The Best Belated Christmas Present Ever

Let me give you a little background information on the girls' section.

They have a TV and a DVD player, but they lost the remote control ages ago. That means they can't use any DVD menus; they just have to play DVDs as they are. But a big majority of the DVDs here come in English and can only be switched over to Spanish by navigating to the setup part of the DVD menus. So, the girls can hardly ever watch regular DVDs in Spanish, which means they are always asking me to bring the volunteers' DVD player down to the section, which means the DVD player is missing from our house on a regular basis. It's kind of a pain in las nalgas. For them, for me, for my housemates who wonder where the DVD player walked off to, pretty much for everyone involved.

So, drumroll please....I bought the girls a universal remote control! Yayyyy!!

I brought it down to the section last night, and good lord was it the most impossible thing to program. Their TV and DVD players are such old/crappy versions that none of the remote control's listed codes would work. Instead, I had to hold the remote still, pointed at the DVD player, for forever so that it could search for the right code. But it found it eventually!

Then, after climbing that big hurdle, we ran into the problem of navigating the DVD menus. The only arrows located anywhere on the control -- just volume and channels -- didn't do a dang thing on the menu screen. Well that figures. Another 20 minutes later, after reading the entire instruction manual and then just resorting to trying every button on the control, I discovered that on this particular remote you use the numbers to navigate menus. (In other words, if you want to select the 4th item listed on the menu, you have to press 4 + Enter.) Who on earth has ever heard of that? Guatemala is so weird.

However, when all was said and done, the instant I got that DVD to play in Spanish, I just started shrieking -- and the girls started shrieking with me. I'm not actually sure who was more excited about this exciting development in our movie-watching experience, me or them.

Later, after forcing Yohana and Estrella to pay close attention and learn to use the remote control so they could teach the other girls, I headed home to bed, exhausting from so much trial-and-error and general brain frustration. But thanks to the new working universal remote, I was in the best mood EVER! :)

Frente, Mejilla, Boca

That's the phrase I have stuck in my head. Frente, mejilla, boca. Frente, mejilla, boca.

It's one of those jump rope games that 12 year-old girls play, and we were playing in the section the other night. You know -- the ones where you chant some lyrics and wherever the jump rope-er messes up decides what boy they love and what their future together is going to be like? Remember those? Those oh-so-official games?

Well frente, mejilla, boca (forehead, cheek, mouth) is the popular one among the girls right now. When I played, I landed on G and they decided it meant Gerber was my one true love. And then I landed on mejilla, so he's going to give me a kiss on the cheek. Hooray.

Frente, mejilla, boca! Man, takes me right back to 6th grade recess! :)

The Prototype: Success!

Last night in my room piled high of fleece and pillows, I decided it would be a good idea to tackle that mountain of fleece and pillows and confirm that this whole pillow project was going to work. After all, the last thing I wanted was to show up and have 25 girls disappointed that someone (ahem, me) didn't think this all the way through.

So, I made the pillow.

And look how cute it turned out!!!

I am SO excited for this despedida.

Story Update 29

Oh wow, I just realized this might be the last story update I ever post. Meaning these are the last articles I will ever write from NPH Guatemala. Meaning: this is weird.

Posadas - With the Christmas season comes the tradition of posadas at NPH Guatemala.

Christmas at NPH Guatemala - The Casa San Andrés home celebrates La Navidad.

The Difference Between Guatemala and the U.S.

Ok, there are about a thousand differences, but here's today's.

This coming Tuesday (yiiiiikes) I am having my despedida (going-away party) with my section of girls. There will be more to come on my despedida, and despedidas in general, but for this post just know that I am planning on making this no-sew fleece pillow with the niñas. It's gonna be cute.

BUT...

..the preparation has not been so cute.

Now if I were in the States, the purchasing of the two simple materials needed for this project (fleece and pillow filling) would go something like this:

Get in car. Drive to Hancock Fabrics. Find fleece there. Find filling there. If for some reason something couldn't be found, walk four doors down to Wal-Mart and solve the crisis there. Return to car. Dump everything in large trunk. Return home in time for lunch and to continue watching season 4 of Felicity.

Ohhhh but I'm not in the States. Here is how this goes in Guatemala. Are you ready for this?

