Hey Y'all From Bay St Louis

Today we woke up at 5:30 a.m. and made our way to New Orleans; 6 hour bus
drive! Yahoo! We arrived at the French Quarter at around 2. Once we made our
way to Jackson Square, we dispersed into our respective groups and just went
off to have fun. Some went shopping, some ate, and some watched the various
street performances. We all now had the chance to sit down at an actual
restaurant; a nice change from greasy fast food. We in particular, went to a
typical Southern cafe, and quite enjoyed ourselves. We got to experience
eating ALLIGATOR. It tastes like chicken. Literally. Personally I thought it
tasted exactly like squid but whatever (I am not gonna argue with the girls).
Apart from the food, it was nice to experience the southern culture, such as
the funny accents, friendly people, and a certain dude with a massive afro
wig(and I mean MASSIVE -- Parker's got nothin on this guy). It was a fun
time for everyone, and we are looking forward to our swamp tour tomorrow.

Sincerely,
David Wiebe - with Brittany Olsen and Caitlyn Hegedus

Update 4 From Guatemala

El Salvador was cool. We're back. Shippin' out tomorrow. Thanks for reading! Just kidding.

We left bright and early on Thursday morning, leaving Semilla at 6. We picked up Adriana and Caitlyn, an MCC SALTer who joined our trip, on route. Fortunately, before we got too far out of the city, Mario, our driver, remembered that we needed an important document to allow him to drive us over the border. We sat around for about an hour waiting for Antony, the MCC director, to drive out to where we were parked to give us this document, because the traffic into the city was awful and it was unrealistic for us to make good time going in. So we sat about. During this hour Geraldine and Jim broke out breakfast. Yum yum yum, pandulce. If you're interested, Ryan and I (Jordan) improved our Kaiser record to 4-0 in the time between then and now. The girls and Adam also realized that Cassandra is overcompetitive at card games.

There wasn't much to tell from there to the drive to the border. We didn't end up at the crossing we wanted to, but we made it more or less. We took the scenic route (got lost) to La Linea (the community we were to work at) through San Salvador. We discovered we had just missed Barack Obama by a day. ¡Shucks! See, our Spanish is improving! We did end up at La Linea and had some delicious chicken. We met the local MCC workers there named Lynden and Elizabeth. We were formally introduced to the church and its community afterwards at the new building they had for a church. After this, we were given a tour through their community. We visited the "old city" where the community lived before tropical storm Ida and mudslides destroyed much of the housing there. We were able to visit their old church. It had an incredible view, but the ground underneath was slowly receding (like Ryan's hair will be) so that the building was unsafe to worship in. We spent the night at San Martin in a convent/retreat center run by Catholic nuns.

The next day we went to see the "promised land." This is the land La Linea was planning to purchase to move their community to. They need roughly $30 000 more to buy it. Since they do not own the land they are on, if the railway company, whose land they are squatting on, decides to develop the area where they live, then the entire community would be homeless. To avoid this conflict, it's imperative they buy this land. It would give them a chance to get them away from the violence from the slum, reclaim an abandoned coffee plantation, and be able to grow gardens, mangos, oranges, guavas, avacados, plantains, and bananas. This is a big deal. I'm not sure how happy I would be to go back only because of the sketchy infrastructure. It's not exactly 4 lane highway.

One part of our experience was the cicadas. Man can they produce noise (Ryan thinks this is a little bland. He would have preferred scream). People really mean it when they say the forest comes alive at night. Wow. Ryan and Hillary, who was wearing ear plugs even, were also not aware that roosters crowed at 3 am. Kate, Katie, and Hillary finally broke down and pet their first puppies here. I'm surprised it took so long. I was getting sick of hearing them say how much they wanted to pet the dogs. Good news, it only itched for about an hour afterwards.

A note on the food of La Linea. Holy smokes! Delicious man! I've never had more delicious fish in my life, and I've been to some good fish places. Wow! I dedicated an entire page in my journal to this fish. Hillary didn't have it. What a weiner. We ate it on a beautiful courtyard surrounded by fruit trees, a duck, a few chickens, a parrot, and a spectacular view of the valley. After this fish, the local co-op brought out some goods for us to purchase. They make some wonderful hammocks. I'm sure it was the best day of sales they'd had in a long time.

