MEXICO!

SOOOO! I'm back! We made it safely between all the borders and such, but it was basically two days of travelling both ways, which was tiring and fairly dull. But Mexico was amazing. It was such an incredible experience! It was dirty and dusty and crazy! There are no seat belt laws (which is fun!) and tons of speed bumps (TOPES!). Every morning, we'd go to Sala (which means living room) for "morning devotions", and we'd go to the cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Coka-Cola was sold everywhere, and everything was cheap. I learned a lot of Spanish (although I still can't speak much of it). There were palm trees EVERYWHERE! There wasn't really a way for us to communicate with anyone from home, but the week went by pretty quickly. We were only allowed three minute showers, so you had to keep turning the water on and off...and we ate lots of pb & j in the visitors' lounge! :P There was also the "Tiendita" or the snack shack, where you could buy tasty things and pop during break. Overall...it was an incredible experience, and I'd like to go back at some point in the future.

Anyways...so here's what we did! :



So, last Saturday, we flew from Kelowna to Seattle, and then from Seattle to San Diego. We had to wait on the plane in Seattle because they're main ignition for one of the engines wasn't starting. But they fixed it, and after almost two hours, we finally got on our way. In San Diego, we checked into our hotel for the night and went out for dinner, which was really good, and had soft ice cream that looked like dog poop...which was a good source of entertainment for quite a while, because yes, we are immature. We stayed up late watching a John Wayne movie (:P) and then got up early to start our drive down to Vicente Guerrero. We drove through Tijuana, and stopped for lunch in Ensenada (we ate at a McDonald's...how exotic). We also kind explored a bit of the city. There was a little sort of plaza beside the ocean, so we sat there for a few minutes and got a whole bunch of pictures beside this massive Mexican flag (seriously, it was huge). Then we drove for a few more hours to Vicente Guerrero, where we got our rooms, unpacked and then went out for dinner to eat tacos. We went to a taco stand called "El Pollo Loco" (The Crazy Chicken), which was pretty tasty. Lorna also got us to try what she thought was brain. So we tried a brain taco. We late found out, though, that it was actually a face taco (bits of cheeks and chins and such). So we ate face. Heh... It was actually pretty good. It tasted like hamburger, but I was grossed out because we thought it was brain...



Monday, we went on a tour of the mission. Darby and I had breakfast duty, which means that we had to set up the tables for the visitors (us and the other groups) and then mop the cafeteria afterwards. After the tour, which was rather informative, we had work assignments for the afternoon. Preston and I were helping to clean up the cement from a little wall they were replacing. I was sooooooooooo dirty by the end of that! My legs looked tanned from all the dirt. And everyone knows my legs don't tan. So that's a big deal. :P It was good though, we worked hard, with a guy named Elias, who had knocked down the wall that morning. That night, we babysat for one of the houses in the orphanage. We were in Casa 6, which had 12 kids, but some of them were older than 16, so we had a fairly easy house.



Tuesday, Preston and I worked in construction again. We started by sifting sand for Elias and the wall, and then were sweeping the dust and stuff out of the rooms in the new addition they're building onto the Bible College, so that they could be textured and painted, which was another incredibly dirty job. Isaac, one of the head builder guys, had us drive his truck back and forth between the wall and the construction site to bring Elias tools and cement bricks, which was pretty crazy. Preston got to drive an old pickup truck in the middle of nowhere in the Baja...haha! :P Anyways, I worked in The Nuthouse that afternoon. They grow macadamia nuts at the mission, so I was working with a few other people cracking nuts. That evening, we went out to a migrant work camps about half an hour away from the mission, for "Adult Evangelism". When we were driving into the camp, all the kids chase the white vans because they know that people are coming from really far away to play with them. It was really cool and very fun! I blew bubbles with the kids for a while and then we had piggyback races, which the kids loved. Then, they set up a movie for the kids to watch and then one for the adults. They give out Bibles to the adults that want them and pray for anyone who wants to be prayed for. It was dark by the time we left, and then we went out to "Smokie's" (sp?) for tacos. I just bought a Coke, though. Everything is really cheap down there, which is pretty awesome! :P



