my mom will never get it, but seriously, I am reconnecting with old friends due to facebook!!! It's so fun. I am getting together tomorrow night with five girls that I played softball with when we were like 14 years old and younger. We started playing together from the time we were in like 1st grade and we played together for several years. Softball was my life and these girls were a huge part of my life. I spent my entire summers at the ball field. I am so excited to see them and reconnect with them. I am also having lunch with my kindergarten teacher on Monday! How crazy is that??

I leave on Tuesday to embark on my long journey around the world. ha ha. I am so excited about seeing some other friends and seeing some other parts of the world. I will see Laurie in Spain, Rebekah in Italy, Wendy in Kenya, and Laura in Belgium!! I can't wait!

Gum Scrapers

2009-06-11T22:49:00.002-05:00

We started having a really bad problem of students chewing gum at school, so even though this policy started a little late, we started making the kids who got caught chewing gum scrape gum off the bottom of desks and the sidewalks. So, like any good teachers, we took pictures of them and put them in the end of the year slideshow today!!! :)

My 30th Birthday!!!!

2009-06-11T22:36:00.002-05:00

I celebrated my big 3-0 birthday back in May! I knew it was coming up all year and I kept thinking about how I wanted to celebrate it here in Guatemala. I wanted to do something memorable, something fun and something different. One night we were out and this trolley bus passed by with people yelling out the back and looked like a big party on it. At that moment, I knew, that was what I wanted to do for my 30th birthday!!! Well, I did it! It was so much fun and there was a wonderful group of friends that helped me celebrate and welcome in a new decade.

Jaime and I outside the bus before we left!

The party going on inside the bus!

Sharon and I!

The outside of the bus, it was so fun!

We had jello shots and when we stopped for a bathroom break at a gas station, Kari gave this mariachi band some jello shots. They loved it!

The back was open so you could ride back here!

Jaime, Fernando, and me! Fernando promised me a few birthday "presents" and showed up with like 4 or 5 Guatemalan guys on the trolley!

Dancing in the trolley!

This was after midnight so I was getting birthday hugs! (We went on Saturday May 16, so it officially wasn't my birthday until midnight!)

It was sooooo fun!

Service Learning Projects

2009-06-11T22:28:00.002-05:00

Each year the different grade levels at our school take on service learning projects. In seventh grade this year, our topic was health and we were partnered with a sister school here in town that we were to help out. We spent the first part of our project teaching the kids lessons on different aspects of nutrition. Then we spent the next half of the time having the kids come up with a little workshop with an activity to teach a small group of students from our sister school their lesson on nutrition. The kids worked really hard and got really into it. They all had penpals that they had written letters back and forth to and were looking forward to meeting the kids when they came to our school. Well, due to the glorious SWINE FLU, our school decided to cancel all outside activities with other schools, all sports events, all academic activities, including our service learning project! So the week of, we had to tell the kids that we weren't going to be able to host the other school to participate in their workshops. The kids were pretty disappointed but we ended up inviting elementary classes to come and go through the workshops so that the kids felt like their hard work was for something! It was still fun.

Millers in Antigua

2009-06-09T15:57:00.003-05:00

Like any good Guatemala tour, we made a trip to Antigua. It is just such a unique town and so different from Guatemala City. The architecture there is beautiful and when it is clear and you can see the volcanoes, it's so nice!! So we got back from Rio Dulce on Saturday night and got up Sunday morning to head to Antigua before Mike and Gretchen had to fly out on Sunday night. We had beautiful weather and a nice day full of shopping and fun! They even got to experience some Guatemalan classics while here, we passed two dead bodies on the side of the road on our way to Antigua and they felt a tremor while shopping in Antigua!!

Mike and Gretchen with the famous arch in Antigua. This arch was built for a church so they could pass over from the church to where they lived without having to go out in public and cross the street!

One of my favorite pictures of the arch, with the blue sky and the volcano coming through behind it!

Of course a trip to the Sky Bar, one of my favorite places to visit with a nice view!

It was so fun to see the Millers and get to spend time with them!!! In Korea everyone asked if Gretchen and I were sisters. Since we are both from Missouri and we have a lot in common, we just started calling each other our long lost sisters!

Sisters!!!

When we got ready to leave, there was a parade of some sort going on. Well we followed it......all the way back to our car!!!! It took us another 45 minutes to wait out the parade before we could move the car and leave!!!

Boat (Yacht???) Ride

2009-06-09T15:37:00.003-05:00

Friday night while we were eating dinner at the restaurant, this little boy and his father come up to Stephanie and say, "Hi Miss Moy." He is a second grader at our school and they came up to say hi! We chatted with them for a few minutes and then the dad proceeds to invite us all to come on their boat with them tomorrow, because they are going to go to a finca (farm) to eat breakfast and then on to the hot water fall. Sure, we said, not sure if it would really happen or not. They said to meet them by 7 am down at the dock. They told us their boat is there and they would be sleeping there that night. Well, nosy us, we meandered our way down there that night and saw this nice LARGE boat sitting there! So we packed up early and went down to the dock where the captain greeted us and let us on the boat and served us a beverage before heading off. We had a great day hanging out with the kids. One of the older girls will be in my class next year. The family was so nice and generous to us all day. It was a super fun day. Then they dropped us off at the car and we headed home! (They headed home on Sunday in their helicopter!!!)

Gretchen and I on the boat!

This was where we stayed, a view from the river. We were in the cabins on the other side though, not quite this pretty of a view!

Here is the Castillo de San Felipe, the Castle of Saint Philip. We didn't stop there but we heard it as just as impressive to drive by and look at as it was to actually go in!

The second grader deciding to go inside the boat, no problem, just climb up the front of it!

The boat.....or yacht, as we referred to it!

We ate breakfast at this farm and then we all piled into the back of this tractor and it pulled us down the road until we got to the path to get to the hot water fall.

This was the weirdest sensation. We went swimming in here and the water coming down from the waterfall was very hot. The water in the pool was cool, so it was this weird hot/cold feeling!!!

Then after about an hour swimming in the waterfall, we came back to the boat and the kids wanted to go for a ride on the banana boat, there was one more space, so I got volunteered to go with them!!! It was fun though!

I had already gotten changed or I would have done this too, but then the kids climbed to the top of the boat and jumped off into the lake!!! So fun! Action shot...

Just lounging around on the Yacht!

Rio Dulce with the Millers (and others)

2009-06-09T15:14:00.004-05:00

Mike, Gretchen, and I, along with my neighbor Stephanie, piled into the car on Thursday, the first day off school, and met up with two others cars to caravan to Rio Dulce. We stopped at the ruins, as posted below, and then finally made it to the hotel at Rio Dulce. Rio Dulce is the river that connects Lake Izabal to the Caribbean Sea. It ends right near this Garifuna town of Livingston. Garifuna is a mix of Caribbean and African people who live along the Caribbean coasts of Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Nicaragua. It was a really cool little town, with a kind of Jamaican feel to it. We got to our hotel on Thursday late afternoon, took a refreshing dip in the pool and hung out there all day, eating dinner at the restaurant that night. Then we rented a boat for the day for all of us, and it took us all the way down the river to Livingston, making some cool stops along the way. We had lunch in Livingston and then came back. Here are some pictures of our day:

In the boat on the way out!

Mike and Gretchen getting blown away!

We came upon this tree and if you look closely it is inhabited by tons of white egrits.

These birds are cormornats. They are taught to dive down into the water and catch fish and then they have to stand here and dry off their wings before they can continue diving. They are pretty cool. Rachel (the science teacher!) was telling me that in Asia they tie their necks so they can't swallow the birds and they use these birds to help them fish. I actually saw it on the Amazing Race later!

No idea what these insects were, some type of grasshoppers or something, but they were all over these plants!!!

Then our boat driver decided to pick one off the plant so we could get a closer look at it!

Then we went to this place where there were lily pads EVERYWHERE!!! It was beautiful!

Finally made it to the town of Livingston.

The beach at the Caribbean Sea. We didn't go in!

Mike, enjoying his "coco loco." These are pretty popular here, coconut milk and rum!

Mike eating his lunch of the local soup, with an entire fish in the soup!

We stopped along the way home so we could swim in the river. Gretchen and I decided to get in for a little bit, even though it was really cold and I'm sure we were the entertainment for the day for the Mayan women in the background.

Quirigua Ruins

2009-06-09T12:15:00.003-05:00

My good friends Mike and Gretchen came to visit me over a four day weekend at the beginning of May. I went round and round trying to figure out what to take them to do. They really wanted to go visit Tikal, but it really wasn't logical without flying there. The roads are really curvy and dangerous here and it didn't seem wise to be driving for 16-20 hours within a span of 3-4 days. So I decided to take the to Rio Dulce, somewhere I also wanted to visit, and we also got a short stop at some Mayan ruins on the way up there as well. There were two other couples and Stephanie that we carpooled with to get there. It was a great trip.

Quirigua was the Mayan city state that defeated Copan, but the ruins here were not as impressive as those in Copan. It was still cool though and I'm glad that Mike and Gretchen got to see some of this too! Quirigua is famous for its stellas, which are the carved stones that stand tall.

The leaning stella of Quirigua! (Not the real name, just made it up! ha ha)

Mike and Gretchen with a stella.

Mike Gretchen and I on the steps of the acropolis.

Gretchen being silly!

Gretchen and I by a really large tree!!!

Introducing Gretchen to Guatemala's own cerveza, Gallo!

Student Teachers

2009-06-09T12:07:00.002-05:00

We had two student teachers at our school this spring, Laura and Leslie. They were both from a university in Wyoming, who had the opportunity to come do their student teaching at out school. They are such sweet girls and it was fun getting to know them. I'm not sure if I would have ever taken the opportunity but I wish I could have student taught overseas somewhere!! I am so glad they took advantage of this and came! We had a dinner for them before they left and took them out to eat at a favorite restaurant of ours, Tamarindos. It was very yummy!

Me with Leslie and Laura

Sharon and I!

Good luck girls, in whatever you decide to pursue!

Teacher Prom 2009

2009-06-09T10:05:00.003-05:00

The teachers at our school have a Prom each year. Not a prom, like a dance for the kids, but a prom as in let's all act like we are seniors and have our own prom! And that we did. It was so much fun, probably even more fun than my own high school prom! We all got dressed up, some in old bridesmaid dresses (me!) and some in rather hideous dresses bought at thrift shops here in Guatemala while others wore dresses that were in style from the year that they went to prom in high school. It was a fun time had by all. I wore a dress that I have now gotten about 3-4 wears out of, first at a New Year's Eve fancy party, then at my sister's wedding, and I believe I wore it to another occasion that I can't recall. And now for prom 2009!!!

