Trip 2, Day 1

We started our day around 3am at the Embassy Suites in Nashville. Everything went smoothly with our flights and we arrived in Guatemala City around 12:30 p.m. We had arranged to get AnnaMaria at the Marriott at 2 p.m. Dona Aura (the facilitator) and her daughter arrived a few minutes before 2 with AnnaMaria. AnnaMaria's hair was up in tiny little dog ears! I was a little concerned that Blanca (foster mom) wasn’t with them. But, I learned later that she was spending Holy Week with her grown children. Dona and her daughter had been taking care of AnnaMaria for a few days.

Sonia, our translator, was a little late for our 2 p.m. meeting. Communication was quite impossible, so we all basically sat around and smiled at each other. It’s funny how that was not at all awkward though.

AnnaMaria seemed to remember us. She was happy to come to us. We learned that she has had chicken pox. It doesn’t look like a very bad case; she has a few spots still drying up. She has much better control of her head and neck, but still wants to hold her head mostly to one side. She also still hates to be on her belly. We think Blanca holds her all the time. That’s all very common.

Sonia and her friend, Moe, drove us to Antigua in two separate cars. Sonia usually has a van, but her brother took it to El Salvador, which I think is only about 2 hrs away. We divided up boys in one car and girls in the other. Moe’s English is very good also, so it was a nice drive. Traffic can sometimes be backed up all the way from Guatemala City to Antigua during Holy Week, so we were very fortunate to have little traffic and made the drive in about 45 minutes.

It’s been a little rainy, so some activities were postpone. Time really means nothing here; people seem to be willing to wait forever! Grandma Janice would go crazy!!!

We got to watch people make carpets in the streets. They block off a section of the cobblestone street and cover a rectangle with sawdust. Then they go over it with all sorts of colors of sawdust applied through stencils. They look like tapestries and are beautiful!

We saw the parade in front of our hotel. It started just before dark. There were several large statues carried on people’s shoulders. Everyone wore black and there was a lot of smoke and incense. Rather than a celebration it was more of a mourning of Jesus in the tomb.

Guatemala is on Central time, but not Day Light Savings, so it is an hour earlier here than at home.