How I Spent My Summer Vacation: A Love Letter to the Conference Grounds

Until Sunday, August 17, my summer was unremarkable. And that was at best. At worst, it was horribly frustrating. I took three classes this summer, and while they weren't difficult, they were a lot of work. Not to mention, spending 4 nights a week in class was less than enjoyable. My job was nothing to write home about, either. I had the summer off from my school year nannying jobbecause the mom is a teacher, so I had to pick up a summer job. I knew I would miss my little boy, but it was only three months and then I could go back to nannying him when school started again. I won't go into details, but I ended up quitting the summer job that Sunday night because I was frustrated and wasn't making the money I was promised. Let's just say that there were unmet expectations on both sides.

Now, under different circumstances, I would have just accepted the 2 weeks off and enjoyed some free time. However, I worked only 5 weeks out of the whole summer when I was told I would work 10. Half the weeks meant half the income. A quick look at my bank account online told me that I was $800 short of tuition, which was due on the first day of the semester. If I didn't make that money, I wouldn't be able to go to school in two weeks. The people I worked for couldn't guarantee me that I would work during those last two weeks (they pretty much said they would let me know the day of) and that wasn't going to work for me. I needed to make money, and I had to be sure that my hours wouldn't be canceled on me at the last minute.

So I quit.

Then I panicked just a little bit.

How was I going to make $800 in two weeks if I had just quit my job?

Then, a flash of brilliance (or perhaps divine intervention): THE CONFERENCE GROUNDS. The last two weeks out there are always understaffed because the high schoolers and college staff go back to their regularly scheduled sports, orientations, jobs, classes, and activities. Where else could I get a job on short notice with no application, no interview, no training period, and no hassle? I didn't even have to fill out any of the usual paperwork because they still had it on file from two years ago! So on Sunday night at about 9pm, I made a few calls, sent a few texts, secured two weeks of guaranteed work, and moved out to the Grounds the very next day.

It was as if I had never left. I slipped back seamlessly into the ice cream store and teaching Bible school. I received a hero's welcome when I arrived because I was able to pick up so many random shifts vacated by the people who had already left. It was actually kind of embarrassing - the way I saw it, they were helping me out more than I was helping them by giving me a job so that I could pay my tuition.

Being around people I liked and who liked me turned my entire summer around. At my other job, I never felt like they liked me or trusted me, and those are important things for me to have in my job. Going back to a place that felt like home, where I felt safe and accepted, was exactly what I needed after a summer of school stress and getting the run-around at work. It felt great to be trusted again - trusted to know what I was doing, trusted to do a good job, trusted to take care of the kids. It's hard for me to put into words just how much this all meant to me.

Now, when people ask me how my summer was, I feel like I can truthfully say that it was good instead of disappointing. My self-confidence suffered quite a hit after I quit my original summer job, especially because I knew my employers didn't care that I was frustrated to the point of quitting. They told me they had hired someone else the week before. I'm 95% sure that they would have just strung me along until the end of the summer instead of telling me they were dissatisfied with the job I was doing. That's never a good feeling. But after my two weeks at the Grounds, I felt like my heart was put back together. The people there are genuinely interested in how you are and what you have coming up in your life. I don't have to pretend there. They accept me as I am. They make me smile. They make me laugh. They care.
They are my people.

Honduras, Days 4 and 5 – Local Television Star

Yesterday I took a nap instead of writing a post. So there you have it.

Today (Tuesday), was business as usual, with a little bit of extra stuff for me. Rather, I got kind of bored with the dispensary stuff, and there were no kids because they were school. Plus, Jefa Sandy wanted to teach me how to locate glasses in the inventory, and I didn’t really want to do that, especially because I get pulled in enough different directions already without having to get called away for interpreting in the middle of finding 

glasses for a patient.

Anyway.