The day continued with a parachute game with the smaller children. It was pretty hot. I think that's an understatement. The one person in our group who doesn't burn got burnt (Hillary). The amount of perspiration on mine and Ryan's back was quite gross. Matt's white shirt was not a solid choice. Lucky for us, we got to sweat more in a soccer tournament! The girls brought home gold, but they were led by the soccer star Caitlyn. The guys did not have such luck. We had Matt, and the rest of us gave our best. We lost out in the first game. Some highlights were being the fan favourites, Me (Jordan) taking out the net after saving a goal, and the aforementioned person missing various opportunities to score. Sorry team. As it turned out, Adam scored the only goal, surprisingly not with his face. The church team, who we were playing, ended up winning the whole thing.

In the evening, the church youth came to our abode and gave us a proper send off. We played some mixer games which including me breaking the game up for a few moments by speaking in a universal language, also known as passing gas. Whoops. At least some good came out of it. I will be remembered there! Perhaps not for the right reasons though. They sang us a song, and we gave them some gifts of appreciation. I sang Last Saskatchewan Pirate backed up by our group. We really need a whistler. They presented us with the trophies from the soccer tournament. The girls won theirs fair and square, and the guys were given the trophy won by the church team. Guess what? The guys was bigger and better. We had to carry ours on the bus and the girls packed theirs away in a backpack.

We took Israel and Sylvia back with us. They are "youth" from the community (24 years old). Interestingly enough, Israel's favourite sport is American football. They will be coming with us to San Marcos and Quetzaltenango. Our drive back was quite uneventful.

Hey mom's, the guys did laundry! Impressed? I thought so. Just be warned, it may not happen when we get home.

In the next couple of days we will be in San Marcos, Guatemalan La Linea, and Xela (Quetzaltenango). We may or may not have internet so we'll see what happens.

¡Feliz noches chikos y chikas!

Jordan, Hillary and Ryan

PS Currently the room was filled with an unbelievable amount of sarcasm directed at Cassandra's knowledge of computers. I'm surprised the walls didn't fall down because the room was bursting with it.

Hello from the Mississippi Trippers

Ooh hey, didn't see yeah there.

So we're still alive. The bus ride was long (36 hours), greasy and uncomfortable. But we survived through movies, ipods, and sleeping in the aisles awkwardly. Easy to say we've never looked better. We're learning important life skills that we've seemed to have forgotten. Like sharing. We slowly, but successfully shared two single gas station bathrooms between all 31 of us while getting ready for bed time on the bus. We missed our opportunity to visit the Museum of Civil Rights, but "fortunately" got to tour the "wonderful" and "exciting" Graceland. in Graceland we got to sign the wall outside of Graceland (as seen in this photo) we arrived in south haven at around 6:30 this evening. After glorious and well needed showers we set out to experience the comfort food of the south. Deep fried broccoli... delicious. After our phenomenal meal we are finally settling into our rooms for the comfort of a real bed and a good nights rest. tomorrow we will be visiting New Orleans touring the french quarter. we are looking forward to the weather (expected to be 29), trying new food, and shopping. Good night Canada, stay classy. p.s have fun in the cold. :)
Sincerely,
Ryann and Kirstin.

Guatemala Update

So, as you probably know already, we're not in El Salvador. What's that, you want to know why? Well just sit down and I'll tell you a tale.

It all started yesterday at 5:30 AM. The children were running and screaming, awaking the shallowest of sleepers (so of course not Ryan). We awoke and had breakfast at Semilla and went over our plans. We were to go to the market and a human rights museum featuring the exhibit "Why we are who we are." In the afternoon we were to travel to San Salvador and spend the night there.

So we travelled to the market. On the way,we saw a man herding goats in the middle of the main plaza. The thing that alerted us of his presence was the cracking of his whip to keep his goats in line. At the market, we were given the task of "buying" basic necessities for a standard family of four on what would be an average farmer's budget (50 Q or 6 dollars). My group was fine (Ryan, Jim, Jordan, and Luke), but I'm sure the other groups were not as great as us. Hillary's group was approached by a drunk man, who told them he loved them forever. We had a tough time finding items to supply a family for one day at a reasonable price. Most of the items surprised us. We asked for prices on various things including tomatoes (5 Q/15), beans (10 Q/lb), a chicken (40 Q), and toilet paper (4 rolls/ 22 Q). Based on these prices it would be hard to supply a family sufficiently since you would likely only be able to buy the most basic of things. Some of the participants also felt uncomfortable asking the prices without intent of buying goods since this was these people's livelihood.

