Smiles, Cinder Blocks and Hannah Montana

Buenas noches from Antigua. We just got back from a high quality, inexpensive dessert (or “postre”) outing for ice cream, a perfect way to top off our long but awesome day. Our building today mostly consisted of filling in the concrete cinder blocks with cement, and the houses are now five rows high and starting to look like homes! Hannah spent most of her day being called Hannah Montana by the Guatemalan workers (because apparently Hannah Montana IS America), and about halfway through the day Anne got to go work with the third From Houses to Homes team, a group from Britain. (They’re not America.) While Anne made new friends with the Brits, we gave out the typical Westminster Nike shorts to the children of the two families for which we are building homes. At first, the children did not fully understand what was happening. They were not aware that these were gifts for them to keep. Once this point was made clear through rough translation, the smiles were abundant. It is incredible to think about the way our gifts were received because Anne and I are sitting here, each wearing just one of our many pairs of the same Nike shorts, something so pedestrian for us, and for the children, this was a treasure, shown by their excited faces. Another time when we saw the children’s excitement was when they were able to see the pictures of themselves Anne had taken. Little Luis’s face lit up with surprise- this was something he had never seen before.
On the way back to town, some of us got to ride in the yellow pickup truck, equipped with handles (sorry- no seatbelts), we (Kohler, Anne, Weston, Dylan, and Julia Bowen) daringly stood up in the back of the truck while coming down off the mountain, enjoying the brisk wind beating against our faces. (Twas a beautiful sight – we do have pictures. And everyone made it - even Kohler! Just kidding, no worries, Fontaine – I love you (AH)
After cleaning up, we all headed over to the Spanish School around the corner from our hotel. We were split up into groups of two, each group paired with a tutor, except for Hannah who had a one on one experience with her lovely tutor. (By the way Sharon Falconer, Wiley was paired with Dr. Clarkson and had a great beginner’s session. All good.)(PS I love you too.) By the way, some of us even have homework, but Dr. Clarkson’s sentences were definitely more work than the song Anne and Seb had to write. The topic of choice with most of our tutors was Michael Jackson, which coincidentally, IS also America, like Hannah Montana – para los guatemaltecos. Aside from this, we have all improved after just one day and learned basic conversational pieces.
We know you can’t function without us, but if it makes you feel any better - we’re loving this experience! Oh and we love you too… I guess.

VAMOS GATOS! (that’s for you, Mr. Dimon).

Anne and Hannah