I started the morning again with some prayer time before breakfast. Breakfast today was a bacon wrapped egg, beans and tortillas, waffles topped with fruit, cereal and milk, and orange juice.

After breakfast we went to Hogar los Gozosos which is an orphanage and school for children with special medical needs. They have 22 children living there currently. Some of them are children whose families are just unable to care for them while others have been abandoned at the hospital or rescued from government run homes. Additionally they have opened up the school to the local children in the neighborhood who come each day to learn, but don’t necessarily have special or medical needs and still live at home with their parents. Our project this year was to paint the exterior of the building a very vibrant blue color.

After our painting in the morning I looked like a Smurf! My hands were dyed blue from cleaning all of the brushes and rollers. We made our way back to the convent and then walked over to a corner store to get ice cream! It isn’t a trip to Guatemala unless you have ice cream after your projects! When we got back I dropped my sunglasses and the lens popped out and McKenzie got a photo of my sad face. Luckily I was able to pop it back in with no issues! When we got back Yeimy and Maynor had chicharrones, carnitas and ribs waiting for us as a snack.

We had about an hour until lunch so we just hung out and played cards for a while. Lunch today was a salad with dried cranberries, avocado and a balsamic vinaigrette, chicken legs, tortillas, potatoes and watermelon for dessert. After lunch it was pouring so we waited a bit to let it stop before we ventured back out. We went back to finish our chicken coops. All we had to finish today was framing out the top, putting the roof on, wrapping it in chicken wire and making the door. The masons always amaze me with how they get things done! I got a video of Edy cutting a piece of wood in half with a machete. We set up a Timelapse video but unfortunately it started raining so we had to stop it before we completed the entire project. The family had a ton of fruit trees on their property, it was fun trying to identify some of them, at first I thought one tree was a lime tree, until I saw one that was massive and discovered they were actually oranges!

After we finished the chicken coops we went back to the convent and some of the masons did a corn back for us (grilled corn seasoned with butter, salt and lime). We had a few hours before dinner so we had time to shower and play several rounds of Uno and “Spicy Uno” which is Uno with lots of extra twists and rules that I still don’t fully understand. Needless to say, I didn’t win any rounds. We got a brief reprieve from the rain which provided a beautiful moment of the sun popping through the clouds as it set over the mountains.

Dinner tonight was a shrimp and chicken stir fry with chow-mein, squash soup, beans and tortillas and pineapple for dessert. I am not sure how I was hungry because I feel like all we did today was eat, but I forgot to take pictures of the food so that tells you I was in fact pretty hungry!

After dinner we played cards and it started raining again so I opted to head to my room early and read for a while until it was time for bed. Something about the rain on a tin roof is the absolute best sound machine!

Good night!