After this, we went to the artisan market. There was a lady there wearing 6 hats, 10 table runners, and large amounts of clothing and bags. The strange thing was she was wearing them all in the heat that was roughly 27 C. A friendly man tried to help Luke find an adequate belt. He was quite determined to sell him a belt, and even went about looking in various stalls to find a proper fit. Luke had no choice but to buy this belt after he put in so much effort to find a good belt. The guys bought a few machettes, and a couple other gifts for various people, which may or may not include family members. This opportunity to buy gifts at the market gave us a chance to practice our bartering skills. I can quite confidently say I was the best. Some were better than others of course. We were all ripped off in the end.

Next stop on the tour we went to the museum. The exhibit mainly talked about the indigenous groups and their rights, and the bloody history of the people. The exhibit was interesting, but we were quite limited by our minimal knowledge of the Spanish language. It was definately worthwhile, but we're still processing what we got out of it.

We came back to Semilla for lunch and packed our stuff up to head out. We ate some delicious chicken. Shortly after lunch we were introduced to our driver, Mario. As fortune would have it, we needed gas. We proceeded to stop at a shell station which housed the cafe called "On The Run." Where's this going? Well, as Adriana returned from purchasing gas, two men came to different windows. One pulled out a gun and pointed it at Mario. He demanded all of our money. Needless to say, we handed what he wanted over. Among notable things stolen are Cassandra's passport and Gerry's camera, along with a lot of MCC's money. Remember the name of the cafe? Pretty coincidental eh? I thought the mood was quite dark in the van afterwards. I looked at the name and started laughing and sharing what I was laughing about. It cheered Hillary up at least. We immediately went to MCC afterwards and debriefed about our experience and our feelings surrounding the event. Thankfully everyone was fine.

So now we had to figure out how to get Cassandra a passport. She did her thing at the Canadian Embassy today, securing a passport for our travels set for tomorrow at 6 in the morning. We slept in this morning and played Kaiser (Jordan and Ryan up 2 games to 0 over Matt and Luke, who think they're going to win the third) while she was doing this.

We also had the pleasure of heading to the community of Lo de Carranza in the afternoon. We met up with Manuel, who was part of the experience of last year's group. We toured the neighborhood as well as checked out the church and the preschool in the area built by past RJC trips. During our tour of the neighborhood, we got to check out some houses in the area as well as meet the locals and interacting with the kids.

On the way back, we encountered a bus that blocked the two lanes of oncoming traffic while trying to turn left, but the traffic headed the other way refused to let him in. The bus driver behind us got quite upset and furiously honked his horn in vain. We also encountered the longest red light in the history of the world. We sat at the light the in the time that it would take approximately to read this blog twice.

We leave tomorrow bright and early for El Salvador.

Your Intrepid Explorers

Jordan, Ryan, and Hillary

PS Thanks Hillary for going to bed and waking up Cassandra so she could proofread. We already know we cannot rely on the sppellcheck feature. I think we're good for next time though, and I'm not sure if I want to see Cassandra after she's prepared for bed again.

From Guatemala!

So, we had a fantastic day of flights that resulted in a few stories, a couple of missing essential components, and a confiscated bottle of hand sanitizer. We had somewhat of a scare right off of the bat when the nice lady from Air Canada announced our plane to Calgary may or may not be landing, which would have forced us to reschedule our entire flight scheme. However, the plane landed 1 second after she announced this. Thank you for not looking out of the window, Air Canada lady. So we made it to Calgary. Then I (Jordan) go through security. I let them zap my ticket and I walk through the metal detector. I get to the other side and the nice man asks for my boarding pass. I fail to find it. Fortunately for me, they found it under the table on the other side of security, so they searched my bag next. Then they took my hand sanitizer. I thought, "how the heck did this thing get through Saskatoon?" It's a pretty big bottle too. So we are about to board our plane from Calgary to Houston when the guy checking our boarding passes notices an incredible amount of Mennonite names. He then asks if we're from Steinbach or something.

