Day 4 1/15/09

I think we'll be able to survive living in Guatemala. It is going to be a HUGE adjutsment!! Not just the physical differences, the language differences, the driving differences, and the eating differences....to name a few. It was pretty funny when we went to dinner last night there was a sign out front that said if you are smaller than this height you get to eat for free. Chris pointed out that none of our kids (Not even 3 year old Laina) were short enough. I guess that's one drawback to having tall kids....no free meals for them!! Today we went up to the temple site. It was so cool to stand up there and take pictures. (Yes, I'll post them when I get home). The soil testing people dug a couple huge holes about 15' each. Anyway, one of the holes was growling at us. Come to find out a wild dog had fallen down the hole. There were wild dogs all over. They rank up there with pigeons for me. YUCK!! The lot below the temple is a big field also, There is a squatters tent under one of the big trees. While we were there a bunch of police officers came over. We just assumed that they were being kicked out but after about an hour and ten million more cops, reporters and vehicles later, we realized that somebody had died in the tent. The funeral home trucks were all lining up to take the body away. It was pretty sad to see how severe the poverty is. Hopefully while we are in Guatemala we'll be able to find ways that we will be able to help the community and to also get out a little bit. It is definitely going to be difficult to make friends there. I already told Chris that I'm making chocolate chip cookies the first day to give to the security guard. I definitely need to have him on my good side. We decided not to bother looking at the other houses today. We're pretty much set on the first house we looked at. It has a park and areas for the kids to run around and play. There are also construction people working on other houses. I asked Chris if they would pay Cole a buck to help out. He laughed at me and said that they don't have an extra buck. I asked if Cole could pay them a buck to let him help out. Cole really seems to enjoy having a job! We also went shopping to get an idea of how much it will cost to furnish the place. It was pretty reassuring to see that the stores have EVERYTHING we could ever need. We even went to a toy store!! They had the Simpsons operation game in spanish. After our shopping, it was time to drive back to Guatemala City. When we drove to Quetzaltenango, we took the high roads. (Up north in the mountains or highlands). For the drive back we decided to take the coastal road. I am so glad that we did. It was still very windy and crazy drivers but it was GORGEOUS! I can not wait to get my pictures downloaded. Granted they are all taken from the back seat of a car driving super fast and winding all over. There were fruit/vegetable stands all over. At one point a lady pulled some vegetables out of her garden area and ran them out to the truck waiting on the side of the road. We saw banana trees which I have been waiting the whole trip to see. They have a ton of varieties of bananas here. We also saw what we think were coconut trees. There were tarzan vines that someday I am going to stop and try to swing on. They also had rubber trees. Not exactely sure what they use them for. (Duncan no comments please!! (: )The drive also took us through the sugar cane fields. It is harvesting season so the roads were full of huge trucks loaded up with sugar cane. A lot of the pieces would fall out of the trucks so they had workers going down the road picking up the pieces. We pulled over and grabbed a piece to check out. It was weird to think that sugar comes out of those things that look like a stick! We made it back to Guatemala City in about 4 hours. It has been a long exhausting trip and I am very excited to go back home and see my kids, sleep in my own bed, and eat something that I don't have to learn how to say in Spanish!!