Loose ends are such trouble to tie up... The end of the school year is in full swing here at Monte Cristo and it seems so odd that I’m about to head out for six weeks. Just yesterday we had our school pageant and my contestant won!

Even as activities gear up around here, I’m so ready to come home. At the very top of my list is playing with adorable nephew after missing out on the entire first year of his sweet life.

I’m ready to hang out in Sevier park and play at Percy Priest. There will be Chick-fil-a waiting for us once we get off the airplane. And you better believe I’ll be at Frothy Monkey ordering a London Fog before y’all even know it! Can’t wait to see you, Nashville. The 6 day countdown is here!

I have learned so much in the short amount of time I have been here so far. For example, I learned that it is very easy to be deported from South Africa and banned for five year if you overstay your Visa (No this hasn’t happened to me but I do know of plenty of people it has happened to). I have also learned that it is not a good thing to call a English girl ‘thick’. Apparently that means you are stupid not voluptuous (Oops). I have learned that no matter how far away from home you are, you will still hear about all of the craziness that goes on. If I went off of what I heard from the internet and news I would think that the US is falling apart right now. But I know better than to believe that there is no good going on in the US because the bad news will always reach you before the good does. In relation to that, I have learned that no amount of time can go by to make people less ignorant (and I use the word ignorant purely in the fact that people just don’t know what is going on in the world around them). In relation to that, I learned that many people joke about Americans thinking that Africa is one country but the reality is that many people do (it is actually ridiculous). I have also learned a lot about myself.  I learned that I have to make lists to make my life feel less hectic (I actually did that in school so I do not know why I figured I wouldn’t have to do that once I left school). I have learned to make genuine connections with people no matter how long they are here because you can get to know some amazing people. I learned that no matter how much you may think you won’t like someone, it is fairly easy to find the good in everybody no matter what (I thank Kristin for that because she had an amazing heart). I have learned so much more but the point of this post is that you will never stop discovering new things about yourself because situations will always change and your environment affects who you are and what you think. It is okay to grow into a new person and learn from the people who surround you, that doesn’t change who you are it just elevates your understanding of people.

Now for my bi-weekly update! I think I have officially found the most relaxing and beautiful place on earth (well except for the fact that there are huge birds that like to run down hills and scare the living daylights out of me). But Kirstenbosh Gardens are literally a oasis for me. I could go there every weekend and never get bored of going. The air there smells different, the trees look majestic, and the food there is amazing (the air may seem fresher to me because my room is very stuffy). I had the loveliest time laying out on the grass and chatting with my housemates. I also went on a wine tour that takes you to two different wine regions here in Cape Town. South Africa is the 8th largest distributor of wine in the world but they have some of the most unique wines I have ever tasted. I learned how to sample and drink wine to optimize the taste so I can look fancy the next time I have wine in public (remember the 5 ‘S’: sight, swirl, sniff, sip, savor). I’ve had the best two weekends with weather which gets me excited about summertime here!

This is a sign in Kirstenbosch Gardens

These are some of the views in the garden. I didn’t get many pictures

This is Freddy the goat. He lives on a vineyard where he provides the cheese to compliment the wines.

These are the vineyards, dogs, and wine I saw on my tour.

Now for some pictures of my ride to work on a late day... The views are incredible!

I’ve been in Guatemala for almost one year now. When I reflect on all that’s taken place, I am amazed at the changes I’ve experienced in my personal life.

One year ago, I could barely introduce myself in Spanish.

One year ago, I never wanted to be a school teacher.

One year ago, I wanted Middle School to be only a distant memory.

One year ago, I had no true Guatemalan friends.

One year ago, I had no idea what 2014 had in store.

Me at the beginning of our Guatemalan journey.

Now, in August of 2014, I speak far more Spanish than English on the average day. I stand in front of a classroom of awkward middle schoolers and teach them my native language through my newly adopted one. I spend my days with amazing co-workers and friends “cultivating young people” and developing small businesses.

And you know what? I love it.

The wonderful team I work with at Monte Cristo.

As part of my job at CEMOC, I accompany the students in the school bus every morning and afternoon. One aspect of that is that I get to see them outside the classroom environment. I get to see them waiting at the bus stops with their parents, talking with friends, and being vulnerable in front of their peers. Coincidentally, some our biggest troublemakers at school are on my bus route. And I get to see them be just a little bit vulnerable as well. The popular, “tough guy” routine is tough to keep up 100% of the time as a middle schooler, you know.