Next on the itinerary, we land in Houston. We're all pretty hungry at this point. Almost all of the guys looked into getting some Texas barbeque. We find a joint and I request a BBQ sandwich. A meat slab the size of a football field is produced, accompanied by a word I cannot write on this blog, which was announced by the Texan behind me. If a local was impressed, you know it had to be big. Next we hear the PA system calling for Kate McArthur to go to gate E10. She lost everything. If you thought my boarding pass situation was bad, you should not read the extensive list of things she lost: her passport, all of her money, all of her boarding passes, her baggage claim sticker, her drivers licence, her pride, and a pack of gum. While this was happening, we all watched March Madness. At this point, a friendly Guatemalan man came to talk to us about the nuances of bartering and specific sites we should visit. Also, he highly recommended a chicken place in Quetzeltenango.

Next we boarded our flight to Guatemala City. Matt unnerved a lady sitting close to him. A friendly chap served us a microwaved burger in a plastic bag. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, death by... who knows what's in that thing. Whatever it is, it can't be good for ya. We did end up arriving at our destination relatively unscathed (remember Kate's pride), although Cassandra did somehow manage to get stopped and patted down at every possible security checkpoint, including experiencing the (in)famous FULL BODY SCAN. We were greeted by Adriana and Antony in a new van with a fair bit of headroom. Hillary could stand up in it, but that's not saying much. We spent the night at Semilla. We were all happy to be here. Especially Adam (insert mile wide smile here).

I was rudely awakened by a man mowing his lawn at 5:30 am. We gathered for breakfast in the dining hall and discussed our plan for the day. Adriana picked us up and brought us to the MCC Guatemala El Salvador head office. We were formally introduced to Adriana and our itinerary for the next 12 days. After this review, we were given the long answer of everything that is done by MCC in Guatemala and El Salvador. We were served a delicious lunch made by a very very nice Guatemalan lady. Much better than that burger yesterday.  After lunch and a quick soccer match where Adam found a way to get hit in the face multiple times, we travelled to the City Cemetary and did a scavenger hunt to find graves of historical figures in Guatemala's history. We observed the obvious juxtaposition of mausoleums for the rich and a wall grave for the poor, indicating the great disparity between the poor and the rich. We ventured to the edge of the cemetary where we viewed the dump. There was an incredible amount of vultures and an incredible amount of people looking to recycle the garbage that was incessantly being brought in. Afterward, on our way out, Gerry McLellan was approached by a local man who had a little bit too much to drink and was looking to practice his English. Way to be a sport Gerry. I (Jordan) was also gawked at by a number of Guatemalan girls who were perplexed by my height and pale complexion. All of this was followed by a spanish lesson where we were introduced to our new Spanish names. Notables include Gerry being changed to Heraldo, Luc to Lucas, Jordan to Hordan, Kate and Katie to Katerina I & II, and Jim to Diego.

For the next couple of days we will be in El Salvador working with the locals of La Linea. We're looking forward to connecting with the local youth there.  We will most likely be out of contact, so check in again on the weekend for our next update.

A special thanks to the spell check feature of hotmail, which only told us that most browsers do this automatically. You're a champ.

Salud!

Jordan, Hillary, and Ryan

Crossing Borders With Care - Guatemala 2011

Our Guatemala/El Salvador adventure begins soon!  Today in Chapel our group was "commissioned' by the RJC community as we prayed together for safety and a wonderful time of great learning, new friendships and adventure together.

We will be leaving this Sunday morning and after a long day of travel via Calgary and Houston we will begin our service and learning tour in Guatemala City with MCC's Connecting People's program.  We anticipate visits to El Salvador, Guatemala City, San Marcos and the cloud forests, Xela and Antigua.  We have a busy itinerary with many unique and exciting experiences in store!

We will post on our blog as time and technology permit.  We look forward to learning in very practical terms what Christ meant when He taught to "love your neighbor as yourself".  We appreciate your prayers for our group and your interest in our adventure.

Adios!!

Service Education Blog 2011 Going Live Soon

Watch this space for information and updates about Guatemala,
Mississippi and ALSO service and learning trips happening in just a
couple of weeks!

Guatemala trip begins on March 20, 2011

Mississippi leaves for their trip on March 24, 2011

ALSO in Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and begins on March 28, 2011