Hermana Haymond: Guatemala's Gringa: Road Trip!

I live is the most amazing place!

This has been another crazy week as the nurses sidekick. I’m thinking I’ll have to do a segment in my emails every week where I just sum up the craziness in a few sentences. So here it goes… Visited 8 of the 10 zones in 1 day (NEW RECORD). She only went to the hospital once (but stayed there for 2 nights) and I worked with another companion. I had to do a quick pharmacy run while Hna N was in the hospital. The assistants had to come to our house twice this week. And today there's someone else in the hospital Woohoo!! But everyone's fine.

I have no idea why this email is centered. Guatemala computers always keep things interesting.

It's been an awesome, but crazy, week. I have tons of pictures. But this computer is really slow (surprise surprise) so we'll see how many I get sent off.

So Christmas was awesome. I seriously love Christmas here. I'll just start off with this. In English the song Silent Night pretty much explains Christmas Eve in the states. Its all quiet and peaceful. But In Spanish that song is called Noche de Luz, or Night of Light. Which perfectly explains Navidad in Guate. It is not a silent night for anything! Right at midnight there were soooo many fireworks that you couldn't hear anything else. And we had an awesome view. A family invited us over and they have a patio on their roof to see all the fireworks in the whole valley. It was amazing! We all ate dinner together (at midnight, which is what you do in Guatemala) and they had little presents with candy for us. Then we went home and opened presents (also something you do on Christmas Eve here) and fell asleep at like 1:30. We are SO not used to going ot bed that late. Then Christmas day we talked to our families. YAY!! That was fun! But it always feels so weird. Like mixing two worlds that are so separate to me. Then we went to go grocery shopping. A family invited us over for lunch. We got there kind of early and we were so tired! We fell asleep for an hour on their couches. Now they keep making fun of us and saying that when we come over we're just coming to go to sleep. But it was worth it. Then we ate the biggest lunch ever! They just kept bringing out more and more food! It was insane! So between being SO FULL and staying up SO late we were just dead all Christmas Day. It was really great though. I'm sad it's my last Christmas here. Christmas here is like 4th of July and Thanksgiving and a giant birthday party all mixed together. Put it on your bucket list.

Yesterday was really awesome too. Since my companion is the nurse she doesn't get a lot of p-days. So yesterday we made up for it by having the greatest p-day ever. The same family that gave us lunch on Christmas took us on a really cool mini road trip., We left at 5 am and we went all over the mission. We went through the coast, Saw like 4 volcanoes, went on some sketchy bridges, ate really good breakfast, and did all kinds of stuff. We also went to this place that is just mind boggling to me. It's called the paso misterioso. It's a tiny hill where if you put your car in neutral it goes up hill instead of downhill. It's so weird. And I don't understand it. All I know is that we were going up on a downward slope. Please Google it and explain how that works. But anyway... we did a lot of driving through cool places to get to Lake Atitilan, which I've been to a few times. But this time we took a super scenic route and went to another pueblo on the other side of the lake. It was just really pretty and the family we went with is really fun. It was kinda crazy trying to get back by 5 to start working but it was so worth it.

It's almost 2015. That's so weird! My goals for last year were all missionary related, But now I'm trying to think of goals for real life. I hate thinking about it, but I've learned so much on the mission and I need to set New Years goals to keep applying those things in my life. This has hands down been the best year of my life. I'm sure there are many more awesome years to come, but this year has changed my life. And I'm sure it's changed my eternity too.

I love you so much!