In my post about Carlos and graduation, I promised a little update on my other two kids, who I also saw during the graduation trip.

Paulina is doing well and getting excellent marks in school.  Here she is wearing a medal she won in a speech contest.  Now to say I’ve watched Paulina come out of a shell would be an understatement of great magnitude.  With a lot of encouragement from one of her teachers, I think the word she used would be roughly translated as badgering, she agreed to enter this contest with great reluctance.  She seemed to get all nervous all over again when talking about the days leading up to the contest.  But she won second place in her age category and I think you can tell from the picture how proud and happy she was with her success.  The other thing I want to tell you about Paulina is what an incredibly nice girl she is.  Her older sister is exactly the same way.  Her mom is doing a great job raising these two girls on her own.

I thought you’d enjoy this picture.  These are some little friends from next door to Paulina’s house.  They often come over to visit and hang out whenever the giant gringo appears. 🙂

Edgar is also doing very well in school.  He’s absolutely driven to get the best grades and he’s disappointed, maybe a little too much, when he is not the top in every subject.  His younger brother, Ericsson, not so much.  But he still does well in school too.

The whole family is very musical.  I’m pretty sure I told the story about the drum set in my first Padrino post.  This is a pic of the two boys, that’s Edgar seated.  During this visit they both sang a song solo and once together.  They have beautiful voices and their duet brought a tear to the eye of the social worker, Alma, who accompanies the visit.

During this November visit I told them I would be back to Guatemala  for a couple of months very soon, and we made a plan for me to come to Ericsson’s birthday party on March 2nd.  Look for a post about it then.   I promised to bring the cake.

About a year ago I wrote a post called Padrino.  It was about the kids I currently sponsor here.  This post serves as a nice update to that one.

This past November, I came to Guatemala because one of my kids, Carlos, was graduating from high school.  Carlos focused on accounting in school and wants to go on to some more studies.  He’ll be an entrepreneur, and a good one.  This is Carlos during the procession.  Each student is introduced individually as they enter the outdoor auditorium.  There is no way to adequately describe what a huge life step this is for kids in Guatemala.  Less than a full generation ago, it’s a step few kids had the opportunity to take.  Not that many years ago a paradigm shift began to occur in the new generations of parents with school age children.  One of the things that poverty drives is the need for each member of a family to contribute to the income of the family.  When kids were old enough to work, they did.  Becoming school age was often interrupted by becoming work age.  Add to that the fact that going to school costs money, and you have a culture where kids work instead of attending school.  In Guatemala, so called public school, is not just a matter of getting your child to school.  It’s like getting your child to private school.  All expenses related to going to school, tuition, books, uniforms, and supplies have to be paid for.  School was not even close to being affordable for most families.  So what changed?  As if by divine providence, ok, I’m just going to go ahead and call it Divine Providence, parents began to understand that their kids would have better opportunities at life by going to school instead of spending all day in the fields or on the streets selling trinkets, or bread, or tortillas, or anything that people might buy.  Couple that with organizations like Common Hope, and hundreds of others in Central America and throughout the world.  They have learned to connect people of resource and willingness, to families who want their kids to go to school but need help doing so.  Good people led me to sponsoring kids, and I like to think I’ve led other good people to doing the same.

I experienced the great honor of being asked to speak at this Graduation.  I was the final piece of the program and when I got on stage this is what I saw.  It was overwhelming and humbling.  That’s Carlos right in the first chair in the lower right of the photo.  The first thing I said to the gathering was that I wished they all could stand up here and see what I’m seeing.  I fumbled for my phone because I wanted so badly to capture that moment.  They were all laughing and I was holding back tears.  It was perfect. 

After the ceremony there was lunch and all kinds of various game stations to visit.  There were memory games, lego building challenges, bean bag toss, pickle ball, karaoke, (is that how you spell that?), and many more.

In this picture we were in line to visit a photo booth.  That’s Carlos of course, and his parents.  They are exact examples of the parents I described earlier in this post.  Also in the picture is Lesbia, a social worker for Common Hope.  She has accompanied me on all my visits with Carlos and his family over the years, and has become a great friend.  She has also traveled to Minnesota and spoke at Common Hope’s annual banquet a couple of years ago.  The game station idea was new.  It was great fun and a great way for sponsors and grads and their families to spend time.