Wednesday, I worked in the print shop in the morning, where we stuck all the inserts together to be mailed out to the US and Canada. That afternoon, Darb and I went on our first "Child Evangelism" together, which was incredible. It was basically helping a lady teach a VBS class to a bunch of kids in a neighbourhood. We would drive through while the teacher (we had Antonia the first day) would call the kids using a little portable amp thing. All the kids gathered at a church building, and when we got out of the vans, a little girl and her tiny little brother came up to Darby and I and gave us flowers. It was so cute, and a really cool experience (Darby told this story in Sala on Friday). Then, we went in and sat with all the kids (we had about 60 come that day), while Antonia sang songs with them and prayed and such. Three little girls globbed onto me...they were really cute! One sat on my lap and studied my skin because I'm so white, and one played with my hair. She picked a hair elastic off her wrist and did my hair with it. I wore my hair that way all week until the elastic broke :'(. Anyways, so they kept touching my face and playing with my hair and looking at my glasses and stuff. They kept saying "bonita" but I didn't know what that meant until later, when I found out it means "beautiful". That was probably the highlight of my trip. After the VBS class, the kids line up with their own cup and spoon at the back of the van, where we pour them a glass of milk (powdered...ew) and give them each a spoonful of peanut butter, plus whatever snack the teacher brought, which in this case was individual packs of pistachios (sp?). I handed out the nuts, while Darby scooped the milk, and a lady named Catherine from another group (she was really cool) did the peanut butter. We ran out of milk near the end and one little girl hardly got anything at all, which makes you feel horrible, because really, it's the only source of nutrition they get, and the vans only come by once a week. One little girl that we gave milk to knew how to say thank you in English ("dankooo"), so she kept saying it and the other kids thought it was funny, so when we were driving away, they all chased the vans yelling "dankoooooo!". A few of them spilled their milk because they were running so hard...



Thursday, I worked cleaning in the kitchen. Jose (he's so cool!) who does a lot of work in there, had me and and a lady named Wendy washing windows and counter tops and such. We went on child evangelism again that afternoon, but I ended up getting sick to my stomach from the lunch at the mission and Lorna got Carmen (the teacher) to cut the class short because I had to go back. I felt pretty bad about that, but there wasn't much of a choice, and all the kids got their milk and peanut butter, so it was okay. Later that evening, we went to another adult evangelism, which was really cool. We played with the kids a lot and when the movie started, two little girls sat on my lap the whole time. They were smelling my hair and asking what colour my shampoo was! :P They were surprised when I told them it was blue! :D After the movies, we prayed with some of the adults and then they were given Bibles. It really felt like something was accomplished that evening.



Friday, I worked in the Nut House in the morning, and then we packed some stuff up. I bought a hoodie and some souvenirs at the gift shop in the mission. We stopped at the market in Vicente Guerrero to buy some stuff. I got a cool hat and bracelet and some gifts for people. Then we headed out to the beach. It was so much fun! The water was the perfect temperature and we waded in a bit and looked for shells and stuff. It was amazing! After that, we went back to the mission and rinsed off, and then went out for dinner. Brendan joined us for that. We went to a little store by the mission after that and Darby and Preston bought massive glass bottles of Coke for a dollar! :P



Saturday, we packed up, cleaned the visitors' centre and left early in the morning. We stopped at the "Bufadora" or the "blow hole" in Ensenada on our way back, which is like this little crevice in the rock where water shoots out every 30 seconds or so. It was pretty cool! There were lots of vendors who would try and get you to buy stuff from their stores...they were rather annoying. There were tons of Bob Marley posters and t-shirts and stuff...one guy even "had Bob Marley's canned appendix"! HAHA! :P Anyways...so we kept driving through Ensenada and Tijuana and then we waited in line at the border for about 2 hours, while vendors on the street tried to sell you crappy ceramic pumpkins and crucifixes. We bought some "churros" (sp?) that are like super-fatty doughnut sticks...they were soooo good! :P Once we got passed the border, we drove to our hotel and stayed there for the night. We also enjoyed our unlimited showers! :D

In the morning, we slept in a bit and then packed up the last of our stuff to leave. And then we flew back home!

Overall, it was an incredible experience. I did so many new things (eating face, driving around without seat belts, eating rice pudding, flying on a propeller plane from Kelowna to Seattle...), and had a lot of new experiences that changed my life. It's weird to think that people live like that, and they're not very far away. I also met some very cool people: at the mission, at the camps, and from the other volunteer groups that came down.

One thing I found interesting was that a lot of the kids in the camps didn't know how to be held. Most of them were fine to piggyback but if you picked them up, they would keep their legs straight instead of wrapping them around you (which makes it hard to hold on!). It really made me realize that a lot of those kids don't get time with their parents, who work usually 6 days a week to make just enough to get food for their families.

This trip seriously was an eye-opener. You think you know what goes on because you see all those World Vision commercials and stuff, but you never really know until you get there. There are pictures from my camera up on Facebook so you can see the mission and stuff, and the title of this blog is a link to the mission's website. I'm hoping to get more pictures from other people's cameras up on facebook soon, so I'll keep you posted.

Now, all we need are some palm trees in BC!
-Kristen