My First Garden (at Boarding School)

May 21st, 2010

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My science teacher at boarding school was super cool. Besides having a live snake in his classroom, he gave each of us a plot of garden for our own, sectioned off by rope. During the first semester, we planted wheat. After it was ripe for harvest, we removed all the grains by hand, and we ground it and made flour. We baked bread out of it, and it was delicious, hot from the oven.

The second semester, we could plant whatever vegetables we wanted. That was when I grew to love the smell of the soil. (That is, before we were required to put old cow manure into it. It never smelled the same after that.) I made furrows the correct spacing apart, and I planted the seeds and covered them with soil. I ended up growing carrots, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers, beans, and peas.

Every day, I would run out to my garden, look at the progress of each tiny plant, and pull any weeds that were growing. When it was time to harvest the fastest-growing plants, we had a huge, absolutely enormous basket of radishes and carrots. The carrots were so sweet and huge, with beautiful green tops still attached. I felt like Bugs Bunny as I chomped away. I eventually got sick of burping radishes, and the rest of the radishes spoiled, even though we let everyone in our dorm eat as much as they wanted.

The harvest from the other vegetables was eaten by us little by little as it grew, so we never had any leftovers of those. I enjoyed opening the small gate and swinging it shut behind me. I would walk down the rows of plants, because I had left enough space to walk around each row. As I saw the vegetables growing, I would pluck them off like Peter Rabbit. What a clever way to get children to eat more vegetables!

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Boarding School

May 20th, 2010

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While growing up in Guatemala, I went to boarding school for two years. I absolutely loved the adventure of it. There were large oak trees to climb. The branches were so perfect for climbing, being thick, sturdy, and close enough together to move from one branch to another with plenty of options as to which path to take up. We named each of the trees with different letters of the alphabet, and my best friend would pass a note to me, saying, “Meet me at the V tree at 3:00.” We loved climbing those trees! Sometimes I would climb so high that by the time I got to the top, I would hang on for dear life, dizzy with sweaty palms and a racing heart. I calmed myself by looking at branches at eye level. Then I would lower myself down little by little. What an adrenaline rush!

A fun playground was always accessible during our free time. The swings, teeter-totters, and monkey bars were made out of red chunky wood. The chains on the swings were thick and were so high up that I felt like I was flying like a bird, rushing through the air, rushing upward into the blue sky. The feeling of freedom.

There was even a tree house in the woods. The property was fenced, so we were safe. We would play for hours in that tree house, bringing snacks or different toys depending on what we wanted to play. We could make up any adventure. Sometimes the boys would bully us, and we would yell at them, “We got here first!”

We had hikes on Saturdays, sometimes on foot, and sometimes on bicycles. I loved looking at the tadpoles in the water. I would collect tree frogs and put them in my suitcase. They were so slippery, green, and smooth. After getting about twenty or so, I looked at them jumping around like popcorn in that small suitcase. I realized they had no water or food, so I took the whole suitcase outside and dumped them out. Sometimes the science teacher wanted one or two to feed the snake in the classroom. I would watch the garter snake swallow the sweet little frog in one gulp, the lump moving slowly down the length of the snake.

That reminds me of the fact that the teachers made us eat everything on our plate, no matter what. I still remember to this day, sitting in the dark abandoned dining hall, holding my nose, and forcing myself to swallow cold, mushy, stringy, disgusting squash. I missed part of study hall that night because it took me so long.

On Sundays we had a barbecued lunch, consisting either of barbecued chicken or hamburgers. We might have had steak a few times, and also hot dogs. We got to eat some chips with our meal outside. Our lunch was followed by “bomberos,” which were like popsicles without a stick, that you push up from a long, thin bag. We ate them under the beautiful oak trees.

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The Bomb that Went Off at my Friend’s House

May 19th, 2010

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One day growing up as a missionary kid, I saw smoke rising from my neighborhood when a bomb that went off at my friend’s house caused the street to be blocked by the police.

Let me give you some background information so you can understand what happened.