Several of us even got our hair done! One girl has a friend who is a hair dresser here so we paid her about ten bucks to fix our hair! She did a great job!

These two girls bought matching dresses at a Guatemalan thrift shop! So cute and 80s!

Me, Jaime, and Steph, ready to party!!!

All of the girls all dressed up for prom!

More friends, Manoela, me, Melissa!

After we got kicked out of the party room, we went to one of our favorite bars in Guatemala to continue the party! A few people changed clothes but most of us went in our prom dresses! We were quite the crowd!

Party is over!

Copan Ruins

2009-06-08T16:54:00.003-05:00

We spent Saturday night in the town of Copan, which is this really cute, quaint town, and then Sunday we left early to go explore the ruins. The Copan ruins are the largest ruins in Honduras, and are home to an ancient Mayan civilization that thrived between the 2nd and 9th Century AD. It was one of the strongest city states until it suffered a defeat by the Quirigua in 738. I actually visited the Quirigua ruins about two weeks after I went to Copan when Mike and Gretchen came to visit me! The Copan Ruins went from the time they were abandoned in 984 to almost 1000 years later when they were first written about in 1834. They began to excavate this site in 1934. The buildings did not have roofs as they were destroyed by earthquakes and other natural disasters. It's pretty amazing to see the ruins that were unveiled by a city that existed almost 1000 years ago!

Mom and I climbing up the plaza.

One of the ruins.

You can see the structure of the buildings and how intricately it was designed. Pretty amazing for over 1000 years ago!

This is known as the hieroglyphic staircase, which was destroyed by an earthquake and was found all in pieces. They are going through and doing a lot of work on it right now and getting it all put back together.

There were cowboys everywhere and I thought they were so cute! Here is a picture of me with two of the cowboys that worked there at the ruins site.

After I took my picture with the cowboys, our old tour guide with about four teeth left got jealous and asked for his picture with Sharon, who had joined us on our trip!

Mom taking a rest at the top of the buildings.

The acropolis.

It was a pretty cool site to see. On our drive home, we stopped at a gas station right across the Guatemalan border and I asked for "llena de regular" (full of regular). The gas station attendant didn't understand what I was saying. I said, "regular" in my Spanish accent! He said, "Super?" I said, no regular. He had the super pump put into my gas tank already without pumping it yet. I kept saying, no regular. He acted like he had no clue what I was talking about. He called his buddy over and then they were SMELLING the gas cap and trying to tell me that there was super gasoline in my gas tank. It took about five minutes to convince them that I had never put super gasoline in my gas tank and it was really just regular gas!!! It was quite the fiasco! But finally they obliged and put regular gas in there. I think there must have been some prize for the person who sold the most super gas in a day or something. They thought they could convince the stupid gringos or something! ha ha

Copan Honduras

2009-06-08T16:46:00.003-05:00

While my parents were here we also took a little two day trip out to Copan Honduras. There are some old Mayan ruins there, which are supposed to be second biggest after Tikal. It was pretty neat there but sooooo HOT! It was a fun side trip though while they were here.

Here we are crossing the border.

When we got there, we went to a bird park the first day. This is a big toucan!

Dad liked holding all the birds!

This was as close as I would come to them. I'm not a big fan of birds! He's actually not as close as he appears in the picture! ha ha

My favorite place at any excursion!!

The place we stayed was the Casa Jaguar, so as we were driving around and couldn't find the place, Mom saw this jaguar and said, that's it - I remember seeing that picture on the website!!! Well, she was right, this was where we were staying!

Whenever I am meeting new Guatemalan friends and they ask where I am from, I like to respond to them, "Soy chapina," meaning, I am Guatemalan. Of course they always laugh and I know I look nothing like a Guatemalan. Well one time a friend told me that they do have blond haired, blue eyed Guatemalans but they are all from Zacapa, so if I say I am chapina, I need to say, "Soy de Zacapa," meaning, I am from Zacapa. Or, I could just say, "Soy Zacapaneca," meaning I am a person from Zacapa. I liked learning to say this word, so now that is what I tell pepole when I meet them and they ask where I am from. It's a nice ice breaker to a conversation! ha ha. So on our way to Copan, we had to pass through Zacapa, so I took a picture by my "hometown" sign! :)

Parent's Visit

2009-06-08T16:42:00.002-05:00

It was so fun having my parents here and being able to show them around Guatemala and introduce them to a few new things!

One of the things I made sure to introduce them to for their first meal here in Guatemala was Pollo Campero, Guatemala's finest fast food fried chicken place! We have most American fast food chains here except KFC. :)

In Antigua, there is a really nice hotel there called Casa Santo Domingo. It has beautiful grounds, so I took Mom and Dad there to show them around. Here they are with the birds!

Mom and I in front of some nice flowers there!

And of course I had to take them to the new mall! We had breakfast there one morning before heading down to zone 1.

This was inside the national palace, which we took a tour of. Looking out one of the doors.

They had an art exhibit there with all these pictures of quetzals. Stephanie and I really want to see one, so we weren't sure if this was as close as we'd ever get!!!

Nice quetzal!

Semana Santa Processions

2009-06-08T16:35:00.002-05:00

Along with the alfombras being made, there were several processions along different routes in Antigua. Different churches would sponsor these processions and each one consisted of several people either dressed in purple or in black or in white carrying different floats. I'm not sure what to call these things they carried. They all depicted different scenes of Holy Week, usually either of Jesus or of Mary. The men carried the ones with Jesus, while they women carried the ones with the virgin Mary on them. It was all accompanied by music, usually very solemn, with all sorts of tourists in the road taking pictures! There would be incense along with the processions. These processions would go very slowly along the routes, most of them lasting for several (like 8-10) hours. The people would pay a fee to their church in order to have a part in carrying, as part of their penance, I've heard. Very interesting. There would be a person at the front carrying a number and when you saw your number up there you knew it was your turn to go find your spot and take over for the person carrying.

There would usually be people that came to line the sides of the street before the procession came through, like below.

Here is an example of one such "float" depicting Jesus carrying His cross.

Here are the Roman soldiers lining the streets before this procession came.

Even small children would be dressed up in the same attire and be accompanying fathers, brothers, uncles, etc on the sides.

This one was HUGE. I think there were like over 100 marked spots for people to be carrying this one.

Doesn't this look fun?

Semana Santa Carpets

2009-06-08T16:12:00.003-05:00

My parents were here visiting for Semana Santa, Holy Week this April. WOW. That is all I really have to say about it. Pictures cannot come close to doing this event justice. It was really one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. And unique things. For the week and even some of the days of the weeks leading up to Holy Week, people create these rugs, or in Spanish, alfombras, on the streets. They close off all the streets in Antigua where the processions are going to be that will go over the alfrombras. People sometimes stay up all night creating these alfombras, which are then trampled on by these processions and destroyed within minutes. It's such a sight to see and you can walk around all days watching them being created. They first start by putting down the color of the background of the alfombra. The sawdust is colored and sifted through these pan type of things. Then they begin with the stencils working on the borders or the inside parts. This rug has the main purple color down and people are working on the border.

Here is a close up so you can see the design of the border. They either use a plastic spoon or just their fingers to sprinkle the sawdust in the stencil.

An action shot of making the border in the stencil.

Then while working on the inside of the carpet, the people have to have these boards up that they lay or squat on while they work, since you can't stand on the carpet itself after the colored layer is put down.

Here is a rug nearing completion.

These two guys were having quite the time working on their rug, laughing away. I was quite surprised not to see one of them fall off the board!

Even my mom got in on the action, helping out some friends of mine that were making a carpet in front of their store!

They have these water packs that spray water to keep the sawdust in place as you are making the carpets. Dad got in on the water action!!!

If any of you ever get a chance to visit Guatemala for Easter week, please go to Antigua. It was crowded and crazy and a little weird at times, but it was really one of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen. Pretty cool. I'm glad my parents were here at this time and I got to experience it with them!

Melissa's Birthday and Good Friends

2009-06-06T07:37:00.002-05:00

For Semana Santa, we got a nice long vacation from school. The week before Semana Santa, we were out on Friday, then the entire week of Easter, and also the Monday after Easter. Ten days. I loved it! It was a much needed break! The last Thursday we had school, a bunch of us went out to celebrate a friend's birthday. It was kind of a beginning of vacation/birthday celebration! I am reminded at all of the things I have been blessed with in this life, one of them that is very near and dear to my heart is good friends. It has taken me awhile to really open up much and let many people in since coming here to Guatemala. I had some really hard goodbyes in Korea and I think subconsciously, I wasn't ready to start over and get my heart hurt again like that when I came here. Slowly but surely, I think I am starting to get there. Just a few pics of some good friends here in Guatemala.

This is Shelly, Jaime and I. These two girls have been so much fun to hang out with and they are always up for a good time! Jaime is moving to Brazil next year so I will really miss her!

Melissa and I, the birthday girl. She is so sweet and I am so glad that I got to know her through the master's program that we were working on. She came the year before me, so she just gradutated with our last master's course, where I am only halfway through! I am going to miss her in class next year! I like her a lot, even though she's Canadian! :)

Reid, Jaime and I. Reid is moving to Peru next year, possible vacation spot over this next year!!! :) That's one of the joys of teaching internationally is that you meet others that will most likely move on to other countries and then you have good friends to go visit that live in fun places!!

Long Overdue

2009-06-05T23:21:00.004-05:00

I realized one day that I didn't really have any pictures of my building where I live. I think it's really pretty so here are some pictures for you to see.

Here is a closer view of the apartments on the corner. Mine is on a corner and you can now see for yourself the need for curtains. Two entire walls of my bedroom are made of glass, so the sun shines in nice and bright on those clear days. (Like today, away at 6:15 am on a Saturday morning, not normal for me! haha)

And the long awaited picture of my car! I put pictures on my facebook so I guess I kept forgetting that I didn't have pictures on my blog!!! I did really purchase a car here in Guatemala and here is the proof now. This has like changed my life and my quality of life here!! I now have the freedom to go to the store when I want, go to eat when I want, go to the movies, go shopping, etc and leave to come home whenever I want. I can also go out and run errands and not have to worry about how to carry all of my stuff around from all of the stores! It's soooooo nice!

And here I am in it, just to really prove to you that it is mine! ha. Yes, I am sitting in my car inside the parking garage in my building!