The last two days, the technicians on our team have been teaching two students from San Pedro Sula how to make glasses. Now, this is complicated to do in English. And the students don’t speak much English. So Marian and I have been stumbling through the directions that Dick gives us about the various machines and technical stuff. Sometimes it’s really difficult, between the technical vocabulary and the complicated directions. At one point, one of the guys asked me to tell the student to “spot it in” and I had no idea what he was talking about. I asked him what he meant, but he said, “Just tell them to spot it in, they’ll know what it means.” I had to say, “Um, yeah, but I don’t know what it means, so you’re gonna have to describe to me the process of ‘spotting it in’ so that I can describe it to them.” We had several moments like that. Along with looking up the words for “bevel,” “axis,” “trace,” and “centralize.”

Something interesting that happened yesterday and today was that crews from two television news networks came to interview Dr. Bob about the clinic and the work we were doing here. And, of course, since he doesn’t speaking Spanish, they elected me to be his interpreter! It was a little bit scary at first, but it turned out to be not too difficult. The second interview went better because I stopped Dr. Bob more often to interpret and then I didn’t have an entire paragraph to remember. Turns out that’s the key. Who would have thought?

I spent at least half of today being the interpreter for Nisha, one of the doctors who I’ve become really good friends with. We’re the same age and we have perhaps too much fun together. Lots of laughter. Lots of giggling. Lots of broken Spanish. It’s a good time. I was getting a bit tired of the dispensary, and Nisha was getting a lot tired of her interpreter who was prone to texting during every spare moment, so I sat down at her exam station and took over. It was a lot of fun! It was a whole different set of phrases and instructions, plus more questions and answers from the patients, so I got to do interpretation in both directions. Plus, it was Nisha. I always love it when you can meet someone and become instant friends during a trip. I’ll probably not see her again after this trip (unless we meet up on another of these trips) because she lives in Canada and looooves to travel. But that’s okay. There’s always Facebook, right?

I suppose that’s all for now. We’re heading out to dinner in 20 minutes or so, with a cultural dance demonstration after that. I’ll post pics on the blog when we get back to the States, the internet just isn’t fast enough here in the hotel. ¡Buen día!

Honduras Day 3 – Adventures in the Dispensary

Today (Sunday) began with pancakes in the dining room of our hotel. Normally, I’m not a huge panqueque fan, but these seemed different. Mine were much thinner than the ones my dad makes, almost like crepes. After that, half of us went to church and the other half went to the Sunday morning markets. I’ve only been to a Catholic church service once or twice in my entire life, so the service here was unfamiliar, but interesting anyway. I was able to follow along fairly well with the flow of the service, except for when to sit down and stand up. It was a kids’ service, so there was a kids’ choir and upper elementary-aged kids led the liturgies and some of the prayers. That was neat to see. They were so cute.

After church, we hustled over to the clinic to begin working for the day. It was pretty much the same as yesterday in terms of the process, but in addition, we had a handful of clients from yesterday that needed custom-made glasses and returned today to pick them up. We give those that need to return a slip with a day and time that they can come back and we allow them to come in through the back door so they don’t have to wait in the regular line to pick up their glasses. I think they really appreciate that. I know I would.

I got to meet so many great Hondurans (both adults and kids) today. Yesterday was more hectic, but today I had some time to sit with people and talk to them. I even got to hold a few babies!! I miss Tyler (my little hombrecito that I take care of during the week) and he’s not so little anymore! He doesn’t always want to sit and cuddle with me anymore, so I absolutely loved holding the little 5- and 6-month old babies that came through with their parents. It seemed like there were a lot more kids today too, and I got to have a lot of fun with them. While Jefa Sandy and Aunt Penny would find the right glasses for them, I would help them pick out some sunglasses. We try to give sunglasses to everyone here because the sun is much more powerful here, closer to the equator. When I have boys picking out sunglasses, I always show them the pink Barbie pairs first, and they all say “Nooo! Aquellas son para chicas!” (Those are for girls!) Then we all have a good laugh.

