Arrival in Guatemala

Boarding the plane, we noticed that about 80 percent of the passengers on our airplane were traveling to Guatemala to do volunteer work. There were two large groups of church organizations with matching shirts as well as our group of about 30. As we began our descent towards the Guatemala's airport, I remember looking out the window at the night sky and gazing down on the vast and empty landscape of Guatemala. At first, there were a few lights every now and then, but as we got closer to Guatemala City, it looked as if we were flying over some made up city because of all the lights and houses. I guess that was to be expected when Guatemala City is home to about 4 million of the country's 13 million citizens. To compare the size of the city to, Dallas is home to about 1.25 million people, and I thought Dallas was a large city. When we touched down on the runway, I could see out my window all these houses along the runway and I couldn't imagine living in a house with an airport as your backyard, but obviously people do. Another thing I observed was that about every house with Christmas lights had the blinking lights, or "blinkies" as we call them. Even the hotel had blinking lights. Once we got to the front desk, Mark found out that our rooms were smoking and demanded to have them changed even though we would be far from the others. By the time we got our keys, I was starving and Mary Sue and I went to the gift shop to buy some Cheeto Puffs, or "Poffs", as they call them in Guatemala. Little did we know that we needed Guatemalan money called Quetzales. The woman at the shop gave them to us anyways and we paid her back the next morning. Tired and exhausted, we went to our rooms and went to sleep right away to get ready for another busy day.