Semana Santa in my Neighborhood

2009-06-05T23:21:00.003-05:00

Yes, I am really going all the way back to April here! Semana Santa in Central America is a huge holiday. They don't just celebrate Easter, they celebrate the entire Holy Week. Pictures really cannot do the festivities justice by any means. It was truly amazing and a sight to be seen. I would encourage anyone to visit Guatemala during Easter at some point in their life! I was really happy to get to experience my first Semana Santa in Guatemala with my parents! Before they got here though (more on their trip later!) there was a small festivity in my neighborhood. For Semana Santa in Guatemala, people make these "alfombras" or carpets of sawdust on the streets. They use these stencils and make these beautiful carpets on the street. They are so bright and intricatly designed. Then they have what these processions where people carry these huge "float type things" that are so solid and heavy to represent different events from Holy Week. They walk over these alfombras and destroy them in a matter of seconds. We thought this first procession in our neighborhood was so amazing but then I was blown away when I spent two days in Antigua with the folks and saw the real deal! Here is a preview! And remember the pictures don't do anything justice! :)

The first alfombra we came across.

A close up of some of the details. Remember this is all sawdust!

Then began the procession with all the Catholic schoolgirls carrying these signs.

And nothing in Latin America is complete without some music! This music was very somber though.

An example of the floats that they carry. In Antigua some of the floats were carried by over 100 people, they were so big!

And so much for the beautiful alfombras. This is what happens in a matter of seconds! So sad!

And of course the nuns swinging the incense around!

Even the youngest ones can participate!

So cute, walking along with the nun and the Padre.

And what Latin American religious celebration is complete without someone there selling blow up Barney toys?

Swine Flu?

2009-06-05T23:13:00.002-05:00

There have been a few cases of swine flu here in Guatemala. Not much of a hype about it, but you hear about it now and then. Well, one of the other international schools here had a case of swine flu with one of their students so they shut down. I'm not sure how many days they had left but today was the first day they were closed. Today my principal came and told us all that there might be a case at our school and if so we might have to close early. (Thursday June 11 is our last day anyway, only FOUR days left!!!) He said, if you have anything in your classroom that you want for the summer, it might be a good decision to take it home this weekend. So I got everything off my hard drive of the computer in my classroom, two textbooks, and headed out, not knowing if I will see my students again before August or if I will be back at school Monday or not! Probably so, but it's still kind of fun to think about! I am actually selfishly hoping that school will get canceled and I could get to go home a few days earlier than planned. I would love to get to head home a week early! :) I am trying not to really think about it much because I honestly don't think it will happen. I will let you know! Or I might just show up in Missouri a week early!

Summer Plans

2009-06-05T23:04:00.002-05:00

I am stoked about my summer this year. First and foremost, I have a beautiful new nephew that you can see in my previous post that I absolutely can NOT wait to get home and see. For the past two years, I have come home from living far away from home and usually spent my summers doing the same things. Visiting the same friends, going to the same places in the US, maybe taking a short trip somewhere. This summer, I decided, I wanted to take a cool trip. I have some really cool friends that live in some really cool places around the world. It all started off as just thinking about looking for a cheap ticket to get to Europe and stay for a few weeks to visit two friends that I have that live in Italy and Belgium. Then, I began to think, well if I am going all the way there, I should fly in and out of a different country to see at least one more place while I am there. I began looking for where the cheapest places were to fly in/out of from Missouri. Then, a colleague of mine is going to be in France all summer, so I thought I could meet up with her too. THEN.....my friend Wendy who lives in Kenya told me maybe she would meet up with me in Rome while I am there. After talking to her and saying how much I would really like to visit her in Kenya sometime, I realized that this summer was probably going to be my only chance to ever go and see her since she will most likely only be there one more school year. Maybe I could get a three way ticket: Missouri to Europe to Africa and back home. Too expensive. Then after she told me how much her ticket was from Nairobi to Rome, I thought, well maybe it's the same price going the opposite way. It was! So after all this thought process, here is my big summer plan which I can't wait to experience!!!!!!

June 17: fly to KC

June 30: fly to Madrid

July 2: fly to Rome to visit Rebekah

July 4: fly to Nairobi, Kenya to visit Wendy P

July 12: fly back to Rome WITH Wendy P

July 16: fly to Belgium to visit Laura (possible side trip to London, France or Germany)

July 22ish: fly back to Madrid to hang out with Wendy F and Avis

July 28: fly back to KC

August 11: fly back to Guatemala

I can't wait!!!!! My three continent, seven country, four nieces/nephews, lots of family/friends summer!!!!! It's going to be crazy busy but so worth it!

Preston Davis

2009-06-05T22:51:00.003-05:00

I have so much to blog about and I will get to it one of these days, but for now, my big news is I have a new baby nephew!!!! I can't wait to get home and hold this little guy! He arrived on Friday, May 29, weighing in at 7 pounds, 1 ounce, 21 inches long. I am headed home June 17 and I cannot wait!!!! Here are the few pictures that I have and I can't wait until I will be in the pictures with him! :)

Here he is at the hospital, on his first day!

Proud big sister. I can't wait to see her either. My mom has told me how well she is reading and how good she is at math and I can't wait to hang out with her this summer!

And the proud big brother! He's so cute. He just turned four in April and I can't wait to get home and squeeze his neck as well!

And I'm not sure if Nate quite knows what to think of him yet! I can't wait to get home and see my little Natie either!!!!

He's at home now and looking so big to me already!!!! I want to be there!!!

Three boys now. Poor Grace! :) Aren't they just so darn cute????? Twelve more days. Twelve more days!

Sorry for the delay in my posts. I am going to try to work on my blog a little more tonight and put some more pictures and information up! :)

The Beach!

2009-03-31T09:28:00.003-05:00

I went to the beach with some other teachers from school and two babies! We had a great time. This was for our long weekend in February. Here are Shelly and her baby, Sienna, along with Anita catching some rays in the pool. I loved this part of the pool where you could just sit barely in the water on this ledge.

Our little bartender friend at the swim up bar!!!

Shelly and I with our yummy fruity drinks!

My favorite picture of Sienna, look what she can show her friends when she gets older of how she spent her baby years!!!

Sienna! I got to be a tia for the weekend!!!!

The Beach Resort

2009-03-31T09:19:00.005-05:00

We had a long weekend in February, so I went to the beach with about 6 other teachers. We stayed at this really nice resort and didn't even leave while we were there. It was so beautiful, we had nice weather and we just relaxed, swam, laid out, and enjoyed the company. Here are some pictures of the place that we stayed. It is called Cayman Suites in Monterrico, Guatemala. I remembered my camera, my camera batter charger, and left my memory card in my computer. I had to get some pictures from my friend, so that's why I am posting these like 6 weeks late!! ha ha.

The pool literally led right up to the beach.

View of the volcanoes looking the other way

Black sand beaches of Monterrico

The pool with the swim up bar

Gallo, the national beer, seriously owns everything around this country!

Our room was in the building on the right with the sliding door. We literally walked right out to the pool.

Yes, I was sitting there grading papers!!! I'd much rather be doing it there than in my apartment! :)

The pool

Our suite....we had a full kitchen and everything

The living room, with a single bed and a pull out sofa

GO HOME!!!

2009-03-25T01:31:00.002-05:00

Tuesdays are my easy days at school. I tend to get a lot done: lesson plans, organizing, cleaning my desk, photocopy requests, blogging, emails caught up, etc. I only have one class, first period. Today, I was sitting in my classroom at about 1:30, writing some lesson plans when another teacher came by. She asked me if I had heard what was going on. I hadn't. She said, well apparently there are some riots going on and all of the kids are dismissed at 2:00. I was like, ok, this is kind of weird. Then we got the following email (I'm including English and Spanish, so you can get a feel for the bilingual nature of our school!!!) from our administration:

(ESPANOL VERSION)

COLEGIO AMERICANO DE GUATEMALA
Community News
Martes 24 de Marzo de 2009

Por razones de precaución, el CAG ha decidido lo siguiente:
Enviar a todos los alumnos a sus respectivas casas a las 2pm.
Únicamente saldrán rutas a las 2 de la tarde para los alumnos
Todas las actividades extracurriculares se cancelan por hoy en la tarde.
La jornada de hoy para Copa Americano está cancelada. No habrá ningún partido.
Sí habrán conferencias de Padres de Secundaria. (2-4pm)
Todos los demás miembros del personal se irán a las 4pm.
Por favor tomar en cuenta todas estas estipulaciones.

Ate.

(ENGLISH VERSION)

AMERICAN SCHOOL OF GUATEMALA
Community News
March 28, 2009

Due to precuationary measures, CAG has decided the following:

Send all students home at 2pm
There will only be 2pm routes for students
All extracurricular activities are cancelled for this afternoon
All Copa Americano games are cancelled this afternoon
There will be High School Parent-Teacher conferences (2-4pm)
All other staff members will leave at 4pm
Please be advised.

So, my master's class for tonight got cancelled (we have to make it up tomorrow) and we all went home around 3:00 today. From all of the rumors and mixed messages, here is my very vague understanding of what is going on in this country. There have been several bus drivers that have been shot and killed in the city. Like, a lot. It has something to do with gangs and either they won't go where the gang members tell them to go or they won't give them enough money or something, but they shoot the bus drivers. So, the president of Guate decided that they were going to stop public transportation for a period of time or something. So apparently there were supposed to be all of these riots going on this afternoon and into this evening. I'm not sure if anything escalated at all or what happened, but nothing has seemed abnormal to me here in my apartment! :) Hopefully everything has calmed down and maybe it was more rumors than anything actually happening. If it does escalate at all, we probably won't have school tomorrow. this is highly unlikely! But I guess in Guatemala, we will never have snow days, only violence days that we stay home for. Kind of sad.

Friends!

2009-03-24T13:43:00.002-05:00

Just came across this picture today and thought it was cute! :) Ruth is the first person I met from CAG, as we met in the Dallas airport waiting for our flight to Guatemala. She teaches 8th grade math, so we work together in middle school, but also on various math stuff. I would give you her blog to read, but it's private. ha ha. It has been very fun getting to know her this year working here at CAG. This picture was taken one day when we were out with the kids watching a soccer game. Beautiful weather even in January or February! :)

My Car

2009-03-24T11:49:00.002-05:00

No, I don't have a picture yet of my car. That is my next thing I am going to try to do. But the problem is now (this week) is that I am in class from 5-8 every night so it is dark when I get home. I guess I could take a picture in the parking garage but that seems weird. ha ha. This car here has pretty much changed my life and my sense of freedom here. I can go to my grocery shopping anytime I want to, I can decide to go somewhere and leave in five minutes when I want. I have been driving to and from school every day so I can get here when I want to. I can drive to go out to eat somewhere, I can go through the auto-mac at McDonalds (and yes, I have even gotten what I was trying to order). I love having a car here in Guatemala. I didn't think I would want the hassle of it and the costs of it, but it is proving to much more worth it than I had originally thought.

