A Fresh Start...

First of all...umm hello October? When did you get here? Craziness.
Second of all, I'm an aunt again!!!!!! Deacon James Shimer is beautiful and perfect and healthy and wonderful. More on him later ;)

My brilliant plan was less than successful eh? My dad suggested that instead of doing little sections that I use this as kind of a journal and try to say a little something interesting each day. I feel like I have missed so much already that I want to share with everyone, but staying frustrated with myself isn't going to get us anywhere so I'm going to try and just start from this weekend. And hopefully at some point I'll go back and get caught up a little bit with September, but I want to start with what is freshest in my mind.

Saturday, October 1st, the group of international students that I came with had the opportunity to build houses with an organization called Hogar de Cristo (Christ's Home) The provide low cost bamboo homes to families that don't have housing. I had been anticipating this day since before I arrived in Ecuador. My friend Jenna, who came here last year with the same program told me about this experience and I was really excited about it. I would say about 25 or 30 of us went. We drove through Duran, another suburb of Guayaquil and just outside the city we turned onto the land where the community of Hogar de Cristo houses was. They are built very close to one another and in the same area there are also things like a church, hair salon and little shops. We stopped at a little plot of land where we were going to build our two houses. We divided up into teams (two construction and one cooking team) and got to work. Each construction team had a professional builder employed by Hogar de Cristo to help. We started by digging holes about 1.5 or 2 meters apart to put the support beams in. These houses do not have true foundations because they are built off the ground to protect against bugs, flood, etc. After the poles were in we connected them and laid base boards that were about 6-7 feet off the ground.  Then those of us who were on the ground passed the walls which are pre-made at a factory up to the people standing on the platform and they mounted them along with the roof. The whole process took around 4-5 hours. That's the short, uneventful version. The truth is...the experience was very different from what I was expecting. I envisioned myself pounding hammers and sawing wood and being so tired afterwards that I could barely move and feeling really good about myself. In reality, we had two shovels and three hammers for about 12 volunteers. So while we all wanted to help, very few of us could at a time so there was a lot of standing around and feeling useless. The man who was helping us was very good...he obviously had built hundreds of these houses before and I felt like most of the time I was "helping" I was either getting in his way or slowing him down. Once the "platform" went up (the floor of the house) not all of the volunteers could be up on it so the rest of us sat and waited to be needed. It was just different for me to be sitting while others were working. I didn't like that feeling. Don't get me wrong...I'm very glad I was able to have this experience and help out as much as I could but it really got me thinking. Why do I volunteer? I feel like a lot of it has to do with the satisfaction that I have done something good and that I am a good person. How selfish. I couldn't help but realize that the reason I was feeling bad was because I wasn't getting the self-gratification I thought I would. Realizing this kind of made me sick to my stomach. I had missed the point. To selflessly be serving others, like Jesus did. This is a huge lesson and I have a feeling I am just seeing the tip of the iceburg with it, but it is something that I desire to work on in the future.

That afternoon I arrived home at about 4 pm. My parents were having a barbecue with about 10-15 other couples on our back patio. I knew this would be going on and was sad that I would be late to it but when I arrived (and after I showered...I was pretty gross. haha) I went out and was introduced. The custom here when greeting someone is to kiss them on the left cheek...it's actually more of cheek graze while kissing the air...but anyways, I knew that the polite thing to do was to go around and greet each person individually, but I felt really awkward about it. There were about 5 different tables set up and I felt like I would look dumb going around to every single person...so I just did a general way and sat down. My two host sisters who had been at work arrived about an hour later and of course...went around and greeted every single person. Why couldn't we have shown up together?? Ahh I was so embarrassed...but everyone seemed to be pretty forgiving of the gringa...I sat with my mom's sister and her husband, so my host aunt and uncle, who I had met before. They lived in the States for many years and speak very good English. They know that I have come to learn Spanish though so only use English if I don't understand something. They are very interesting characters, but very loving. I was served a plate of food (although my host mom had done all the cooking she had hired two men to help serve it) and it consisted of the following...no joking...salad, a baked potato, a pork chop, a chicken breast, a steak and a sausage. The meat was not divided into smaller portions either. There was a FULL serving of four different meats....it was delicious. It would have taken me six hours to finish it...but it was delicious. Needless to say I had leftovers, which were just as delicious for lunch on Sunday :) After their friends left, my aunt and uncle stayed and we played a card game that they had taught me the last time they were here. I almost won. It's really fun...definitely something I will be bringing back to the States. I headed to bed soon after that because I knew I would have to be up bright and early for church the next morning...which is another story I hope to share very soon, but I feel like this post is long enough as it is. So stay tuned!!