Day Five

Hi everyone! Natalie and Vasily here. Today was an exciting day because it was our first day of service! After breakfast, Olga gave us a presentation about the geographical layout and history of Los Andes. During the presentation, Olga mentioned that avocados were first discovered in Guatemala, and Vasily was devastated to learn that guacamole did not in fact get its name from Guatemala.

We visited the community health center and met Carlos, the sole community doctor. He knows where every single family lives in the community, keeps records of all the children in order to monitor their nutrition, and is even trained as a midwife. It was so inspiring to hear about his efforts to keep the residents of Los Andes healthy and medically informed.

Afterwards, we met the community partners we would be working with for the next five days. We divided into teams and worked together to clean and paint the primary and secondary schools. The teenagers our team was paired with were named Zuriam and Elmer, and although there was a definite language barrier, we were still able to bond over Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez. It also rained for the first time since we’ve been here, but that didn’t prevent us from completing our afternoon service.

During the evening, Olga set up a tortilla-making competition to see which one of us could make the “best” tortilla. Although salt was not part of the tortilla making process, many people used it as their main ingredient when making their tortilla. Even though many of the competitors tried very hard, their final product lacked many of the properties that make a tortilla edible. The judges, who felt very bad for the effort put in versus the tortilla that came out with gave first and second place to tortillas that resembled flattened road-kill. Third place, whose tortilla’s circumference equaled, swallowed his pride in order to avoid another wide-scale emotional breakdown from AWB Guatemala students. (Vasily)

Can’t wait to see what these next 4 days of service will bring!!