Two Fridays ago, my most “troublesome” student sat next to me on the bus route. During the 45 minutes we spent bouncing up and down on the dirt roads together, I realized that he’s just a kid. And beyond that, I realized that I love him. I realized that I genuinely love every single student on my bus. I know their interests, their dreams, their fears... And I love them.

Chatting with some of my smartest 8th grade girls last week.

2014 has been a crazy adventure, but it’s still not over yet. Thanks to the Lumos grant, I know that Chimaltenango, Guatemala is exactly where I need to be. It’s where I’ve found my passion and my service. I won’t be leaving for good anytime soon.

My 93 students

Maybe a lot of you saw Hilary’s picture on Facebook.  I guess I haven’t talked about it a lot.  We have exactly three weeks left with the Lumos program, but Hilary and I are already making plans to return back to Guatemala in October.  So I guess it’s not too much longer until much, much longer.

The past year has been an unbelievable experience- all made possible by the funds we received from Belmont’s Lumos grant.  The plan was to come down for a year to study Monte Cristo’s perfect development model, but we discovered pretty early on that they were far from perfect and needed a lot of help to realize their dream to become self-sustainable.  Hilary and I have been working seven days a weeks for the past year to help them start an array of small businesses, and the progress we have made as a team in incredible.

The truth is that a year just isn’t long enough to make a sustainable change in this type of development environment, and we have found a place on Earth where we wake up passionate every day to work until sundown.  Simple enough- we’re not ready to leave.  So we are coming back in October to continue our work with Monte Cristo indefinitely.  If we haven’t seen you in the last year, we hope to see you in September.  Otherwise, we’ll catch up when you come to visit us in Chimaltenango!

Eric

Whoa! Where has this week gone? Actually the past two weeks have been a blur to me. When you love what you are doing, it is easy to let time fly by! But these last two weeks have flown by for many reason in addition to that!

For one week straight I was in bed sick (No it has nothing to do with Ebola. That outbreak is in West Africa which is nowhere near where I am). I started the week with a really annoying sinus infection and an equally annoying stomach ulcer. Somehow I managed to upset two areas of my body at the same time. That had me in bed and highly medicated for Monday-Thursday. Thursday night/Friday Morning took a turn for the worse. I managed to pick up a stomach virus that had me up all night and crying to go to the doctor’s office in the morning. At one point it felt like someone had a death grip on my stomach and was squeezing everything out of me at once (that is the pretty way to describe what was happening). To settle my stomach enough for me to hold my medicine down, the doctor had to give me a shot in my butt. I have no idea what he shot into me but I know that I felt ten times better (which was still bad) about a hour later. I slept the whole weekend trying to get better enough to come back to work on Monday. I wasn’t feeling 100% by Monday but at least I had enough energy to get out of bed so off to work I went! It felt good to get out of the house because everybody else is slowly catching the stomach bug I had so there are too many germs here for me.

The amazing thing about all of that is the cost of me getting better. My doctor’s appointment on Monday cost me R380 which is roughly $38. The bag of medicine I received to treat everything cost me R368 which is roughly $36. My second visit to the doctor, including the injection into my behind, cost me R393 which is roughly $39. Finally, my second round of medicine cost me R130 which is roughly $13. Thinking about that in the context of ZAR (South Africa’s currency), those trips to the doctor would have been expensive. But I still see things in USD and I would have paid ten times more for everything I had to pay for last week! Health care is extremely affordable here so far.

This week back at work has been smooth. There is something that was said to me yesterday that made me think more about the impact the organizations I work for make. Yesterday, I was doing the finances and putting everything into the spreadsheet as it needs to be done every month. While in the process of entering everything in, it is easy to just see numbers and a process that is taking up your time. But if you look a bit deeper into what you are doing, you can see every fundraiser, every donor, every event, and everything the organization has done that month to affect change  in the communities we work in. You get to see the action behind what we are asking people to donate to and that is the coolest thing to me! After looking at the spreadsheet that way, my day began to feel a lot less like work.

Over all, that weather is slowly getting better here but it is still freezing to me most days. I am back healthy again and I have picked up plenty of vitamin C and different things to fight off sickness. This wouldn’t be my blog if something hasn’t happened to an electronic of mine but my local phone (not my expensive Samsung that I protect with my life) was knocked out of my hand while I was texting and never to be see again. But I bought a really cheap phone so it is not a problem to get another one at some point. I just need to get a bungee cord connected to all of my electronics so if someone tries to take them I can just snatch it back up to me. I am determined to have an incident  free life/blog soon!