The day did not pass without one other very emotional reunion.

In my speech I spoke of the heart ache of losing a sponsored child.  My little gift Ericka died of renal failure when she was just thirteen years old.  During the years she was with us, I worked on construction projects with her father and brother, and so got to know the whole family very well.  Unbeknownst to me, one of her younger sisters was also graduating on this day, and her mom and another sister were there.

After the ceremony they came and found me and in this photo we had all just finished a great cry together.  They were so thankful that I had honored Ericka’s memory in my speech.  Even now, as I’m writing about it, I get emotional all over again.

Which brings me to a good place to stop for now.  I’ll follow this post with another about my November visits with my other two kids.

First, let me start with this disclaimer; I am not one who believes that my everyday life is all that interesting.  However, …………

I do get frequent questions in person, and in texts and emails, about what I do when I’m down here.  How do I spend my time?  So last night I decided to write a post about my day, which is now yesterday.

I started my day with coffee.  Pretty interesting so far, huh? 🙂  Remember that coffee maker situation?  I went to the store and bought one.  Which in the long run is much cheaper than buying my coffee by the cup for two and a half months.  Have no fear though, my favorite coffee hangouts will still see me plenty.  With coffee in hand, this day as most, started with reading.

After a trip up the block for a muffin, a couple of hours of reading and catching up with emails and the dreaded Facebook, it was time for a run.

Running in Guatemala is an exercise in survival.  Some of you who saw me shortly after my stay down here a year ago, probably remember I returned with a nasty scrape above my right eye and two black eyes.  What didn’t show were scrapes on both knees and one elbow, and a nasty big bruise on my right hip.  All of which, at my age, seem to take a long time to go away.  Back to survival.  I almost don’t know where to begin.  The only roads with any kind of smooth surface are too busy with traffic, too clogged with fumes, and no room on the sides.  If one of these thoroughfares does have some room, it is typically lined with fences or walls that have nasty little bits of rusty barbed wire hangin’ about.  On the side streets, the footing itself is challenge enough. (See description above of last year’s mis-step).  The cobbles have twisted ankles lurking everywhere.  The sidewalks are narrow, uneven, and often slanted.  To step up or down from the cobbles to the sidewalk is often up to a foot or so.  Any cover or grate along the path is not to be trusted.  There are numerous driveways that require a step down and a step back up, and bay windows that protrude over the sidewalk.  Oh, and did I mention the dog poop to be dodged.  To say nothing of the dogs themselves.  Many of them not friendly like me.  I shouldn’t even get started about the dogs, but you’ll have to allow me this small rant.  Guatemala has an ever growing problem of stray dogs and people who do not control their dogs.  In some areas it is reaching a level of a threat to public health and the common good.  Having to stop and face down a dog is becoming to common an occurrence.  One of my former sponsor kids, Kimberly, was bitten while running just the other day.  I should stop.  I should have stopped at dodging the doo doo.  It makes me crazy.  In spite of all of that, I still run all the time when I’m down here because it’s the only way to get some real exercise.  On to more pleasant things.

After a shower it was off to noon mass at San Francisco.  One of the changes in my routine this time is that I don’t have morning mass a quick five minute walk away.

The Church of San Francisco is about a twenty minute walk from home, so I’m figuring out how to satisfy my fondness for daily mass by planning for noon or 5 o’clock when I can.

After mass I was craving (and needing) vegetables, so I headed over to an asian place near the center of Antigua that I’ve been wanting to try.  I ordered chicken and vegetables which came in a portion that can only be described as a small mountain.  I also ordered some egg rolls thinking I’d get an order of a couple.  Oh no, no, no, grasshopper! It came as an order of eight.  I’m either proud or embarrassed to say I ate everything.  I would like to call what happened next a nice walk home, but it really was more like a sloshing stroll.  The trip, which  normally would take about twenty five minutes, took forty five.  It mercifully ended with me beaching myself on my bed.  Thankfully with enough recovery time before an evening plan with my Guatemalan family.