One of my little bebecitos, Isaac, a little boy who turned 1 yesterday, had pinkeye. I felt so bad for him. His parents came through for vision tests and glasses, and when they got to the dispensary, they asked me to look at his eyes and tell them what was wrong. I told them that I would get a doctor for them, but even I could see that the little guy’s eyes were all bloodshot. Dr. Bob came by and explained through me about pinkeye, how contagious it was, how important it was to keep the eyes and eyelashes clean and wash hands often, and how the drops worked and how often to use them. The little guy was a champ. He didn’t cry or squirm when Dr. Bob had to shine the light in his eyes or when he put the drops in. One of the other team members got a great picture of him and me, so I’ll have to post that one when she emails it to me. It sucks that he has pinkeye, but that means he has to come back, so I’ll get to see him and his parents again! P.S. to Rob and Susie - Isaac does the "how old are you" hold-up-one-finger better than Tyler does. I couldn't get him to clap, though, which seems to be T's speciality. :)

My Spanish is doing pretty well too. I’ve gotten lots of compliments, both from team members and from clients, about how fluid I am with the two languages. I feel so affirmed by that. My Spanish professors would be absolutely horrified by how sloppy I’ve been with my pronunciation, but I’ve found that trying to mimic the accent that my client has helps me to communicate better with them. For example, the older generation has very thick accents – they tend to leave the ‘s’ off of their words, they say “pah” instead of “para,” and they tend to just garble their words a bit. Like they have rocks in their mouths. The younger generations, especially the kids, speak more clearly, so I try to match accents with the client. Today also went better because I found a little stool on wheels that I sat and rolled around on. Since the patients were sitting down, I sat down too, and then I was eye-to-eye with them. It helped a LOT. I could see their mouths, I could hear them better, and it was just easier to talk. I hate looming over people. I’d rather sit with them on the same level to talk. Hopefully that wheelie stool doesn’t disappear.

I think that’s all for now. We’re supposed to have a “night off” from organized dinner and entertainment, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some homework done and relax with some books. Or maybe I’ll just go to sleep. I’ve been waking up at 6am here, even with earplugs and a white noise app on my Kindle. Oh well. When in Honduras…

Honduras, Day 2 – Don’t Flush That

Today (Saturday) was the first day of our eye care clinic. It works like this: people come to the Lions Club building in town, where there is a dental clinic and an eye clinic. A Lions member registers each person as they come to clinic and gives them a ticket, telling them what day to come back. This is so that they don’t spend day after day waiting in line. The first stop in the clinic is a basic acuity test – the patient covers each eye and does a simplified version of the vision chart you see at the optometrist’s office. The one with the big E at the top. The chart I tried to memorize when I was younger so that my vision didn’t seem so bad. Our charts have numbers and pictures on them because some of our clients don’t know how to read, so a chart with letters would be useless.

After that, the adult patients go to a glaucoma test. When that’s done, everyone goes to a station where they sit down and put their face in that machine where the technician shines a light into your eyes to look at the shape of your corneas. At least, I think that’s what it does. I should know, after going to the eye doctor so often throughout my life, but I didn’t ask.

We have five optometrists on our team who see the patients after the preliminary tests. They assess the patients’ vision more carefully and provide eye drops and glaucoma treatment drops to those who need them. They write the prescriptions for glasses for those who need them, and for the special cases like terygium (they tell me it’s like a callus on the eye) or sores or diseases, they write medical referrals to the Lions Club clinic in San Pedro Sula, which does surgeries and more advanced treatments.

The patients that need glasses then come to the dispensary, where we have approximately 1,500 pairs of donated glasses, sunglasses, and reading glasses. I worked pretty much all day in the dispensary with the team members that pull glasses, adjust glasses, and cut lenses. The doctors had bilingual students to help them speak to clients, so I stayed in the dispensary to talk to patients about taking care of their glasses, how important it is to use sunglasses when they’re outside, and when they should come back to pick up custom-made glasses.

