Hot Dog! (An Awesome Family Project)

This weekend was full of family projects for me. Both Saturday morning and Sunday morning, I took the 20-minute bus ride to Chimal and had proyecto familiar with girls from the girls' Bachillerato House (high school house). I know I've only had a handful of family projects since I got here, but still, Saturday's project was one of my all-time faves. :)

Saturday morning, Yeimy, Yesenia and I headed off to meet up with their third sister, Aracely, at the girls' high school house in Chimaltenango. Yeimy is in 8th grade, Yesenia just graduated from 9th grade and is now working her año de servicio in the panadería (bakery), and Aracely is in her final year of high school. All the girls are awesome.

We spent the morning walking around Chimal, trying to decide what kind of food we wanted to spend our money on. After lots and lots of deliberation and store-searching, they had a brilliant plan. Let's make hot dogs.

We walked and talked and finally made our way to a supermarket, where we bought hot dog buns, hot dogs, and a gallon of juice. We headed back to the bachillerato house and proeceeded to have ourselves one of my most fun lunches here.

After taking over Aracely's room, swiping ketchup, mayonnaise, and lettuce from the kitchen, the four of us got into an assembly line and put together delicious, heaping piles of hot dog. We poured huge glasses of juice for everyone, and when everything was ready, we dug in like we hadn't eaten in days.

I'm not exactly sure why this particular project was so awesome. Maybe it was that the hot dogs tasted so good. Maybe it was that it was my first project in the cute bahillerato house. It might have been that the two younger girls were beyond ecstatic that their older sister could make the project (she's been attending high school in the capital, so they haven't been able to have projects with her for years), or it might have just been because they kept telling me over and over again how much fun they were having during proyecto.

Some of the volunteers were talking this weekend about these rare "moments" here when you completely forget for a minute that you are a volunteer and they are children of NPH. Hanging out, four of us girls, in Aracely's room, all of us super excited to gorge ourselves on hot dogs, was one of those moments. I sort of forgot where I was and who I was to them, and it was so much fun.

So yeah, maybe it was because of that too. :)

Our pretty pathetic attempt at a self-timer photo.