Oh and this is the first August in YEARS that I will not be heading back to school! This is weird and also means I have to start paying my student loans soon, Yikes!

Sorry, no pictures this time but the new initiative I am fundraising for could use your help so please follow this link to learn all about it: http://www.happyafricafoundation.org/project-detailed.html?pcode=30

We had an amazing event last week launching Queen Bee here in our local community of Chimaltenango. We advertised all the products Monte Cristo sells: coffee, fresh vegetables, metal work, wooden furniture, and last but not least- Queen Bee!

The beautiful set up of Monte Cristo’s new store.

The Queen Bee corner

The ribbon cutting of the store front.

Some of our 9th grade students showing off their dance moves for the audience.

Our Queen Bee table display.

Some of our 7th and 8th graders helping advertise the fresh vegetables.

We’re so thankful for the way our Monte Cristo community has completely supported and encouraged the launch of Queen Bee. As one new product amongst many incredible Monte Cristo ventures, we’re confident that CEMOC will achieve it’s goal of self-sustainability in the next year and a half.

I think Hilary and I expected to find a lot of things in Guatemala.  Most definitely the beauty of the countryside, and even more certainly adventure.  I think we expected a freewheeling love, an easy and windswept affection for each other and marriage.  All of these things we found.  What we didn’t expect, at least not to the measure it has been given, was to find a family.  The members of the Zamora-Cardenas family have integrated us fully into their family from day one and have never asked a single thing from us.  They show us an unconditional outpouring of friendship and care with no expectation of anything in return.  They are a new and irrevocable part of our lives.  I don’t think there is anything more valuable in the world.

It is my third week in Germany and I now feel like I am at home. The more things I see and the more I learn about the country’s history, the more I am fascinated by every inch of the country that I have encountered.

Last weekend, the group of students went to Dresden for the weekend. While the highpoint for me was seeing my friends for the first time in months, I have to say that the city is easily my favorite location in the world (note: I have not seen too much of the world). Walking in Dresden, I truly felt as though I was in a different country- where I really should try to speak German.

Spoiler alert- you never need to know German to live in Berlin. Everyone is at least bilingual.                                                                                                                 

Anyway,  Dresden was fantastic. I made the decision two hours after we got off the train that I would spend my last week or so there. I think I would stay forever if I could. It is large, but everyone is calm and happy. Saturday evening, friends and I hung out by the Elbe and just talked. It was so peaceful. Sunday we walked around New Town and saw some amazing graffiti and then we played in the fountain. There were also naked children in the fountain.

I am hoping that my next post, I will be able to do partly in German. My class has been one of the hardest I have ever had, but I am learning a ton. I can already write sentences! Things are fantastic. 

Let’s begin today with some GREAT news! My Computer is FIXED! I finally got in contact with my brother who informed me that my computer had a virus on it! Naturally I panicked because I have no idea how to get rid of a virus nor did I want to pay for someone knowledgeable in this area to fix it. My brother gave me the easiest solution to end my problem... wipe the computer and start over! That would be fine if I had an external hard drive to save all of my files but I did not so I needed a plan B.  Plan B turned out to be a lot less destructive, I refreshed my computer to before I was having my server connection issues and everything is working perfectly again! I was praying extra hard throughout the whole process because I would have been devastated if I lost any of my documents.

I would love to say that all of my electronics are in good shape and in my possession but that would be too easy! Of course as I am fixing my computer I manage to drop my phone and crack the screen severely! But do not worry (mom and dad), there are plenty of places I can get the screen fixed here and I will stay there with my phone as it is getting fixed so I will not have another store of how my phone got stolen (*insert reassuring smile*).

On to more eventful news, last week was #beyondtheroots!!! This was an exciting time for me because I was finally able to return to the place that made me fall in love with Cape Town, Red Hill! Red Hill is a unique township because it is an informal settlement built on private land. This means that there are no permanent structures in the whole community. The government is renting the land off of the owner until a more permanent solution is found but the community has been located there for several years. In addition to uncertainty about where they live, Red Hill’s location makes it a difficult place to live. As the name would suggest, Red Hill is remotely located on top of a hill/mountain. If you do not own a car or have a way to get up and down the hill it can prove difficult to find a job or get to school. I fell in love with this community because I met some of the most cheerful people living there. Not that people are not just as happy in the other townships but I just felt something different up there.

