Christmas is all around

Today is my final push before I peace out of San Vicente tomorrow - One of my woman's groups is throwing me a going away party (even though I'm only going to be gone for about 3 weeks), so I've been busily baking cookies and cakes all day, as none of them have ovens (the last batch are in the oven right now!). The ladies however are providing sandwiches and drinks.

I had a crazy weekend, on Saturday we had our final camp fiesta, I had to make all the food - except for the bread and butter and sprinkles which I delegated to Ferney - and at the same time, the house was FULL FULL FULL of indigenous women preparing for a huge lunch they were having on Sunday. They were preparing for a welcome home party for the brother of the two girls I live with, as he's returning from the States.... So cooking was a little difficult. I was also on a tight budget (mine - and we really get paid nothing) to prepare bastante food for (what turned out to be) 90 kids. I did all the crowd pleasers, cake, cookies and cream pudding, jello, rice krispie treats and of course bread and butter with sprinkles (a favorite of Fiona's for our birthday parties growing up!). This was of course baked with the most campo of ingredients, but it turned out well, the only thing we didn't have enough of was plates as we only bough 75, thinking only about 50 kids would turn up. Our mistake as free food in Guatemala always draws an enormous crowd.

It was a full day of camp as we had food, an activity which included glitter and glue - we were sweeping up glitter for hours afterward - games on the basketball court, the pinata and giving out diplomas for the kids that had good attendance. The Pinata however was quite nearly a disaster, if you think about it, 90 kids, one pinata...yeah, we should have seen that one coming. I had crying babies on my lap who had been hit or pushed, the kids literally ripped the pinata apart with their hands and Ferney was in the center picking up children by the collars and belt hooks and tossing them out of the center, trying to find all the babies that were buried underneath...Luckily there were no lasting injuries and after a few minutes of chaos we got them under control again...as best as we could.

Anyway, that was done, we had the huge family party here at the house yesterday where about 100 people came (Estella had to buy 100lbs of corn flour for the tomales...it was insane). There were videos of the family that live in the States, fireworks (I hid inside for this portion) tons of food and soda. Today is my final event, this going away party in Centro Sur, I'm sure it will be fun and then I'm back tonight and I'm going to clean and pack in preparation for leaving tomorrow morning for Guatemala! PHEW....