Before I keep going, I will say, I may not do an update for each and every day! I don’t want you to feel like you’ll have to read a book! Thanks for following our adventure, it is nice to go back and reflect on the trip and memorialize it while I share it with you all!
I did edit my previous post to mention that my brother, Jonathan, brought my dad late the night before to stay with us. So the morning of our second day in country was welcome with my dad at the house.
A bunny trail of sorts: Some time during our travel day, perhaps in the airport in Guatemala, I can’t exactly remember when, I thought it prudent to prepare the kids and explain that due to the poor plumbing systems in the country, toilet paper should never be flushed but always deposited in the waste baskets provided. Upon explaining “You can’t flush toilet paper here”, Leo immediately exclaimed in ecstatic joy “You mean we don’t have to wipe???!!!!” You can always count on six year olds to entertain with their honesty, I guess.
This second day was, in some ways, uneventful. In some other ways, it was one of the most… interesting? days of our trip.
The morning was spent waiting for Ben and tío Jonathan who went to the city to pick up the rental vehicle. I’m sure I will find a picture of the vehicle on another day, so I will just say that it was a 15 passenger “micro bus” as they are called in Spanish. Everyone found something to do, between unpacking and settling in. The kids did some exploring in the house and with the camera.
It is not advisable to drink tap water in Guatemala, and we depleted the bottled water reserve at the house very quickly. I didn’t mention yesterday that the house we stayed at has a house keeper who goes everyday and keeps the house clean and in working order with and without guests. She “comes with the house”. Her name is Sonia, and she is a sweet young woman. The owner of the house let me know that Sonia was there to serve us and make us feel at home. Because there had been no guests in the house for a while, Sonia had not needed to buy more water and had no idea when the water truck would come by again. My brilliant brother, Jonathan, through his multiple enterprises has been deeply involved with a company by the name of Ecofiltro. If you have been at my house, you will have seen the big ceramic jug that we use for water — that is an Ecofiltro.
The company began as one man was seeking for a feasible and financially viable way to bring drinking water to poor communities. The short version: he played -literally- with mud and saw dust to create a clay that could be shaped into a water container. He mixed that with activated charcoal and shaped it into vases that get coated with colloidal silver and that can be stacked into 5 gallon food grade plastic buckets to turn water from any source into drinking water. Add a spout at the bottom and you can take this bucket just about anywhere. In order to take these bucket water filters anywhere, he needed funds, so he (or someone in his team) came up with more creative ways to promote these and now his product has grown in popularity and can be found almost anywhere in Guatemala. They make them in clay, pewter, and ceramic, and they can be shipped anywhere in the world (in case you’re interested!). We got our own personal tour with my brother as a tour guide and we learned how these water filters are made. My other brother, Josué, joined us that day as well.
As a side note: If you´re interested in telling which one is Jon and which Josué, there are a couple of ways that my younger kids came up with: Victoria would always ask “Is that the dark one or the light one?” (the “light one” is Josué and he is 7 years younger than me, the “dark one” is Jonathan and he is 10 years younger than me). If you asked Leo, he would say “Is that the cool guy or the funny one?” and by cool he would be referring to Jonathan. By the way, Jonathan’s middle name happens to be “Leonidas” after my dad… Leo doesn’t know (or rather didn’t know) that they shared a name before he dubbed him the “cool guy”.
The trip to the grocery store. Let’s just start by saying that I had never grocery shopped for my family in Guatemala. We had never stayed in our own home before and between not really knowing what we were going to be doing each day and trying to convert currencies in my brain I became overwhelmed very quickly. I’m a creature of habit and somehow finding myself at a grocery store so wholly unfamiliar to me, without a list… maybe I should better say without a CLUE! made my brain go completely blank. I couldn’t even think.
Then we can add to the list fiasco a misunderstanding between Ben and I as to the creating of such list… he thought I was going to work on it while he went to get the vehicle, I don’t even remember what I thought but clearly it did not involve writing a list. On any normal day, that may have been an easy to solve dilemma. It took a lot of discussions, misunderstandings on the part of everyone: my mom and dad who couldn’t really follow our conversation; the kids, who were told to pick a cereal box and unknowingly each of them chose the most expensive cereal boxes in the universe, well… you get the picture. A Levendusky nation family meeting had to follow and many apologies were needed. If you ask my kids what was their least favorite moment of the trip, I have no doubt they will tell you it was “the trip to the grocery store”! But, we did manage to agree on a meal for that night and went home with the necessary ingredients to make it happen!
Because we love and are loved by such a wonderful God who redeems everything for His glory, the evening had a wonderful turn around! We finished the day with a family dinner with both my parents and both my brothers joining us at the table. It hadn’t happened in more than six (?) years and it didn’t happen again while we were there. We had moments that I will treasure dearly!