This weekend, I had a lot of fun. ha ha. I had class on Friday night from 5-8. I am taking my third class out of nine in my master's program. After class, I was so tired. I came home and laid down for about an hour, and then met up with some friends who were going out dancing. We had a great time. It was a lot of fun. We went to this place that I had been one time before and might soon become my regular place. This bartender decided he would be cool and make a little fire with the alcohol and he ended up catching himself on fire. Nice, huh? It was a bit scary. Then Saturday I had to get up for class and be in class from 8-1. This class is much better but it is still taxing on the body! ha ha. Then I came home and caught up on some tv shows on my computer and slept on and off until about 6 pm. I met up with my friend Jamie and her fiancee and a few of his friends at this place called the Retro Bar, where they play 80s and 90s music in English and Spanish. It was fun. Then after much indecision we decided to just go back to my house and hang out. We were playing Poker and I guess got a little noisy. The security guard at my apartment building came and rang the doorbell at 2 am and I sent Jamie's fiancee, Guillermo to the door, and the guard asked us to keep it down. Oops. My neighbors probably hate me now. Oh well. I'm probably paying for their electric bill anyway. One of Guillero's friends was celebrating his birthday and this guy is a HULK. Seriously. I have to get a picture of him. He needs to move here (he is from El Salvador) and be my body guard. It was awesome. He's huge. Anyway, they left around 3 and then I went to sleep. Sunday, I woke up around 9:30, went to PriceSmart with Stephanie, bought too much food, went through the Auto Mac for breakfast, came home and put my food away. Then I went with a different friend Jaime to her friend Fernando's baseball game. It was fun. It was at this really nice park and it was fun to be outside at the baseball field again. He also plays on a slow pitch softball team that he's trying to get me to join. I am thinking about it. Then I came home, went to the grocery store with Laurie, and then went to church. I got home and pretty much went to bed after cleaning up a little bit. I have been so tired lately since taking this class.

I will try to get a picture of my car soon to put it on here. :)

Leaving Casa del Mundo

2009-03-24T11:36:00.003-05:00

Here is my last batch of pictures from the lake. It was a great weekend. I will know better for next time what to pack and what not to pack, but life is all about learning, right? :) So whoever is my next visitor who I take to the lake, we will have a great time! When you get to the main town at the lake, you have to catch one of these boats (not fancy boats, mind you) to go to the different villages or hotels along the lake. They get very crowded and are hard to get in and out of. Here is Anita waiting for the boat to come. You just have to stand out on the dock and wave it down to come pick you up!

On the boat, we were the only people at first.

Inside the boat, I liked this picture because you can see the guys legs standing on on the dock and sitting on top of the boat, waiting for the people from this village.

One of the villages that we pulled up to so we could pick up more people.

The same village with the boats at the dock.

This hotel looked cool, but we couldn't see the sign to see what the name of it was.

We got to the main town, Panajachel, about an hour early, so we got to go walk around and see the market and the town. It is really cute. I'd like to stay there next time. I didn't take any pictures there though. We also got some yummy tacos from the taco stand!

Casa del Mundo, the hotel

2009-03-19T13:19:00.004-05:00

This hotel we stayed at was so cool. It is built into the side of this cliff, so it was hard to get a great photo of the place. But here are some great photos of the views we had and of some places here at the hotel. This will have to suffice! :)

Off our patio our first morning.

Our room was right by this area, called "Descanso." It basically means the resting area. I was happy we were so close to it!

This was looking up from our room where we stayed.

Off to the left of the balcony.

This is looking down. There were all these little levels and areas where you could sit and sunbathe with chairs and some places had steps down into the lake.

Morning number two!

The helicopter flying over. We joked if it was one of our students heading back to the city after a weekend at the lake!

Another hotel off to the left. You can see how they are built into the sides of the cliff.

These were the killer stairs. We about died every time we had to walk up and down them. Anytime to get down to the lake or back up to our room. They were bad!!! There were many of them.

So peaceful and relaxing.

Casa del Mundo, View of the Volcano

2009-03-18T17:17:00.004-05:00

This was my first visit to the lake. I am not sure if you have this incredible view of the volcanoes from any place you stay at the lake, but our view of these volcanoes was just pretty much breathtaking. So needless to say, when I got home, I realized over half of my pictures were just different views of the volcanoes! ha ha. So here they are, enjoy! These were all taken from our hotel, since we never even left the place!!

This was from the deck where I was lying in the hammock for several hours!

This was taken from the boat as we were going back to Panajachel to catch our shuttle back to Antigua. Adios volcanes!! :(

Casa del Mundo, relaxing!

2009-03-18T17:09:00.003-05:00

This weekend, we had Monday off school for a long, three day weekend. I went with three friends to La Casa del Mundo, a hotel located at Lake Atitlan here in Guate. We took a shuttle from Antigua and arrived on Saturday afternoon. This is about the extent of what we did until Monday morning when we left. Sorry I don't have a ton of pictures, but this is what we pretty much did for two days. It was WONDERFUL!! I do have some more pictures of the views that I will post, but for now here goes!

This was my view for the majority of the 48 hours spent there! :)

Still a little sleepy in the morning. Stephanie said I looked like the chimney face behind me. ha ha.

Anita and I with the beautiful volcano behind us.

Vida and Anita down swimming in the lake. This was taken from our balcony of our room. You will see the killer stairs later that we had to climb to get down that low. I didn't get in the water at all, but these girls enjoyed a good swim. I enjoyed a good hammock, book, and sunbathing!

Seriously, this is about all I did.

We played a mean game of Uno after dinner on Sunday night!!!

Wrapping My Mind Around WHAT???

2009-03-17T15:14:00.003-05:00

Sometimes your mind just can't even begin to wrap itself around what is going on. For example, my electric bill each month has been ranging from 380 Quetzales to 430 Quetzales (8 Quetzales = $1, for those of you that really care). It has continuously gone up each month, but it's not like skyrocketing or anything, just by like 20-30 Quetzales or so each month. So on Friday, I get my electric bill out of my mailbox and it reads 2065 Quetzales. I was like HUH? I couldn't even really wrap my mind around that, thinking about how I just purchased a car and I'm trying to make some summer trips, etc. It took about ten minutes before I started to freak out. I called my neighbor who was on a bus to Rio Dulce to ask her if their electric bill was high this month. She said yes, I took a big sigh and said oh ok, good. What are you going to do about it? She said, well pay it. I said, but it's ridiculous and she said, well it was like 30 Q higher. I said, no mine was like 1500 Q higher. Anyway, she reassured me not to panic and to go tell the people in the office on Monday, it must be a mistake. I did notice on my bill that my status had changed from residential to commercial. I was like, this is not a business. So I explained to the lady in the office. She said she'd call and see what the deal was and let me know. She said it looked like my landlord had changed my status. I figured it was to get a tax break or something. So I went to lunch duty and came back. She said, "Well we have a bad situation here." I was like oh great. What? Well, since you have been using so much electricity the last two months and your number is over this certain amount (10) then they bumped you up to commercial rates. I was like, well my bill hasn't even gone up that much. And how come I don't get fair warning on this? She said, well I don't know, but your number has to go down for six consecutive months before they will put you back down at a residential rate. I was so angry. I called my landlord and I had to scan my bills and send them to her today and she is going to call to try to get it taken care of for me. I don't know what I will do if I have to pay for this high rate from now on. This is like $250 for someone who is not even at home all day and doesn't come home until at least 4:30 every day. ugghhh. I mean of course, I guess I will pay it if I want electricity, but we'll see what happens. I will keep you updated. Such is the life living in a foreign country, I suppose. Never quite sure of what is going on or the rules and regulations of things, if there are any here in Guate. I am just reminded of my need to be flexible and willing to take whatever is thrown my direction!

My Followers!!!

2009-03-17T10:16:00.002-05:00

So the other day when I was doing all of this updating on my blog, I noticed something on the right side that I had never seen before. It's kind of fun to see who is reading my blog and since NO ONE ever leaves me comments on anything, besides the fact that the counter is going up, sometimes I wonder if anyone besides my mom is reading this thing. Which is fine, I would still post all the pictures and write the stories for her! It is also fun to look back on my time here and see the things of the past as well. But the other day, I noticed something that I had never noticed before: it says "Followers." I was like, hmm, what's this? Then I saw two names down below: Chris Winters and Ryan Bush. I suddenly felt so great, I have followers. Now, this is not something I would really want to say that I have, living in Guatemala. It's not a good thing to have people following you, but I was super excited!!! So here is my shout out to Chris and Ryan!!! Chris is a great friend who I taught fifth grade with in Korea. I came to love and adore his family! His two precious little girls became like mis sobrinas (my nieces) to fill my void of being "Aunt Kammie" while living in Korea. They were totally there for me when my nephew passed away and I showed up in tears on their doorstep at 7:00 am. I used Bella (their daughter) as an excuse to go eat McDonalds and to go to fun things in Korea, such as the Bubble Show. It was so hard to leave them last June. I am way excited that they will be moving to Venezuela in August and I can go visit them there!! I am hoping to make a trip over Thanksgiving or sometime when I have several days off! Ryan is a friend from college that I have had some other connections with. He and his wife worked in Peru for a period of time and had connections to the NICS school that I worked at in Korea. I had also gone on my first missions trip to Peru, so we had that connection as well. Ryan gave me inspiration for an idea of how to decorate my apartmen t. Anyway, if you click on their names above, it will take you to their websites. Thanks for being my "followers," mis amigos!!!!

Habitat for Humanity

2009-03-12T15:26:00.006-05:00

Last Saturday, I went with a group of high school students to do Habitat for Humanity. It is a wonderful organization that goes around and helps those in need, mostly by helping them to build a house. There were about 20 high school kids, one father, and five teachers that went. It was a really cool day. We did a lot of work (not too hard of work!!) but it was great for the students to get out and see what others live like in their own country. Our high school students, I learned, are required to do 30 hours of community service during each of their 9th, 10th, and 11th grade years. They do a lot of work in orphanages, Habitat for Humanity, and I learned that some of them even give up time in the summers and go out and do translations for doctors and they are right in the middle of the OR and stuff. Pretty intense. This was a great day. We went out to a town called Chimaltenango, about an hour or so outside of the capital. We were just working on this little street, mixing and laying concrete for the floor and taking some wire and wrapping it around these other metal poles or something that I'm not sure what it was for. ha ha. It was fun though.

Stephanie and Rachel were two other teachers that went. This is when we were cutting the wire to wrap around these poles and attach these other metal things. So technical, I know!

I'm not sure if this is the boy whose house we were building or not, but he wanted to hang around by us for a little bit. We asked to take his picture and he did. But then he was totally done with the camera! ha ha.

