One.

Day 1-2 Monday June 9, 2008
Wow. We made it to Guatemala. The trip so far has been muy interesante. First off, I had to fly from Sacramento to Los Angeles. Standing in line to get my ticket, I noticed an Asian family in front of us. To my surprise they were Hmong (not that I’ m surprised to see Hmong people, they just didn’t look and then I went up. I only had to wait about 3 min, literally, until they started to board. Right as I was about to hand my ticket they pulled out the Hmong grandma that I had seen earlier. Apparently she didn’t know she was supposed to give them her ticket and just walked through. I thought about asking if they needed help with translation but for some reason I was scared. Well, I got into the plane and sat all the way in the back. I later saw the old grandma sit so I was a bit relieved. I sat next to the window and saw a middle aged man come and sit next to me. Right away he started talking, making a few comments here and there. I knew he was going to be a talker. He commented about how he was glad to have brought a certain book with him. I asked him what book it was. The title had something to do with lust written by Christopher Moore. I was a bit shocked because I expected something a bit more intelligent. He then asked me what kind of books I read. I said, “Mostly Christian books.” Then he asked me what I meant by Christian books. I told him books that guided me through life. He replied, “Oh.” Yeah. Then we both started talking a lot about random things. I could tell he wasn’t a strong believer at that. So I thanked God for the opportunity. I kind of worked my way through the subject. It was pretty intimidating because: 1) he was older 2) he was a huge talker and talkers are intimidating. Basically, what he believes is that religion is similar to that of the story of the blind men and then elephant. Each of the blind men felt different parts of the elephant and believed it was something different. But they were all feeling the same thing. He believes that every religion has a correct part of religion. He also believes that the main purpose of life is to do good and then world will do good back to you. He is focusing on the here and now and not the future. I thought it was interesting so I asked what religion he was. He said that he didn’t really have one but he’d most likely be a Quaker. He likes the Quaker religion because they don’t really tell you what to do. It’s more of your own trial and error. They have resources to help you in your “journey” through. So I guess they guy just wanted freedom and control. He didn’t want someone telling you what is right or wrong. Well we ended up talking the whole flight about politics, religion, animals, pets and travel. We even talked about girls. This guy has eaten so many cool things such as snake, alligator, and even whale.
Well, the flight was over and we exited the plane. Walking out I headed towards the baggage claim area. I saw the old Hmong lady walking somewhere. I decided not to be scared and helped her. I walked up to her and asked her if she needed help. She looked at me with surprise. So I looked at her ticket and explained to her that she had to wait 2 hours for her next flight. Then we went to the bathroom. I took her to her gate. I was going to eat dinner with her and chill. All of a sudden I forgot that I had to go get my luggage!!! Shoot. I started rushing to help her. She wanted to make sure that there would be a person to wheelchair her to her next flight because when she came out of the last flight no one was there. So I spoke to the flight attendants and got her some water. I felt so bad because there wasn’t much that I could do because I wasn’t able to directly speak to anyone assisting her flight. She was on her way to France to visit her daughter. Afterwards I rushed down to baggage claim praying that my bag was still there. I was freaking out because I didn’t know if my bag was going to be gone and I didn’t know how far the United terminal was from the Delta terminal. When I freak out I need someone to talk to. I called Chao. No answer. I called Sao. No answer. I called Monica. No answer. Man. I ran around the baggage claim for about 5 to 7 minutes. Found my bag!!! Yay! Now I had to find where Delta was. Luckily it was only two terminals down. So I’m walking like a madwoman and I see Elizabeth Anderson, one of my teammates. We walk all the way down terminal 5 and found nothing. Then we realized that we had to go upstairs for departures. We reached upstairs and found the rest of our team! Hallelujah! Got in line. Got our tickets. Ready to go! McDonalds was for dinner. I was speaking to Sao when I realized how much I missed my friends. I missed Chao too. Chao called me back. We spoke. He was the last one I spoke to before boarding the plane. On the plane, we waited and waited for take-off. The flight was about 4 ½ hours long. During that time I watched 27 dresses, played a couple of games and slept. Destination reached! We got off the plane and to my surprise it was raining and it looked cold. However, it was humidly hot at 5:40 I the morning. We got out luggages and were picked up by Bianca’s parents in a van. We had a total of 23 luggages for ten girls!!! So the back was packed with luggages and only enough seats for 9 people; there were 13 of us. Obviously we all squeezed together. People were sitting on other people and stuff. Apparently those kinds of things are not illegal over there. We even rode on the back of a truck! All ten of us!!! We stopped along the way at Chicken something. It’s a chicken fast food restaurant. The chicken was muy rico-very delicious. While driving through Guatemala, I noticed that it reminded me of Thailand. There were chickens and cows and horses running around. There was also a lot of jungle. When we got to Bianca’s house we chilled and ate lunch. They actually made chow mein and chicken soup-so delicious. By this time it wasn’t even 12p.m. yet. We chilled and chilled then the pastor who we were going to be working with visited us. We spoke of what was planned and what was needed for the carnival and VBS for the kids. Afterwards we prayed and walked down the street to Bianca’s aunt’s store for cream cheese. We went back home and ate dinner: tortillas with black beans and cheese and fried plantains. Yum Yum. We then had a short meeting and then prepared for bed. I took a nice cold shower. It was interesting but it felt good, night time.