That’s the basics. It was kind of a whirlwind day. When I closed my eyes at the end of the day, I saw patients’ faces and heard lots of Spanish in my head. For most of the day, I was able to speak the right language to the right person (Spanish to a patient, English to a team member, etc.). But by the end of the day, I was speaking Spanish to everyone. I was helping my Aunt Penny communicate with a woman selling shawls and scarves after the clinic closed and at one point, she asked me what the scarf was made out of, the woman said “algodón” (cotton), and I turned to Aunt Penny and said, “Algodón.” She just stared at me, with a little Auntie Penny smile on her face, and waited for me to realize that I hadn’t spoken English.

I had never had that happen before. Even at the end of five months in Spain, my default was always English. I always had to think before speaking to Spanish-speakers because my thoughts were in English. But after just one day here, where I probably did more speaking than in 3 or 4 days in Spain, I was speaking Spanish first. At the welcome dinner at the home of the Lions Club president, I was finding it harder to form English sentences than Spanish ones. Crazy, huh?

Here’s a fun fact (and those of you who have spent time in Central America will recognize this one): you don’t flush your toilet paper here. You use it, then put it in the trash can next to the toilet. This took a little getting used to. I have flushed paper only twice since arriving because sometimes it’s so automatic to just drop the paper in the toilet and flush it. You may ask, doesn’t it get stinky? Surprisingly, not too bad! And they change the trash often. Every bathroom that I’ve been in so far (except the one in the airport) has a window to the outside, which helps a lot. Plus, they maintain the bathrooms more often here – I saw a sign in the airport indicating that theirs would be “refreshed” approximately every four hours. Maybe all they do is Febreeze it, but whatever. It helps. The bathrooms here are no stinkier than the public bathrooms in the U.S.

Today (Sunday) is church day and markets day. We’ll start the clinic a little bit later than normal to accommodate those who want to attend church and those who want to do some shopping in the Sunday market. Then, it’s business as usual! Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. We’ve had a very successful first clinic day. And, yes, my suitcase arrived yesterday afternoon, so I have clean clothes again! Stay tuned for more fun stories and maybe some pictures. I haven’t yet had time to organize and upload them. ¡Hasta mañana! 

Honduras, Day 1 – Houston, We Almost Had a Problem

We started the day not bright and very early at the crack of 3. Boarded the plan around 5:45, supposed to take off at 6:05. But you can probably imagine that things didn’t happen the way they were supposed to. We sat on the tarmac for a good hour or so while the guys in Houston advised us to take another route and load up more fuel because of a set of thunderstorms. In order to do that, they had to take some suitcases off. This will be important later.

It was finally decided that the storms had moved out of our way and we could commence our flight, regular flight route, no extra fuel needed. We finally took off around 7. It was a three hour flight, and if it had left on time, we would have had just under an hour to meet our connection to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. But if you have decent reading comprehension, you will notice that we ate up that hour on the tarmac in Detroit. 

Hmmm….

So all the way to Houston, the group is speculating: will we make it on time? How far away are the two gates? When is the next flight to SPS if we miss this one (turns out it was 24 hours later)? Do you think if we radioed ahead, they would hold the plane for us?

Meanwhile, these clowns behind us (you know, the spring breakers type who pre-tan before they spend a whole week tanning on the beach and who order cocktails on a 6am flight out of Detroit) were whining about possibly missing their connector to Riviera Maya. But hello, it’s Spring Break – there are flights to Riviera Maya every two hours. Seriously. If I had a lempira (Honduran currency) for every time I wanted to turn around in my seat and tell them to JUST COOL IT…I could probably buy a Coke. It’s about 20 lempira to a dollar right now.

