Made it!

After waking up at 2:25 AM in the morning, flying from Dallas to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Guatemala City... we are FINALLY HERE! It is only 6:40 PM here right now and we are all ready for bed. Promise we aren't normally this uncool.

When we first got off the plane, we were greeted by three lovely ladies, Magda, Krista, and Stephanie. As we were driving through the city to get to our house, I was trying to take it in and get a feel for the city. Really, it reminds me a lot of Cozumel... especially with the uneven sidewalks! The buildings are the same style as Cozumel with the pretty, bright colors and iron fences. The streets are much busier here though. I can definitely already see the struggles of the city and the poverty that is so evident. Just when we stopped the car at a stop light, I noticed a cute little boy with his face painted juggling in between lanes for money. Then I looked around and more men just appeared attempting to sell fruit to the cars. This happened at every light after that. Already, my heart was broken. As we continued to drive, we came up to McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Burger King... yesterday at Orientation, one of the Buckner Staff told us we would see America's Polution to countries... this is what he meant! I see what he says now. The fast food chains do not look like they fit in at all.

We were pleasantly surprised to pull into a guarded and gated neighborhood to find our house. It is a sweet little two-story green condo in a little strip of four. We love it already. After we moved in all of our stuff and settled into our bunk beds, we went over our itinerary for the month. Flexibility. That is the word they stressed to us from the beginning. Well, we are practicing that. On the itinerary I was given, we were traveling to 4 places throughout the month. Now, we are only staying in the Buckner House for the whole time and then the last night, we will be staying in a hotel for our farewell dinner. So, that threw us for a little loop especially with handling the budget. But, it works out very nicely that we won't have to be worrying about a lot of packing and unpacking. We also learned that most afternoons and nights, we will be cooking our meals. Threw us for another loop because we had no idea.. so learning how to cook Guatemalan food will be fun! Tomorrow we are doing our first grocery shopping trip so I'm really looking forward to that and practicing my Spanish! During our time here, we will be working with so many different orphanages, family home, transitional homes, and Community Transformation Centers. I am so excited to meet all of the kids and start building relationships with them! All in all, we are in for surprises and really learning how to be on our own in another culture and I love that! Our first group will be here in a couple of days so we are taking it easy and hopefully exploring until then! I am very excited to see what our God has in store for us this coming month. I can already see that this will be a challenging, overwhelming, exciting, glorifying, and unforgettable experience and I cannot wait to get it going!

We are trying to plan for our weekends off.. so if any of you know of any "must-see" touristy things here, shout it out!

I have really good internet connection in the house so always feel free to skype, email, facebook message me, whatever! I love "mail" and getting to talk with all of you while I am here!