I did sneak one more picture in of him! :)

You see different types of things outside the city than in the capital. Here is this horse carrying wood. We saw this scene several times. This was the best picture I got.

The boys had to fill the buckets with the concrete mix and carry it up his ladder. I was scared to walk up it without a bucket of concrete!!!

Mixing concrete in the middle of the street!

Taking a little rest!

This is when we were attaching the little metal things to the poles with the thin wire.

Then we had to chisel out a hole in this cement block. I was scared to do it, as some people were breaking bricks!!!! This girl was so sweet and did a fantastic job!

Carrying a sack of flour home!

I was Stephanie's "encourager" as she chiseled away!

I went over to help mix concrete, but this guy kept taking my shovel. He was a lot better than I was anyway!!!!

But, yes, I did do some work!!!! :)

For our group picture, the guy told Rachel and I to lay in the wheelbarrows!!!!

Our work group for the day!!!

Advisory Competitions

2009-03-12T15:07:00.002-05:00

Along with our assembly last week, we also had advisory competitions, which the kids love. It's fun to watch them run around and really work together as a team. The first game we played was ultimate frisbee, which my kids did great. They kicked the other team's tail! I took a few pictures. I don't have any pictures of our second game, softball, because I was playing with the kids. :) Reliving the glory days. ha ha. It was so fun. The kids always have a blast. We are the Teletubies! :)

7th Grade Slideshow

2009-03-12T13:06:00.002-05:00

Here is the slideshow I made for the assembly. I thought it turned out pretty cute. It is about 10 minutes long, but I think it's worth watching to see how cute my kiddos are!!!! ENJOY!

7th Grade Assembly

2009-03-12T11:19:00.004-05:00

OK, so now I am totally within striking distance. I am blogging about our assembly just LAST Friday. Yes, less than one week ago. :) I know I say this every time, but I really am going to do my best to stay on top of my blog after this! ha ha. I just had my master's class for two weeks and then we ran into finals, which meant getting all grades completed, writing the final exam, and then grading all 100 of the tests. So anyway, last week was the end of trimester 2. That means that I am 2/3 of my way through my first year here in Guate. Kind of weird to think about. So for the end of the second trimester, we had a little assembly to celebrate. Somehow I got put in charge of it with one of the other teachers who was going to be gone that day. :) We got it all organized and planned out. We decided that we would give away some awards to kids in each section for their hard work, have a slideshow of pictures, and let some of the kids showcase their talents. We have some really talented kids in our school and it's fun to see them in their element rather than only in math class. So I am happy to say that it went off pretty well. I did a powerpoint for the entire assembly so I took pictures of all the kids and put them up on the screen when it was their turn to perform. (I apologize for the quality of pictures, I had a student taking them!!!)

One of my favorites was this group of boys. Three of them played guitars while three of them sang the song. They were so cute!

Here they are warming up.

Our flexible gymnasts!!!

I turned around and saw this girl snapping all these pictures of me. I ended up with about ten of them similar to this but most of them I am not turned around! I also had about ten pictures of the floor and seats in the auditorium. (And yes, every Friday is jeans day at our school!!!)

This was one of my two favorite acts that went. Joseph was playing in the band with the other boys but then he asked if he could do his own song as well. He rocked the house man!!!! (There is a video of him at the end of this post!!)

This picture is really dark, but I had to mention this kid. He is one of my biggest class clowns and he asked if he could play the piano. I had a big talk with him and said, you better be taking this seriously, you better not get up there and act like a clown, etc. He assured me he was serious. WOW. He got up there and rocked the house to some Beethoven. It was awesome. I was so proud of him.

Boy band! :)

Giving out awards for participation. Not sure what happened to my head in this picture!

Joseph playing and singing. He's so cute and did an awesome job!

Day of Movement....

2009-03-12T09:21:00.005-05:00

So a few weeks ago (I am actually blogging about February now, can you believe it???), the middle school had a day of movement. A bunch of teachers volunteered to lead different workshops, ranging from salsa dancing to yoga to giant twister to pilates to gymnastics to cheerleading to line dancing. Yes, I was recruited to help with the line dancing workshop. We had three 45 minute workshops throughout the day. My friend Kelly is from Georgia so she was in charge of it. I decided I would help her so I could spend the day listening to country music! Little did I know how much I would end up enjoying myself all day and getting into the line dance. :) It was so fun. The kids even started to get really into it. It was so cute. Here are a few photos and even a few videos that are probably worth watching if you have the time! They are cute.

Kelly teaching the kids the line dance.

Letting the kids take a shot at it!

Here I am trying to help teach!

Some of my crazy 7th graders were so focused and really getting into it. I was so surprised that they were so interested. It was really cute and they ended up doing a great job!

They even made up some of their own moves to the same dance. A strange mix between the line dance and the......chicken dance???

The girls were very focused and trying to get it right! So cute.

Check out these videos of the kids dancing.

After we had workshops all afternoon, we had a closing assembly for the kids which was awesome. They hired these ninjas to perform at the assembly. Oh my gosh, it was so awesome. I decided after that if I dated a ninja, I would feel soo sooo safe in Guatemala. I wouldn't have any doubts anymore. ha ha. They were just so cool. They also had this team of cheerleaders from some area high school that the boys were like all in love with. Seventh graders are pretty funny when it comes to that stuff. They were like, Miss Bass, I think she wants my phone number, can I go give it to her? I was like, NO, sit down!!! Anyway, it was a fun day that the kids really enjoyed.

Futbol

2009-03-12T09:10:00.002-05:00

I knew that the Latin countries love futbol (or soccer, as we gringos know it). What I didn't realize is that we would dismiss classes to go watch our high school soccer game in a tournament. Only about half of the kids really seemed to care about it, so I spent the rest of the time taking pictures of the kids that weren't really paying attention. These kids are just so darn cute, I can't seem to get enough of them. Of course, there are the ones that are complete stinkers, but some of them are so charming that I have a hard time getting mad at them! ha ha. I try to be so strict but I end up being a big pushover most of the time! Our school hosted the big AASCA (Association of American Schools in Central America) tournament this year, so this was the game we were watching. Our school vs. a school in Nicaragua. It was pretty fun. Here are some of my kiddos!

Sharon's Birthday!

2009-03-10T23:41:00.003-05:00

Birthdays are definitely one of the hardest times for me to be away from home. Not just my family, I can't remember the last time I celebrated a birthday with my family, but just being away in general. My second year in Korea was a lot better than the first, and I have a feeling my first year here in Guatemala will be hard. By the time the second May rolled around in Korea, I felt like I had my Korean family there. I don't feel like I have my Guatemalan family yet. It will come, I have no doubt, but I haven't found it yet. And this year is the big 3-0. But anyway, all that to say, we had a little celebration for our friend Sharon to help her celebrate her birthday. I had class that evening so I arrived late, but got there in time for a delicious dessert. We had chocolate fondue with a bunch of different fruits and things to dip into the chocolate. It was perfect.

Here is Stephanie slaving away on the stove over the melting chocolate! :)

All the yummy things to dip into the chocolate along with Sharon's birthday plate!

Serving it up! (And yes those are my papers I was grading at the party at the end of the table!! ha ha)

First time I've seen candles stuck in pineapple chunks! :) It worked.

The happy birthday girl!

Blow out all your candles!

What a fun night and a great group of gals!

Beach Day

2009-03-10T22:54:00.007-05:00

After a rough weekend, my sweet friends took me to the beach for the day on a Sunday. I had a really bad weekend so far, so they decided to get me away from it all and relax. It was so nice and seriously, just what the doctor had ordered. So Jorge, Heber, Kelly and I headed to the shore. We stopped first at this place that has these pools and hung out for a little while. We had a picnic lunch there and Kelly and I read and laid out while the boys tried to stay out of the sun. Weird. ha ha. Here are Heber and Jorge laying in the shade trying to avoid the sun.

Then we drove on a little further to go to Puerto San Jose, which is a close beach town. We paid like $7 or so to park in this spot where you can use the bathrooms and these little tables right on the beach to hang out. We parked there and sat around and drank a beer while watching the sunset. There are some really pretty sunsets here. Kelly, Jorge, and I relaxing. This is quite the life!

Heber and I

Watching the sun go down, one of my favorite activities. Wait, can I really call that an activity?? Ha ha. One of my favorite things.

Beach at Puerto San Jose

More sun going down

Kelly taking it all in

We're almost there.

Kelly and Heber relaxing on the beach

Breaking through the clouds. It wasn't quite clear that night but it was still pretty!

That was about as far as we got before we took off.

Wow, so beautiful.

After hanging at the beach for a few hours and watching the sun and not even talking much, we headed back to the town of Esquintla where we visited Jorge's aunts and uncles. It is like this old hydroelectric plant where his family used to work. It is not functioning anymore, but the families who used to work there still own land and can live there. It was so cool. He told me we were going to stop and say hi to his grandma. Little did I know this meant a stop at the cemetery. I was a little freaked out to say the least. This place had no lights and I have not seen so many stars in a really really long time. I really enjoyed this day.

Dancing

2009-03-10T21:33:00.011-05:00

I love dancing. I haven't gone a lot here for a couple reasons. First of all, for safety issues, being a white girl here in Guatemala has its issues. I shouldn't go out by myself of course (I wouldn't really want to anyway) but it's also not the safest thing to go out with just girls, especially white girls. It might be ok to go out with just the girls, but only once you know specific places to go. Which leads to the second issue, I don't know good places to go dancing. When I lived in CT, I had my regular place I liked to go to, Cafe Madrid, which is now shut down :( and when I lived in Korea, we always went to Club Caliente. Well, now that I finally live in a Latin country, I don't know where is safe and good to go. I don't have many Guatemalan friends for them to take me. Well, I finally got some guys that said they would take me out. So I went dancing with them on Saturday. One problem: none of them are English speakers. ha ha. It was still fun. So the next week we went back to the same place and I recruited a few of my gringa friends to go with me. We had a fun time. Here are a few pictures of the night!

Ruth, me and Kelly.

With our friend Heber, that took us.

One of Heber's friends from his soccer team, Esteban.

This is the club where we went dancing. Fun times!

Esteban and I

Out dancing....

The girls, what a fun night!

Market

2009-03-10T21:07:00.001-05:00

I had gotten in the habit of going to the market almost every Saturday with my neighbor who has a car! She offered to take me and a few other girls, so we were going almost weekly. I am not even a big fruit and vegetable eater, but for some reason, I just really enjoy going. I think it's partly because I feel like whatever I buy there, I am helping the locals, and also it's a great deal on fresh fruit. There are ladies there making fresh tortillas that I usually finish before I can get home. They are like 4 or 5 for a quetzal, which is like 14 cents. Not bad. I can also get about a half pound of fresh strawberries for about 80 cents. It's just fun to go there and feel like I am a local shopper, since I guess I technically am, since I live here in Guatemala! I took my camera one day and took a picture of the fruit stand where I usually go. It's fun to get to know the people that work there and they tend to recognize the regulars (especially the gringos....haha).