The flight lands in Houston, and as it’s taxiing to a terminal, the flight attendant asks everyone who does not have an immediate connection to remain seated and let people through. The plane stops, seatbelt sign goes off, and EVERYBODY STANDS UP. I was this close to body-checking those Riviera Maya people, who had several noisy conversations earlier with Houston to switch all of them to the flight leaving two hours later. They were not in nearly the hurry that our group was in.

We got off our plane and rummaged in bags for our boarding passes to SPS, trying to determine how far away the gate was. I wish I could tell you that it was right next door. It was not. We were at terminal B, and SPS was leaving from terminal E. So we hoofed it like we’d never hoofed it before through escalators, people-movers, and a metro.

Word on the moving sidewalk was that they were holding the plane for us and to move to our gate as quickly as possible. And there, around the corner and at the farthest possible corner of the terminal, was our gate.

We made it, by the way.

They held the plane for us for about half an hour, which we realllllly appreciated and thanked them for profusely. I think I apologized to just about every row of people I passed, I was just so relieved to have made the flight. The next one to SPS was something like 11am the next day. That flight was fairly uneventful. No crazy party-hearty spring breakers, at least. And each seat had its own media screen, with live DirecTV and movies for just a swipe of the credit card! No thanks. I stuck with my Kindle.

We landed in San Pedro Sula around 11:45am, I think. I wasn’t sure with the time difference. The ticket said we were expected to land at 10:55, but of course, we delayed them taking off, and there was an hour or two of time difference in there, but whatever. I honestly didn’t care what time it was. I was just happy to be in Honduras.

We made our way through customs and on to baggage claim with the rest of the passengers and lined up around the carousel to grab suitcases. Let’s do some math here: there are 19 of us on this trip, each has a personal suitcase, plus there were approximately 20 “clinic suitcases” filled with equipment, tools, and about 1,500 pairs of glasses. Each of us was responsible for a clinic suitcase in addition to our own suitcase and carry-ons (carries-on?). So we wait around the carousel, grabbing any and all bags with our signature red duct tape strips. The crowd is beginning to thin out, bags at the end have been claimed by people in the back of the line at customs, and our group has claimed a little over half of our suitcases. The luggage hombres close the doors to the outside, announce “Han bajado todos” (all of them have been brought down off the plane), and head to the nearest coffee kiosk.

Yikes.

Remember those suitcases that they took off the plane out of Detroit in order to make room for more fuel that we ended up not needing anyway and they took it back off and didn’t put the suitcases back on in their places?

Nine of us (including me) ended up without our personal suitcases, and I think 6 or 7 clinic suitcases were left behind as well. Most of them had glasses in them, which kind of stinks because we’re planning to set up and start seeing people right away tomorrow. The good news in all of this is that by the time we had reached SPS, our bags had caught another plane out of Detroit to Houston, and a small plane was arranged to bring our missing luggage into SPS sometime late tonight or tomorrow morning. We were told that we could expect our bags to be here at the hotel when we get back from the clinic.

Kids, this is why you put everything you can’t live without in your carry-on.

We took a bus from SPS to La Esperanza, where we’re staying, and I drifted in and out, so I’m not sure how much time it actually took. I would estimate 3 to 4 hours, which is pretty good for a giant chartered bus and mountain roads across that distance. First, we dropped all of the clinic bags and equipment at the clinic and said hi to some Lions Club members who are hosting us, and then around 6pm we arrived at our hotel for the week. The hotel is owned by Lions Club members that host this group every time they come to do the clinic. I like them already. They’re going to be cooking all of our breakfasts and a good portion of our dinners, and they’re taking great care to wash the fruits and vegetables with bottled and treated water so that we don’t get sick.

The under 30 crowd (me, an optometrist named Nisha, an optometry 4th-year named Dan, and Mackenzie) plus my Uncle Bill immediately hopped on the lobby’s wifi. I’m hoping to post every day since the wifi is right downstairs. Around 7, we were served dinner, and after eating, I peaced out and headed up to my room for a shower and to type this and then to bed. It’s 10:30pm Grand Rapids time, I’ve been awake since 3am….I’m too tired to do the math. 18 hours? Ish. Night night, ya’ll. Sleep tight. I know I will. My bed here is bigger than my bed at home.