Take crowded chicken bus to Chimal. Enter claustrophobic Chimal market. Find fabric stalls. Start looking for fleece. Find no fleece. Ask people if they have fleece. Learn that there is no word for fleece in this country; they just call it "blanket material" or "flannel" (um, but it's not flannel?). Be told to try the other end of the fabric stalls. Get there, be told to go back the direction I just came from. Still no fleece. An hour has passed. Leave the market and go to the other part of the market. Hope for better luck there. Walk the streets for a while. FINALLY find a man selling fleece blankets! He seems slightly intoxicated, but it works in my favor because he gives me a great deal. Buy nearly his entire supply of fleece blankets.

NEXT, on to something to fill these pillows. Ask the fleece blanket man where I can buy some kind of pillow stuffing/filling. Learn he has no idea but can at least tell me the name of what I should ask for. Walk the entire market and have every person tell me there is no way on earth I am finding pillow filling in Chimal. Awesome. Decide to buy pillows and just rip the stuffing out. Search the market for pillows and learn there are none. Another hour has passed. Disheartened, go back to my fleece blanket man and ask him where the heck I can find just regular old pillows. Bless his heart, he leaves his stall and escorts me to a shop that sells pillows! Gaze at wall of pillows. Barter and argue and buy 12 pillows. Allow owners to stuff all 12 pillows, plus 27 yards of fleece, into one huge garbage bag (seriously impressive), tape it up, tie it up with string, walk me to the chicken bus, and throw the huge bag on top of the bus.

Thirty minutes later, back in Parramos, carry massive bag back to NPH, finally reach home, collapse.

HO-LY COW. These pillows better turn out freaking adorable!

And the Blog??

The other day, some of the other volunteers asked me what is quite possibly the most important question of this entire year (oh just kidding):

What are you going to do with the blog when you leave Guatemala???

That is a good question. I'm not so sure my life is going to be very exciting or at all read-worthy when this is over, so I don't know. Then again, it has become a pretty serious habit, and I realize it provides even better stalking material than Facebook. I guess we'll have to see.

Any votes on what I should do???

11 Things Learned for 2011

Happy New Year! The entire world says it's 2011, but somehow it still just doesn't feel real. Probably because I have absolutely no idea what 2011 will bring. I've never "not known." And that is terrifying.

Yet while I have no clue what will happen in 2011 (beyond that U.S.-bound flight on January 25), there are a few things I can cling to in the new year. They happened in 2010, but I suppose they were learned for 2011, so here they are.

11 Things Learned for 2011

1. Time is about the fastest thing out there. Before coming here I thought a year was such a long time. It was scary long. Now, I have to laugh remembering how intimidated I was by those words: an entire year. The year I thought was going to be the longest of my life turned out to be the fastest of my life. So, I don't think I'll be underestimating time's speed again any time soon. 

2. Although it was painful at times, I, Carrie Daut, can survive 13 months without most of my favorite foods. If that's not a serious revelation, then I don't know what is.

3. I love this job -- writing and blogging and talking and promoting and communicating. It's the kind of work I want to keep doing. I am sure of that.

4. But I don't want to do this job for a fashion magazine. I want to do it for a nonprofit or an arts center or a university or something. I want a communications job that exists because there is a need for it. 

5. AND I hate being ordered to take photos. That will hopefully not be part of future jobs.

Hmm, what else...

6. No matter how good you think you are, you cannot spend a year at NPHG without getting piojos. I learned the hard way with only three weeks left to go. I guess Guatemala was not going to let me get away scot-free.

7. I am not a travel wussy. This year, I have climbed through mudslides, taken boats through tropical storms, spent 36 hours just to reach a destination, and been stranded in foreign towns -- and lived to tell you about just how much darn fun it was.

8. I used to think that after college, you would never find friends who just fit so perfectly into your life. I was wrong.

9. I am a 13 year-old girl at heart, just like my section, and I am not ashamed of that!

10. The things you are most scared/embarrassed/nervous to try are the ones that will never go away if you just avoid them. Better to stop thinking and just do. When it's over, you'll wonder why you ever thought it was such a big deal in the first place.  That's been a daily-life-at-NPH-Guatemala lesson, but we all know it's a real-life one too. 

11. And finally...13 months ago, I thought that after so much bouncing around post-graduation, I'd be ready to calm down after Guatemala, that I'd be ready to kind of stop the adventure. Well folks, I don't think I am...