Part of the family is pictured here at Sunday breakfast during my last visit.  Seide is in the foreground, then Lourdes, then Samantha.  Not in the picture are Renato, who took the photo, Stefani, and Kimberly. Kimberly is actually Lourdes’ cousin but is like another daughter and lives with the family.  She’s the same Kimberly mentioned previously in this post.  I sponsored her “off the books” to help Renato and Lourdes with their support of her.  The story of how she came to live with them is not a pretty one.  But now she has graduated from high school, went on to get a degree in Hospitality Management, and is now working in one of the exclusive hotels in Antigua.  I’ve known Renato since he was in his early twenties and I’ve come to think of him like another son.  Lourdes frequently tells me that I’m the closest thing to a father that she’s had in her life, and the girls all refer to me as Grandpa Eric.  Voila.  Guatemalan family.

Meanwhile, back at the post about my day………..

Over the years I’ve been to all kinds of functions at the girl’s school.  Stefani is on the Student Council and they sponsored a show for a group of seniors who have been studying Improv as an extra curricular activity.  So last night we all went over to the school for the show.  The group was a complete delight, very funny and talented.  What they did with the spur of the moment challenges, which came from both the MC and the audience, was truly AMAZING.  

So I’ll end this post with telling you about a meeting I had this morning with my young friend Erin.  It’s pertinent to this post only because it speaks to how I’ll be spending my time.  Erin is a Minnesotan who works for Common Hope down here and is the coordinator for volunteer activities.  As long as I’m here for an extended visit, we were plotting ways I can plug in and help out during my stay.  Whatever of that I might think would be interesting to you, I will surely write about.  Right now I can tell you it’s going to start with a sanding and varnishing project of the shelves and bookcases in the day care center.  I probably won’t be writing about that one. 🙂

I am well and hope you all are too.

Sometimes old guys get confused when they get off the bus, so lucky, I have this sign to always get me going in the right direction home.

If Guatemala had suburbs, Santa Ana would be an inner ring suburb of Antigua.  Where I am living on this trip, as the crow flies, is not very far from where I’ve been staying the last couple of years.  But it is quite a different world from staying in the heart of Antigua.  Picture small town America versus, say, St. Cloud or Mankato.

Central Squares are common in Guatemala just like small towns in the United States.  This is the central square in Santa Ana looking towards the church.  I was hoping for a church that had Daily Mass but no such luck.  Only Sundays here.

The squares in most towns are pretty lively at night.  The people who sell food come out at about six o’clock and start their grills and fires.  This is where I’ll be finding dinner most nights.  Lots of traditional food choices.  A nice plate of rice and beans, some veggies, and a piece of chicken with tortillas will cost about Q25.  In your pocket that’s about $3.50.  Take that same plate of food and move into Antigua proper, and the price will more than double.  Eight Bucks!  Call the cops.

This is the street I live on in Santa Ana.  Number 99 Calle Real Santa Ana.  You really don’t get a sense from this photo, but it’s a fairly steep walk up from the bus.

And this is the house I live in, the one on the left.  My room is upstairs in the back so those aren’t my windows.  By anyone but the most wealthy in Guatemala, these would be considered very nice houses.  Inside parking for vehicles is an upscale design and the garage space is almost always open to the rest of the house.  When you park your car in this house you are looking right into a small family room with the kitchen off to your right front.  The owner, who does not live here, runs this as two bedrooms with private baths,  on Air BnB.  My room is very nice, the bed is comfy, the wifi is good, and the neighborhood is noisy.  Conspicuously absent from this house are a TV and a coffee maker.  NO COFFEE MAKER?!  Call the cops.  Again. Really.

No TV?  Well, the bad news is I will likely miss a lot of the Olympics.  The good news is I will hear almost nothing from those dipsticks in DC.  Yeah, I’m talkin’ about all y’all.  Both sides.  Embarrassing!  Don’t get me started.

The coffee maker?  That’s a situation gonna need a remedy.