Just doing the job

Things have been busy here lately. I'm working on a $30,000 funding request to a church in Houston that is due in next Tuesday. It's just about done, if I can get two short client stories (being written by our communciations director) and 2010 end of year financial data. That last item, the financial data, will be interesting, as I will have to translate it from a Guatemalan-styled financial report to a U.S.-styled financial report. Unlike U.S. accounting, that places the sums at the bottom of the data set, in Guatemala the total sum appears first and then is broken down into its constituent parts. Of course, I'll also have to translate from Guatemalan quetzales to U.S. dollars. Today, the exchange rate is Q7.76 to the dollar.

Usually, I ride to the Ochenta (what we call the office, because its street number is 80) in the van that brings the guys to the Wheelchair Workshop in the morning. Today, Linda and I attended the weekly expat breakfast at the Café Condesa. It´s an opportunity to meet other expats and learn from their experiences and mistakes. Today we met a couple from near Ames, who spend the winter here in Antigua. He´s a retired lawyer, who volunteers with a local nonprofit twice a week helping build houses for the poor. Linda got into a conversation with an expat we met last year and may be helping her teach sewing to some local women.

The work day here at Transitions generally starts around 9:00 a.m. and ends about 5:00 p.m., with a two-hour break for lunch. Naturally, I don´t take two hours eating lunch, so I've been going back to work early, especially since I have this funding deadline staring me in the face. Many days, I'll hitch a ride back to the casita to have lunch with Linda and walk back to Ochenta.

Last night, I met an interesting group of medical volunteers with a group called Faith in Practice. Although Faith in Practice is based in Houston, this group was from the southeast U.S. in and around Georgia. They had invited Alex and some of his staff to have dinner with them, which they cooked themselves. It was quite tasty. There was quite a bit of interest in how Linda and I got to Guatemala and our plans for living here. Some were amazed, but a few seemed quite jealous. After dinner, I circulated and collected email addresses to add to our newsletter list.

Tomorrow afternoon, we will participate in a family conference with the nursing home my mother and stepfather are in in Missouri City. Susan, Robyn, their new physician in Houston and the nursing home staff will also participate. It ought to be interesting. Both my mother and stepfather are fighting this every step of the way, despite the fact that my stepfather is no longer able to care for my mother, who is paralyzed on one side. They keep telling us that they are going to go back home, which won't work anymore. We are told by the nursing home staff that this is not unusual. Hopefully, they will settle in and enjoy the fact that they can see Susan, Robyn and the two grandsons on a regular basis. Right now, however, they are almost doing everything they can to convince themselves that it's not going to work. We'll see.