African Impact’s Beyond the Roots initiative not only celebrated Mandela Day this past Friday but also its 10th birthday! Across our many projects, 10 gardens were built to promoted sustainable food sources and healthy eating habits. Each project’s garden was impressive within itself but we had a unique challenge with Red Hill being an informal settlement. The government can choose to move the whole township at anytime so anything built there must be able to move with the community. With the smart thinking of some of our incredible staff we were able to build a hanging garden at Red Hill Preschool. We partnered with Can Grow to plant bean sprouts in hanging cans and we also built a hanging herb garden made out of recycled soda bottles (that myself and Sarah cut and drilled holes in most of Thursday). The preschool is also in need of a new stove to cook lunch for the children during the day so I organized bake sale to cover some of the costs. To make the bake sale fun to the volunteers in the house, we made it into a cooking competition putting four teams against each other in the kitchen. The baked goods ranged from cookies to teddy bear cupcakes and I also baked up a batch of carrot cake cupcakes. All of the treats were sold at the Beyond The Roots celebration and all of the proceeds are going towards the purchase of a new stove! I could go on about Beyond The Roots but I will not make you read an essay right now. In the end it was a great day! Oh and I got to see the little girl that stole my heart! Pinky!

I am having such an amazing time here in Cape Town and I wouldn’t change this experience for the world! It has been hard living in a house that I am constantly getting close to new friends and then seeing them leave a few weeks later but I have to say that this wouldn’t feel the same if I wasn’t getting to know people who live all over the globe. I do know that I will be making a trip up to Canada to see Naznin when I get back to the states! And I have so many houses to crash in if I ever go to Holland I cannot count! After Holland I can hop on over to Ireland or England to see some people. Oh and I cannot forget about Singapore, I have to go visit my (new) brother there at some point! And then I will head down to Alabama to visit some friends close to home! I know that so many adventures will come out of this one trip that I am excited to see who else I will meet! There is so much beauty in change that I can’t help but to be excited about everything! I will just miss all of my friends dearly as they leave!

I ended up writing you a essay anyways but I have so much to tell you guys about! But I will leave you with some picture to look at (FINALLY)!

This was the sunrise one morning on the way to work (yes mom I am up before the sun most days)

I went sightseeing one weekend and had a blast!

I thought these were cool! They sit outside of the courthouse to remind people of where the country has come from.

Here are some of my kids from the aquarium trip striking a STARFISH pose! Oh I had to show that one of the girl’s name is Beyonce!

This is Thuva my Singapore brother! We had a group session to remind him about why he is awesome!

These were some cookies from the bake off!

I come from a different world. I went to the same private Christian school for 13 years of my life. My world set me up to be an over-achiever and perfectionist. Never did I recieve lower than a B- in any of my classes: elementary school, middle school, high school, or university. I was friends with my teachers. I had their cell phone numbers, we went to the beach together... sure there were teachers I didn’t like, but I always treated them with general respect.

When my students at Monte Cristo rejoice with merely passing my English class with a 60%, I fail to relate. When my students talk back to me and treat me disrespectfully with out reason, I fail to relate.

On Monday, we were forced to stop our 9th grade class because of the extravagant amount of vulgar language, heckling, and disrespect.  As a result, the director of the center came to speak to the students and inform them that at 4:30 there would be a meeting with all the students and their parents about the continued discipline problems in this grade, not just in English class, but across the board.

When 4:30 came along, everyone was nervous. Even Eric and I were jittery. The meeting began simply enough, the director spoke to the parents and them gave the children the chance to talk with their parents about what had occurred. Then, the floor was opened for the parents to say anything they would like.

One mother from the rural community stood up, shaking with frustration and anger saying, “Tell me now if my son is the one doing these terrible things! Tell me now if he’s one of the students causing all these problems! Because listen here, if he is, I’m pulling him out of the school today. Today! There are no more opportunities left. We sacrifice for him to come here and learn and if all he’s doing is messing around and creating problems- he’s gone. He’s more use to us working in the fields to help put food on the table than wasting time here if he’s not setting his mind to learning.”

Now, I have this problem where if other people cry, I instinctively cry with them. When Wilmer’s mom spoke those words through her tears I began to sob as well. I remembered that I don’t come from this world. Where I’m from, education is a right that everyone deserves and expects to receive. Where I’m from, full-time jobs are for adults, not 9th graders.

As Guatemalan as I often feel after the past 11 months I’ve spent here, Monday taught me that I have to remember that I’m from another culture. My expectations and perspectives don’t always translate.

I’m happy to say that Wilmer’s mom didn’t pull him out of CEMOC. He’ll likely graduate with his middle school diploma in October. I hope he finds himself in anywhere but the fields.