Our last day in Guatemala started out the same as the rest of them: breakfast (pancakes and fruit with hibiscus juice) at 7 AM before loading onto our chosen transportation for the day. Today's mode was one of the El Faro trucks that was loaded with a huge stove. The stove was going to a school in a village that was a 45 minute to an hour drive away from El Faro so the children could have healthy meals without inhaling a ton of smoke. The ride was filled with bumps unlike any we had come across before, so we had to stop due to Dana getting a little motion sick. She was fine, though, and we continued on.
When we got to the school, there were no kids there despite it being a school day and time for school to be in session. It turns out that there was a football tournament in Puerto Barrios, so school in a village more than an hour away was off! The Guatemalan school system is weird. There were some young kids down the road who came to see what the silly Americans were doing at the school when there was no class. Thanks to Tony, we had some helicopter-type toys to give them, and the kids had so much fun. Two young girls took Lauren's phone and Bethany's camera and took at least a hundred photos on each device, including multiple selfies. While we were playing with the kids, Mr. Dean, Keith, and Luis installed the stove in the school's kitchen and soon we were on our merry way again, riding in the back of the truck again for an hour through bumpy roads.
After getting back to the camp, we had twenty minutes to regroup before meeting in the guys' room to sort through all the extra stuff we were leaving here at camp. Megan, the daughter of the camp's owner, helped us out along with her otter Lola. We got done pretty quickly, which left us with an hour before lunch to go swim and have fun. Lunch was beef, coleslaw, potatoes, and some homemade flatbread - really yummy. After lunch, we had even more free time; about three hours to have fun and enjoy our last day here.
Our final activity with El Faro was a boat ride on some waves to the public beach for another Kids Club. We brought a parachute and a beach ball in order to play with the kids, and helped them dance, complete puzzles, and make some crafts. We got back to El Faro around 5:30 after another "fun" boat ride, complete with me almost falling into the ocean as I tried to get out of the boat.
Dinner was at 7 tonight instead of 6:30 and was a cheeseburger and fries, the perfect food to get us back into the mood for the United States. After we all paid off our tabs at the store, we met at the conference room in the main office for our last team meeting. There was some El Faro merchandise available for us to purchase; I'm pretty sure we all bought an El Faro water bottle. Keith handed back our passports in order for us to fill out our forms for the border crossing before collecting them all again, and we were able to ask the adults anything we wanted. Our final meeting ended with some information about the flights and times we needed to make before we all said goodnight and went back to our rooms to pack. The mess that exploded into the girls room has finally been contained and shoved back into our suitcases. Our carry ons are ready, and the air conditioner is dripping water into two garbage cans as a soundtrack to our packing. We're all going to sleep well tonight, as well as on the bus ride to Honduras, the plane ride to Houston, the plane ride to Chicago, the bus ride back to Chesterton...
If you want to know about our flights tomorrow and/or keep track of any changes to them, click here for the flight to Houston and click here for the flight to Chicago. See you in less than 24 hours!
- Sereen
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