As an MK, I had an interesting mix of education. Between bilingual school and boarding school, I had one semester doing paces at ACE. I absolutely hated it. I was in a cubicle all day (a wall on 3 sides of me, boxing me in), doing thin workbooks in silence, and putting up a little flag if I needed something. I graded my own work at the end of each booklet, and then I would do another boring, mundane, black and white page. The day droned on and on in endless tedium.

One of my friends from that school lived in my neighborhood, and we had been friends for years. Her hair was blond like a barbie, and she even smelled like a barbie. A loud parrot lived at her house. I remember that after school sometimes, I would go over to her house to play, and one our favorite things to do was to roller skate on the roof. The roof itself was flat cement with a cement wall around it that was high enough not to feel danger. The roof was also smooth enough to roller skate freely.

We would also do plays together, along with my best friend and two younger sisters. I would write the scripts and then hand them out. We would make costumes, sometimes out of paper. One time my best friend insisted that I wear a paper skirt, even though she had a beautiful hoola hoop skirt that made her look like little Bo-Peep. Needless to say, the paper skirt tore when I sat down. Not happy.

That barbie-headed friend came to my birthday parties for years. We would always have a pinata filled with candy, and when we hit it, candy would fly in all directions. My dad would swing it around so crazy that you didn’t know where it was going to be, especially when blindfolded. We also played games like “Red Light, Green Light” and “Mother, May I?” My friend is in all the pictures.

Well, one day my neighborhood friend came to my house and said that her parents had gotten a note in the mail that was threatening. It said that if her family didn’t leave the country right away, they would be killed. So she said good-bye to me, and I never saw her again. I thought that was sad, because it seemed like I played with her almost every day. At least I still had my best friend, but she still went to the bilingual school, and she lived further away.

A couple of weeks after my neighborhood friend left, a bomb went off at the house where she had lived, exploding upwards into the sky. My whole neighborhood was blocked off, and a shoot-out was happening at my friend’s house. Some guerrillas were using that house as a hide-out. The police shot so many holes in the house and the gate that there was hardly a square inch without a bullet hole. It looked worse than a slice of Swiss cheese. So much smoke rose from our neighborhood that it was foggy. And I was glad that my barbie-headed friend was safe and sound.

But what I remember about that evening the most was that we were allowed to go out to dinner, which we almost never got to do. So I cheered with my sisters in the back seat, and we ate at Pollo Campero, fried chicken, for dinner.

If you liked reading “The Bomb that Went Off at my Friend’s House,” you will probably enjoy my other MK writings, which I post on my MK page on Facebook.
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The Bullet that Almost Killed my Sister

May 18th, 2010

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Growing up as a missionary kid in Guatemala, it was normal to see soldiers with machine guns everywhere. One time when my mother was standing in line at the bank, I looked over at the soldier standing in the corner. His finger was on the trigger of his machine gun. I thought oddly to myself, if I went behind him and said, “Boo!” lots of people would be killed. I thought it was foolish for the soldier to have his finger on the trigger! What was he thinking?

Our house was located near the university, and there were riots going on at the university all the time. We would hear gunshots or machine gun fire every once in awhile, and we just carried on because everything was normal. Firecrackers were popular to set off, and they sounded very similar to gunshots, so if you paused any time you heard a popping sound, you would never get anything done. For example, people popped firecrackers whenever it was someone’s birthday, Christmas, New Years, and any other excuse for a celebration. Charred newspaper remains were often seen blowing along on neighborhood streets, because few people ever bothered to pick that up.

Well, one day, a stray bullet flew through the window, just inches from where my baby sister was standing. The window hadn’t stopped the bullet, the curtain hadn’t stopped the bullet, but the couch did. It was an ugly green couch, and maybe that bullet was the turning point that caused my parents to buy a new couch after so many years. Nevertheless, my sister was okay. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even injured. God is in control of even the stray bullets, but it sure was a scare. The odd thing was that we continued to live in that house, and it didn’t really affect our lives very much, except for the fact that we were grateful that my sister was still alive!

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