Honduras, Day 0

In one hour, my aunt and uncle are swinging through to pick me up and head for Detroit. We'll fly out tomorrow at the crack of 6 for Houston, and from there to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The flight plan says we'll land in SPS around 11am, but of course, this is American aviation we're talking about. We're hoping to arrive in La Esperanza around 7pm, settle in, sleep, and hit the ground running on Saturday with setting up the clinic and seeing people.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers! I am a little nervous right now, mostly because I don't want to forget anything important, but it's only ten days, right? And what are duty-free airport shops for, except for buying things that you forget, right? Anyway, I'm bringing my computer with me so that I can write updates as often as possible.

Here's a map of Honduras for those of you unfamiliar with Honduras geography (myself included). La Esperanza is there about an inch to the left of Tegucigalpa, the capital, marked by the star. Near the end of the week, we'll be going for an excursion to Copan, another inch slightly up and to the left of La Esperanza, near the border of Guatemala. I'll take lots of pictures for ya'll.


Bon voyage! Happy Spring Break to me! I hope the rain lets up for the rest of ya'll here in west Michigan.

What good is a picture of the dark?

When I was in high school, I went on a youth group trip to Rehoboth, New Mexico. There was a student a few years younger than me who took pictures of the most bizarre things. He would take multiple pictures of the same bizarre thing, too. A cactus needle really close up. A person from very, very far away. The sun at noon. Things that no one else would think to take pictures of.

One of those bizarre things was a completely black night sky. If you flipped through the pictures of this sky, you would think that he had taken pictures of the inside of his pocket by mistake because they showed up simply as black rectangles. But here's the real story: there was a lightning storm many miles away that night. We could see it from the dorms we were staying in. Lots of us set up camp to watch it for a little while because it looked so cool. The student, let's call him Craig, wanted to take pictures of the lightning storm. He was convinced that if he pushed the button at exactly the right moment, he would capture a streak of brilliant lightning against the black sky. It didn't matter to him that he all he had so far was a bunch of black pictures, or that he was using a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. Craig wanted a picture of lightning and he was going to try to get one no matter how many people said it was impossible.

Without knowing the story of the black pictures, you would learn absolutely nothing from them. You wouldn't know who took them, where they were taken, what they were of, or what the point was. You would say, "What good is this picture of the dark? And why are there so many?" Craig would be able to tell you exactly why he taken those photos, if you'd only ask.

Depression is a collection of black pictures. There's the obvious connection that depression feels like a black cloud or a walk through darkness with no light to guide you. It goes deeper than that, though. From the outside looking in, it's hard to understand depression when all you have to look at is a series of black pictures. The photos themselves don't tell a story, don't show anything useful, don't explain a damn thing. You need the photographer's story - words on paper, words spoken aloud, words that form a story.

But depression can rarely be explained adequately with words. Believe me, I've tried. It's invisible, so I can't describe what it looks like. I can describe what a person may look like if they are experiencing certain symptoms, but that's not the same thing. That's like saying that wind looks like trees moving back and forth. The pain is intangible - I can't point to where it hurts and I can't explain how it hurts, only that it does. You would have to crawl into my head (or perhaps my heart) to understand what depression is and does. All I'm left with are these photographs of the dark that say, "I have borne witness to this, I have been here, I have lived to tell you about it."

Society has taught us to keep quiet about our pictures of the dark. It has taught us that if you can't take a picture of something, it may as well not even exist. A picture of the dark means nothing and proves nothing.

That's not true though. A picture of the dark proves that there was someone present to witness the dark and capture it, if only for a moment. That dark represents something that cannot be seen, but must be felt or heard or lived. And just because you cannot see it does not mean that it doesn't exist.