miércoles, 30 de enero de 2013

Adios

I have been home in Algonquin Illinois for the past week.
I know, I'm confused too.

When did this happen?  I mean I vaguely remember a few hugs, hearing my flight being called... its all a blur really.  Am I really done?  And now I'm in this strange cold place...

Needless to say, the last three weeks in January in Guatemala went really fast.  The new volunteers came and we old volunteers trained them.  I worked with a German volunteer who will do recreation therapy with the kids with learning disabilities.  Apart from that I just worked on tying up loose ends. I tried to take advantage of spending time with everyone - the kids, the volunteers, and the employees.  It was very busy.

We had a good bye lunch with the kids with special needs.  We hiked to a beautiful park in the woods, had a bon fire, and enjoyed the afternoon.  It actually all worked out perfectly :)


 



With Santiago - my section of adolescent boys - we said goodbye by going swimming for the day at a place called Aposentos.  It was a lot of fun even though I neglected to bring my camera :/
They were really funny.  I attempted to teach some of them how to swim, but it turned into an arm flailing, leg thrashing mess.  Good thing they had plenty of shallow pools :)

I will/do miss them a lot.  I've been having dreams about all the kids the last couple nights.  And then I wake up and realize that I won't see them today...

Then of course - I spent the last couple weeks with the other awesome volunteers.  Our last Saturday night, all of us in house 4 moved our mattresses out to the main room to watch a movie and spend the last night together.  It was really cute... and really sad.  I miss my housemates so much!

Charlotte, Nona, Vroni, Katie, me, Elena


And its good.  Its time to start something new.  Its time to get a job in the real world and I hope to go to grad school in the near future.  Its time to say goodbye to Guatemala, my kids, and the life I had last year.
And thank you all for following my blog.  It was a really hard year.  There were a lot of challenges, miscommunications, and overwhelming moments.  But I learned a lot and met really incredible people along the way.  I know that there is no experience quite like what I had at NPH Guatemala.

I wish you all well!  And I hope you keep enjoying your own adventures! Hasta pronto.