Saturday May 18th - Travel Day

Saturday May 18th
Travel Day
Allison Hortman

I barely slept at all the night before we left. I woke up at 2:30 am to be at the airport by 4. I was the first one there and I was so nervous and excited. As the group started to arrive it became more real to me, we were really going to Guatemala...today! I didn't really know what to expect but I couldn't wait.

It was two hours to Miami, then a 3 hour layover, and another 3 hour flight. It seemed to drag by because I was so ready to be there. When we finally landed at the Guatemala City airport it was SO HOT.

We took bathroom breaks and went through CUSTOMS, which turned out to be a much more painless process than I had expected. The first thing that struck me as very different from the United States was the cops! They wore all black and looked more like soldiers than police officers.

That's just a picture I found on Google, but its pretty accurate! They were very intimidating to say they least.

As soon as we walked out of the airport we were swarmed by people trying to sell us things. It would have been even more overwhelming but we immediately ran into Katie, from Humanitize Expeditions, and she led us away from the crowds to 2 buses waiting to drive us to Los Robles. We quickly introduced ourselves to our interpreters: Diana, Taylor, Matt, and Adam from Utah. Then we loaded up for another long ride... 3 more hours. But this time it was much more exciting.

Guatemala City was scary. The drivers were impatient and lots of horns were honking. We saw an overturned car within 10 minutes of leaving the airport. It was interesting too though. We saw a lot of American-ized things. Burger King, Shell stations, WalMart.

 

The ride was bumpy and the road was full of potholes but it was exciting because the countryside was beautiful. When we finally got to Casa De Sion where we would be staying all week it really sunk in. It was wonderful. There was the building we would be staying in, an outside/inside eating area with a kitchen attached, and the clinic.

 

 

We met Dominga, who would cook all our meals for us at Casa De Sion. Our first meal was sweet cornbread, rice, beans, and eggs. It was delicious.

 

Then we learned how to wash our dishes outside with a special blue soap that can also be used to wash your clothes!

 

After that I went to put my stuff away in a room I would share with Mysti and Kelly. I was greeted by a HUGE spider! I'm terrified or spiders so I jumped and the bed and yelled for someone to come kill it. Luckily one of our interpreters, Adam, saved the day. I wish now I had gotten a picture of it!Tyler shook out all our blankets for us and before long it was time for bed. Between excitement of what would come the next day and fear of another huge spider, I didn't sleep that much that night either!