Portal del Angel restaurant

2009-03-10T20:45:00.002-05:00

This is this road that goes up this hill and some of my friends and I have seen this restaurant that looks so nice and has a terrific view of the city on that road. We have been wanting to go there, so finally one Friday night, two taxi-ful of us girls went out for a nice dinner. We had an amazing view of the city and what a fun night out. One of the ladies suggested (actually kind of mandated) that we order dessert first. ha ha. What a fun night out. Here is a view of the city lights. The pictures didn't turn out very well, because of the darkness factor and of the glass. This is the only one that kind of turned out.

Laurie and Stephanie, my neighbors!

Ruth and Linda

Visitors

2009-03-10T20:18:00.004-05:00

Back in January, I had a few visitors, my faithful girls who would come see me anywhere I was in the world! Mostly because they can fly cheap or free, but hey, who cares why, right? :) Wendy and Erin came down for a few days, during the week, so unfortunately I didn't get to play very much with them while they were here, but we still managed to have a few fun outings together. It's always fun to have people come visit, especially on foreign turf, and show them around a little bit. One of our first outings was to Hooters. It has become kind of a joke between some of my friends that I met in Korea to go to Hooters in other countries. Now, mind you, I've never been to Hooters in the United States, but when I lived in Korea, I would get these cravings for buffalo wings, especially after Alexa and I lived on them while vacationing in Hilton Head one summer. So, I had always heard that Hooters had good wings, so we went in Seoul when we saw it one day. Alexa, my feminist/vegetarian friend and I went to Hooters. ha ha. Quite the oxymoron. Well, it became a weekly or bi-weekly affair in which we would meet there to get our "wings" fix. So now it is fun to go there in foreign countries. In Korea, it was no big deal to go there. Here in Guate, it was definitely a place where only the men hang out. We were not treated very well by the waitresses and you could tell they were not too happy that we were dining there. We were the only women in the place. (Except the waitresses.) But we still had fun and enjoyed the great wings!!!!!

Showing off the Hooters Guatemala menu!

Proof we were there!

Yes, it is hooters!!!

On Tuesday, the girls got to visit my school and meet some of my colleagues and students. It was fun. Then I headed to Antigua with them for the afternoon. Here is the famous arch in Antigua. So pretty.

The big church, La Merced with Wendy and Erin posing.

La Merced

We went to this place called the Sky Bar. On clear days, it's a beautiful view of the volcanoes. It was a little cloudy this day!! :(

Wendy in the nicest Burger King I've ever seen! We made her put the crown on for the picture. We just went in to use the bathroom!!!

Wendy loved the shopping there. The markets are really cool in Antigua.

Erin had the best shoes of all - Reef flip flops with a secret drawer in the sole that you can keep some cash, your ID and a credit card. Pretty handy, that's what I will be looking for this summer. Especially nice here in Guate.

Erin bought a scarf or two from this little cute girl, so we asked her to take her picture with us. She was so sweet.

The arch at night while we were waiting for our taxi.

Long time, No blog

2009-03-10T16:51:00.002-05:00

Yes, I do realize it has been about a month since I blogged (not counting the post I just wrote about climbing the volcano in January). I am going to go through my pictures tonight and figure out what I need to blog about.

Not that I am trying to make excuses or anything, but I have been super busy!!! I bought a new car, so I spent several weekends/days making phone calls, going to look at cars, trying to figure out how to do everything here in Guate to buy a car, etc. I will write more about my car later, but that definitely took up a lot of my time. I am also working on my master's degree with a program here that my school offers, so I had class for two weeks, which pretty much put me out of commission. My program is with Framingham State University in Massachusetts, and it is comprised of nine classes. I will take 4 of those classes this year, 5 next year. The classes meet for two weeks at a time, 3 hours each evening after school and then two Saturdays for 8 hours. So needless to say, I don't feel like writing any more after my class! I also went away one weekend to the beach and did not take my computer!!! ha ha.

Well anyway, my school day is over. I am heading home in my new car. Will blog more later. Hope I am not losing my audience after such an absence. ha ha. :)

Climbing Volcan Pacaya

2009-03-10T16:28:00.009-05:00

Well, after reading this post, you might start to see why it has been so long since I have blogged. I can't, for the life of me, decide which pictures to use. ha ha. These pictures are from January - wow, I really am so far behind on my blog. I am finished with my grades now for second trimester and no grading to do tonight, so we'll see what kind of damage I can make tonight. ha ha. I climbed the Volcano Pacaya back in January after I came back from Christmas break. I was really excited about it and had no idea how hard it would be. ha ha. I am not really much of a hiker but it is an active volcano and you can't just hike up an active volcano any old day, so I went for it. I went with two families with kids, so I figured if the kids could do it so could I. Well, I did it, but I thought I was going to die a few times.

Here is a beautiful view of the Volcan Agua on our way up.

We got one horse for the kids to share. Here we are starting out, I was still up for taking pictures at this point. :)

It was absolutely breathtaking at several points. The steam in the bottom of the picture is coming from an electricity plant that is powered by the steam from the lava.

Time to change positions on the horse. I never got a turn. :( ha ha.

Looking down, so pretty

We had to run down this hill. It was much easier than trying to walk it.

We were eventually trying to get to the top. You can faintly see a line of people (dots) walking up the side of the volcano. We went to the right side, not the very top peak you see.

The volcanic rock

Lexi and Sam showing off some of the volcanic rock. Very light and sharp.

Sam found a big rock!

Hiking up, not fun for me!!!

We are about to stop for lunch. I need to get to that part back behind me.

Lexi and I taking a break.

Lunch break!

Sam, on top of the world!

We are going up where that line of people are going. This was the worst part for me, but we had to go up it to see the flowing lava, which was really cool.

Our first glimpse of the lava.

A better view of it.

I made it!!!! It was soooo hot up there.

Still there, still beathing, still alive.

We even had our guide roast marshmallows for us!

Yes, it was that hot. They were totally charred. Pretty cool.

Look how red his face is as well!

Alex (our guide) even got in on the fun!

Look how red Maya's face is!

Trekking back down, even less fun. :)

Coming down

The volcanic rock was really cool.

We made it through the hard part!!!!

Here is our group after we were pretty much done, just had to hike down the rest of the volcano, which wasn't bad at all!!! What a great day!

The pictures really don't do it justice. It was so cool. Check out the videos in the next post of the lava flowing. It was so cool. Again, don't do it justice!!

Vidoes of the Flowing Lava from Pacaya

2009-03-10T15:23:00.005-05:00

Here is some video footage from the volcano. You can tell how windy it was up there. It was soooo hot as well. The lava was so cool, just flowing like a little river.

Citibank

2009-02-05T10:55:00.002-06:00

I started banking at Citibank while I lived in New York and Connecticut. I have always been pleased with them and once I moved internationally it was nice to know that my bank was international as well. Even though there are not branches in Missouri, I do most of my banking online and have always been pleased with my service. Except of course when I have to call Citibank and I get all these Indian people that don't know if Guatemala is outside the United States or not. And no, I'm not being racist, I asked one of them once where they were located and they said said they were in India. I couldn't understand most of what they were saying and they were not very helpful. Anyway, here in Guatemala after you eat at a restaurant, they give you "mints." Usually these are Halls cough drops. Interesting how they become mints. ha ha. Anyway, after eating pizza one night, we got these mints that apparently came from Citibank!! ha ha

2009-02-05T08:38:00.004-06:00

I arrived back in Guatemala in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, one bag less, and after traveling all night. I was quite exhausted. I came home to take a nap! Now, my point of coming back to Guatemala for New Year's Eve so I could party like the Guatemalan and have a wild and crazy WARM New Year's Eve!!!!! Well, I got none of the above! ha ha. It was a great New Year's Eve, but very low key as to what I had expected. Not always a bad thing.....I guess. I ended up going over to my friend Kelly's house and she had some other friends over and we just hung out. She has a beautiful view of the city from her rooftop deck, so we went outside to watch all the fireworks. It was quite a spectacle I must admit! We didn't do any crazy fireworks, especially after our "Quema del diablo" experience, but we did have fun with our sparklers!!!

And as you can see from what people are wearing, it wasn't exactly a WARM new year's eve either!!! :)

No we didn't stay up until sunrise or anything, but these are the volcanoes from Kelly's view at her apartment!!! So beautiful!

And here are a few videos so that you can see what was going on in every direction in the city. They aren't great videos but they are still kind of fun!

Flying Back to Guatemala

2009-02-05T08:20:00.003-06:00

Wow, so this was pretty much forever ago!!! I had the bright idea to buy two airplane tickets to save money, as opposed to spending more money on only one ticket. So I bought a round trip ticket to New York and then on the inside of that ticket I bought a separate ticket from New York to Missouri. I just spent a few days at the beginning of my trip in New York so I could see Nancy and my other Connecticut friends. Was a short and sweet visit with dear friends. Well, the only downside to this ticket was when I was coming back, I wanted to be here for New Years Eve so the way the itineraries went, I flew from KC to New York on Dec 30, arriving around 8:30 pm, then hanging out in the airport to leave New York at 5:45 am for Guatemala. I figured it couldn't be that bad. It actually could have been bad, but it wasn't. Everything turned out fine. I got to Kansas City, checked my three bags in (free with my "elite" status!! ha ha), sat down at the gate, turned on my computer, had my headphones in and was content. Until the flight kept getting delayed. We ended up taking off from Kansas City about four hours late. I was sure I was going to miss all the last flights from Minneapolis to New York. Well, by the time I got to Minneapolis, I made the last flight, even had time to grab a slice of pizza after I checked at the gate and got my boarding pass. We made it into New York around 11:45 pm. I made it, and two out of my three bags made it. I hung out in the baggage claim area and the office and got my missing bag reported. The guy was a little surprised when I asked for it to be sent to Guatemala! But it wasn't a problem at all. He filled out the paperwork, and I had to take a shuttle bus with my two other suitcases to the other terminal to catch my Continental flight. Laguardia was pretty much deserted. I did find this little bakery that was open, there were about four other people in there doing the same thing I was doing, waiting for an early morning flight. So I parked, made myself at home, and started watching episodes of my tv shows that I was behind on. I think I watched about 4 episodes of Grey's Anatomy. :) These three guys came in that I thought were speaking Spanish and they ended up being from Guatemala (of course I talked to them!!!). It ended up passing the time fairly quickly and then I had two legs of first class on my way back to Guatemala, as I got upgraded due to my patronage to Skyteam! There were no other problems on my flights from New York to Guatemala. Here are some nice shots of Guate I took on my way in.

What a beautiful country!!! I love it!

Three Day Weekends

2009-02-05T07:41:00.002-06:00

I don't even know where to start so I'm just going to start from today. I knew I was behind on my blog, but I knew it was really bad when I got an email from a friend (you know who you are!!!!) and all it said was "You are waaaaaaay behind on blogging Miss Tortilla! Better get with it!" No, hey how are you? What's been going on? Ha ha. So anyway, I figured I better post something new on here. I feel like I don't have any new pictures and usually people are more interested in the pictures than they are in what I have to say! :) I do have some older pictures that I'll post next, but I will just fill you in a little bit. I totally can't figure out where the whole month of January went. I mean it's already February 5. Weird. We have tomorrow off school. No one really knows why. Someone said that the administration likes to give us at least one day off each month. Pretty nice, I think. So they chose this Friday, and we have a three day weekend. I am headed to the beach with about six other teachers. I am excited. There will be two babies there, so I will get part of my "Aunt Kammie" fix that I always seem to need. It is kind of cold here in the capital, so it will be nice to get away and get some warmth and sun!!! OK, so cold here in Guatemala at least. I think I'm becoming one of "them." By "them" I mean those warm climate people who start saying it's cold when it is 54 degrees. Which is what it is right here. But also just remember that we don't have heat in any of our buildings, so when it's 50 degrees outside at night, it's 50 degrees inside my apartment as well. Anyway, my hands are super cold right now as I am trying to type! But, we are going to the beach by Monterrico, the same place I went last time as well. It looks like next week it is supposed to get into the high 70s again which will be nice, as opposed to the high 60s only. :) We are leaving early tomorrow morning to make the most of our time there. I am so ready. Next week when we come back I have parent conferences all week, so the kids are dismissed at 1:45 every day and we have conferences scheduled from 2-4 every afternoon, Monday through Thursday. Shouldn't be too bad, just a busy week. My parents bought their plane tickets to come here for Semana Santa (Holy Week) so I've been trying to figure out what we are going to do when they are here. My mom has given me the job as travel agent, so we'll see how well I fare. :) Anyway, I am out for now, I'll see if I can get my New Year's Eve pictures posted! :)

I was doing so good...

2009-01-15T11:36:00.002-06:00

I was doing so good on getting caught up on my blog! Yes, I am still alive and well and can't wait to get caught up so I can start blogging about things in the present instead of always having to think back as to what happened three weeks ago! ha ha. So for now, I'll share with why I am a horrible blogger at times! The hardest part for me is the pictures. I love pictures and I take a ton of them and it is so hard to decide which ones I want to post on my blog to go with my stories. So I have to narrow them all down, then go through and resize them all to make them smaller so they will load quicker on blogger, and then post them and write about them. Well, ok, for me it's really hard! I can never decide what pictures! And of course now I have other things I need to blog about! I have spent the last few days with my friends Wendy and Erin who were here visiting. We had a good time but I am exhausted now! I can't wait to get home for a nap today! Well, I need to get a few things done at school before I leave and maybe I can get my pictures chosen tonight and either blog tonight or at least get the pictures done so I can blog tomorrow!!!!!

Day of Fun with Grace and Sam!

2009-01-06T13:30:00.000-06:00

So I had many days of fun with Grace and Sam while I was home but here are a few highlights! They are at such a fun age to take them to do things and they can be independent enough that they enjoy things and also that they can do some things for themselves now too! One day we were at the mall shopping, my mom, sister, Grace and I and the boys all decided to come join us for dinner and for some play time. At the mall they have this big bungee jump/trampoline type of thing that the kids can jump in. I think it kind of pulled them up and they didn't even have to do all that much jumping! Sam really enjoyed it!!! He went really high up there.

Grace enjoyed it until the end when she was going really high and when she would come down low, she would say, "Aunt Kammie, I'm getting a little scared." It was pretty funny.

One Sunday afternoon before I left, we all went out to lunch at this place called Five Guys Burgers and Fries. It had really good burgers and good homemade fries as well!!! They have peanuts there that you can eat while you are waiting for your food I guess. Grace is the nutcracker as she loves opening the peanuts for everyone. She eats a few of them but enjoys just cracking them better! In fact, she was sitting on them to crack them!

We sat Nate up on the sacks of potatoes that they make the fries out of!

Sam, probably drinking my diet Coke! ha ha

And yes, Aunt Kammie even spoils these kids with some high quality tastes by getting them Starbucks hot chocolate! It's so hard not to spoil these cute little faces though!!!!

For our special day before I left, I took Grace and Sam downtown to Crown Center. Our day started off by eating breakfast at IHOP which is definitely my thing that I do with them when I go home. They love it, as I do too! Then I drove them downtown and we got our tickets for Kaleidescope. It is this place that has a bunch of leftovers from Hallmark and the kids can make whatever crafts that they want. They even have this cool puzzle machine where you color on this cardboard piece and then put it through the puzzle machine and it cuts out a puzzle for you from your picture. Pretty cool. I have taken the kids there a few times but they are enjoying it more and more. We had some time before Kaleidescope so we went and played on the outdoor toys there since it was such a beautiful day. The kids had a good time!

With the giant nutcracker!

In front of the famous Kansas City fountains. In the summer I am going to take them back there, because you can wear your swimming suit and run through the fountains! I can't wait for them to do that. And next winter, I am going to take them back down there and take them ice skating on the rink that is there!!!

Working hard on a project at Kaleidescope!

They have all these markers, paints, tape, glue, cut up paper, etc to make crafts out of. The kids love it!!!

Fun times!

Guatemalan Sobrinos

2009-01-06T12:50:00.000-06:00

The word for niece and nephews in Spanish is sobrinos, so I am always talking about mis sobrinos here in Guatemala! I took home some Guatemalan gifts for mis sobrinos in the United States! I even tell them to call me tia Kammie, for aunt Kammie in Spanish! Grace is always asking me what her name and how I say other things in Spanish! It's really cute! Here is Grace when she opened up her Guatemalan shirt!

Sam insisted on putting his jersey on for the rest of the night after he opened his. He looked so cute!

And Nate really liked his Guatemalan kitty cat! He loves cats and can say "meow meow" so it was really cute!

I got Sam and Nate hacky sacks from Guatemala. I'm not sure they really eat them but whatever! ha ha. They really liked these, in fact, I think I need to get Grace one next time!
Don't they look cute in their little jerseys. Nate's was a little bit big but he can grow into it! :)

Little Guatemalan worker!

We weren't too successful in the photo op with our Guatemalan jerseys on. It wasn't until I bribed the kids to take them to Starbucks that they finally put them back on! ha ha.

About as good as it gets!

Me and Nate!

It's more like a dress on him!

This was as good as it got for a picture with all of us together!!! ha ha

Grace and Sam were the ones getting the bribe to Starbucks!

Grace and Tia Kammie!

Christmas Eve with the family!

2009-01-06T11:17:00.000-06:00

Not sure if this was Christmas Eve or not, but it is just so fun to be back home and be with my niece and nephews at Christmas time. I just love spending as much time as I can with them! Here we all were watching TV one morning, still in pajamas, my favorite thing! :)

On Christmas Eve, we went to church at my sister's church. My nephew was singing in one service and my niece was singing in the next service. I got to hold little sleeping Nate during the services.
Grace didn't do such a hot job singing her song! She didn't know any of the words and just stood there and looked cute. Which you can see she managed to do a pretty good job!! This was actually while we were sitting in church during the service that Sam sang in!

The pictures of Sam singing did not turn out good at all, but here is one that you can kind of see what he did. He knew the words and sang his song really well that he was supposed to be singing, but about halfway through he decided that he was kind of tired and needed to rest on the ledge in front of him!

With all the nieces and nephews on Christmas Eve after church in our Christmas clothes! (Well the kids at least!)

Me and Sam

Sam, well, just being Sam!

And more of just being Sam!

me and our little miracle, Nate!

All the girls in our family: my sister, Kellie, me, mom, sister Kristi, and Grace in the front!

Sam loves puzzles so here he was working his that he got for Christmas. He is so cute. Everytime he got a gift he wanted to stop right then and use it or play with it before he opened something else.

Sam and Grace got their scooters out to use to pass out the presents to everyone. Nate thought it looked like fun and that he needed a turn.

Nate, being cute!

Sam, writing in his notepad!

Christmas Day with the family

2009-01-06T10:49:00.000-06:00

Christmas is so much more fun when there are kids around. Nothing beats seeing the joy on their faces when they open presents that they are so excited about and watching them! I love spending Christmas day with my niece and nephews and they have added so much joy to our family. I have gotten into the habit of spending Christmas Eve at my sister's house so that I don't have to get up and get ready in the morning and am just there for when the kids are opening presents. Otherwise I probably wouldn't get to her house until like noon when everything was over! This year I went to sleep after everyone and went to bed in Sam's top bunk of his bunk beds. I'm not sure the kids knew where I was but they didnt' wake me up until about 9:30 or 10! We had a fun Christmas watching the kids open up and play with all of their new toys! Sam got a new work bench that he enjoyed playing with. Nate wanted part of it too!

Nate was a little more into opening presents this year. It was very cute! He really enjoyed this piggy bank that he got! The small joys in life!

One of the few pictures I have with Grace with her hair out of her face!

Sam in his cute Christmas pajamas!

Nate concentrating to open his gift!

Sam liked Nate's microphone as much as Nate did!

One of the joys of getting new presents is all the packaging they put on the toys these days. My sister really enjoyed taking all of the new toys out of their packages. ha ha

The kids got this new game where you put this tail around your waist and it's almost like flag football as you chase each other around on all fours and act like animals and try to get the tails off of the other players! Nate looked so cute with his tail on!

The animals posing!

I got these Christmas pajamas for Grace when she was a baby. I would say they have made their rounds! They are just so cute though! Merry Christmas!!!!

Friends Back Home!

2009-01-06T09:17:00.000-06:00

After I finally made it in to Missouri late that Friday night, I called the Millers who were driving from Colorado to Columbia, Missouri, and were going to stop off in Kansas City so we could meet for breakfast. Gretchen said they were on their way and should be in Kansas City around 6:30 or 7. I just told her to call so I wouldn't have to get up! So my phone rang around 5:30 am and they were almost there!!!! I got up, brushed my teeth, and threw some clothes on and went to meet them at IHOP! It was soooo good to see them and so fun to get to see the kids and how big they have gotten. They were not people I was definitely expecting to see over Christmas vacation so it was a really fun part of my trip! Here I am with Makena and Beckett. They are pretty much like my niece and nephew as I got to meet Makena shortly after they brought her back from Ethiopia and as I met Beckett the night he was born and kept Makena while Mike and Gretchen were at the hospital. They are a very special couple and now family to me!!!

Gretchen (my sister...ha ha) and I with the kiddos. Gretchen, after driving for about 10 hours in the car and me after traveling all day the day before and being up at 5:30 am! :)

All of us together again! It was so fun!!!

I also got the chance to meet little Ross, who being stubborn, had to wait until a few days after I left in August to decide to be born! Natalie and I were in the same kindergarten class, so it's always a lot of fun to see her and catch up and think about the fact that we have been friends for about 25 years!!! Kind of weird! I don't keep up with a lot of people from back in Missouri but it's really fun to keep up with an old kindergarten buddy! And fun to meet her little baby now!

Ross and Aunt Kammie! :)

I also had another unexpected visit with another friend that I taught with in Korea. Krista and I met up at the mall in Kansas, where she is from. I took Grace and Sam and we had a good ole time catching up. Grace took this picture of us! ha ha.

It was a lot of fun to see Krista. We took the kids on the carousel and took this self portrait of ourselves! :)

Since Natalie lives in Kansas, after we went to the mall, we stopped by Natalie's house so I could see her again and Sam wanted to hold baby Ross! It was so sweet. Then when he was done, he just kind of got up and left! ha ha. He is a good big brother, which is a good thing since I have another little niece or nephew on the way!!!!

I also keep in touch with my friend Andrea, who I went to junior high school with and we played on the same basketball team in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. She has a little boy who is almost the same age as Grace and then she just had twin girls last January. They are so cute!

Me with the twins

I took Grace and Sam down to Crown Center one day and our longtime family friend, Ed, took us into the Hallmark building where he works downtown. It was so fun. We saw this cool Hoops and Yoyo tree all decorated with only their stuff!

It was so fun to see everyone and especially seeing so many people I wasn't for sure if I would get to see or not. Friends from kindergarten to friends from Korea, what a great trip. I am constantly reminded at how important relationships are and how grateful I am to have those special bonds and friendships in my life. I have so many good friends, literally, all over the world. I am so thankful at how God uses so many different people at different times in my life.

My Flight Back to Missouri!

2009-01-05T22:30:00.000-06:00

I left New York on Friday, when there were storms being predicted to come in all night and throughout the whole day. When I woke up in the morning, schools were cancelled already for areas all over Connecticut and I was worried about if I was going to get out or not. My friend who was flying to Florida went the night before to avoid any trouble from the storms. Well, everything was supposedly on schedule when I called in the morning so I made my way to the airport, just in the nick of time and everything still appeared to be on time. I got through security, no problem, saw that my flight was delayed about 15 minutes, so I had time to grab lunch. We were leaving right about noon, but I didn't want to be starving on the plane. We all got on the plane and were ready to leave just a few minutes late. It was starting to snow outside but they said we were still going to get off. By this time, flights after mine were starting to get cancelled left and right. They told us that we had to wait to for the deicing truck to get to our plane before we could leave. Well, one thing kept happening after another ranging from: only one deicing truck in operation, that one truck running out of deicing fluid, another plane in the deicing line had a medical emergency and we had to wait for paramedics, planes getting sent back to New York and jumped ahead of us in the deicing line, only one runway getting used at Laguardia. FOUR HOURS LATER, we finally took off for Minneapolis. I had this nice lady from the Dominican Republic (my Spanish comes in handy in the US as well) who was sitting next to me that let me use her cell phone to call my sister and keep my family updated on what was going on and if I was going to get home. At one point, the gate agent came on the plane and said if we wanted to get off we could, but flights were cancelled and full and probably we wouldn't leave New York until Monday! (This was on Friday!) I opted to stay on and take my chances of getting stuck in Minneapolis! Here are some pictures from what the airport looked like in New York!

This one was before I even boarded the plane, the snow was just starting to come down!

This is what my window looked like when I got onto the plane!!!! Nothing like a little ice and snow!

Out my window, just waiting and waiting and waiting!

The planes getting deiced.

We finally made it out of New York and I saw a beautiful sunset over the clouds on my flight to Minneapolis. As many times as I've flown, I still can't get over the beauty and amazement of flying over the clouds! This was just so pretty as we flew over the clouds!

Sooooo pretty!

It's almost over!!!!

We finally made it into Minneapolis and when we got there they had a gate set up where anyone who had missed their connection, they had printed out the next flights going to your destination. There were still two more flights to Kansas City and I even had time to grab a slice of pizza and call my parents and tell them what time I was going to be home. After a full day of travel, I was finally home with my family!!!!

Trip to New York and Connecticut!

2009-01-05T20:59:00.000-06:00

When I arrived at Laguardia, I needed to look for Nancy who was supposed to land about 15 minutes before me! We found each other in the airport and boy was it a sweet reunion!!!! It was so fun to see her and to get to spend a day with her in New York City! We went and met up with her friend AJ, who we stayed with in Brooklyn for the night. We hung out, it snowed, it was just so much fun!! Here we are on the patio of a bar right next to the Empire State Building while it was snowing! So fun and sooooo great to see Nancy!

We went to this other bar later with her friend AJ where they had performances from Broadway singers singing Christmas songs. It was a lot of fun and one of the performers was Paige Davis, from Trading Spaces on TLC!!! So we got our picture with her!!!

Empire State Building during the day!

Since I moved to New York after 9/11 I never had the chance to go up into the Statue of Liberty while I lived there. Even though you can only go up into the pedastal, I still wanted to go. So Nancy and I went and visited Lady Liberty! This is the size of the actual torch that is on Lady Liberty!

The beautiful New York skyline!

It was such a pretty day out and a beautiful blue sky.

Here she is!

Lady Liberty!

Fun times with great friends!

I took Nancy on a whirlwind tour around downtown, showing her where the twin towers stood, Wall Street, the Lucky Bull, etc. Here I am with the lucky bull!

I took the train up to Connecticut so here is Grand Central Station. They had this cool light show going on, so there were pictures shown in lights all around the station. It was pretty cool!

Saying goodbye to Nancy! :( It was so great to see her!

Flying Back to the US!!

2009-01-05T18:38:00.000-06:00

Stephanie and I were on the same flight from Guatemala to Houston so we shared a cab to the airport for our early morning flight. We got through all the lines and everything quickly and got to our gate. I got bumped up to first class and enjoyed a nice quiet comfy seat on my flight! I got some great views of the volcano out of the window on my way from Guate to Houston. It is just beautiful! Check out the Volcano Agua.

So pretty!!!! Adios Guate for a few weeks!

Just some views of the city from the plane! Of course, you can see the big futbol (soccer) stadium!!!

Another view of the city....this layer of clouds was just sitting down in this valley, it was really cool!

Stephanie and I got something to eat (I had Panda Express....yum!!) at the airport and our next gates where we had to part ended up just being across from one another! Mine left about thirty minutes before hers so we hung out for a few more minutes before I had to go board! Here is Steph about to be in Boston in a few more hours!!!!

CAG December Activities

2009-01-05T17:37:00.001-06:00

We had a few school wide activities that went on in the short time that we were in school in December! One of them was on a Thursday night, it was a school event called "Noche de Luces" and for the longest time I didn't exactly know what was going to go on at this event! Everybody just said, well there is a big fireworks show and they sell food and you can buy stuff. I was like, ok. Well, the KFC of Guatemala is called Pollo Campero and I really like it! They put on a fireworks show for this event at our school. It was really good. The event lasted from like 4-8 or until it got dark when the fireworks went off. Danielle and I ventured back there and got us some Pollo Campero. There was soooo much food being sold and about anything that you could ever want to eat! We ate and ate and ate! It was all so good. We had fried chicken, papusas, crepes on a stick, and I'm sure a few other things I can't remember! It was so fun. Here is Danielle pointing out our Pollo Campero that we were craving!

Pollo Campero even brought their big chicken mascot. You can see how enormously large that thing was by Danielle and I standing in front of it!!

As teachers, we did have to volunteer for like an hour or something to help out somewhere. I volunteered to help out in cookie making. I got to help some of our cute staff kids make (and eat, of course) their cookies! Here is Maya!

Sam, concentrating! I work with his dad in 7th grade!

And Alexis, the cutest little thing around!

These were all the tables and tents that were set up for eating at Noche de Luches. All of those tents were different restaurants or individuals selling food. Some families came and were selling food from their home countries.

Churros are really popular here. They are this fried dough and here in Guate, they can be filled with various things. A lot of the kids had them filled with Nutella!!! Yummy!!!!!

The last Friday that we had school, we only had a half day of classes and then the parent organization held a lunch for all of the faculty and staff at our school. It was a really nice lunch catered by the Hyatt (I think) and they had a wealth of prizes to give away by drawing names out of a bucket! It was a lot of fun. It was probably the coldest afternoon of the week and probably even in the past few weeks so our nice lunch outside was a little chilly! It was still really fun and nice though. I think the highlight was probably when one of our three bald (by choice! ha ha) teachers got picked to win the prize of the liter bottles of shampoo and conditioner! ha ha. He was quite embarrassed as were the moms that were doing the giveaway! They found another prize to give him! It was pretty funny though. When all of the staff and faculty gets together, we form a pretty large group as you can see in the photos below!!!

A group of friends at another table! You can see a few folks with their scarves wrapped around them!!! It was a little chilly! :)

Shopping in Antigua

2009-01-05T12:15:00.000-06:00

Before I left, and while a few friends were also still here, we decided to go finish up some Christmas shopping in Antigua. The markets there are quite a bit cheaper than those in the city and you can find the same stuff. I always have this problem when I am shopping in another country, how traditional of a gift to get and to make sure it is something they are really going to use or if it is worth it to just go back to the US and have to fight crowds and do my Christmas shopping back there. I have gotten to where I hate Christmas shopping anymore because it seems like we end up wasting a lot of money. Especially now, living in a country where I see people every day that don't have money for food or clothes and things like that. Not that we don't have those people as well in the United States, but we also have welfare systems set up and those people can go places and get help. Here, the people that are suffering from poverty don't have many options or sources to go to for help. So anyway, off from that tangent, I made a trip to Antigua on Sunday before I left. One thing I love about going to the market is seeing all of the vibrant colors in all of the fabrics and textiles that are available. Here are a few pictures that I took from the market.

These are all like table runners, placemats, napkins, etc.

Once we finished shopping and were heading out to the car, we saw this processional leaving the cathedral down there. I have no idea what it was for, but it was kind of interesting. Here are a few shots from that.

All these people were lining the streets and carrying this really heavy thing down the street. Maybe the virgin Mary??

Any guesses as to what it is?