Hi Everybody! Alyssa and Pat here. We�re glad that you could take a moment to check up on how we�re doing here in Guatemala! We are hoping to post something weekly, but we�ll see how that goes. :-P Also, we�ve haven�t taken our camera out yet, but we�ll do that soon so there will be pictures too.
So here�s what we�ve been up to:
Our flight left Portland at 10:45 PM on Monday, August 29th. We arrived at noon on Tuesday the 30th, after a four hour layover in Atlanta where Denise Columbe came and visited with us at the airport. For those that know her, she is doing very well. When landed in Guatemala, we cruised through customs, got our luggage, and met Oscar from Camino Seguro outside waiting for us. The drive from Guatemala City to Antigua was crazy. People drive crazy there in the city! The lanes aren�t marked, and people are constantly merging, driving maybe a foot from each other, and from pedestrians too! Quite a wide range of cars too�busses billowing black smoke, lots of motorcycles, many different cars that we�ve never seen in the U.S. Once we got to Antigua, we dropped our stuff off at our host family�s house. Then we went to Camino Seguro office, found out that the tour that we were supposed to be going on the following day was actually started in a few minutes!
We took a chicken bus to visit Casa Hogar in San Pedro (about 3 miles from Antigua). The bus cost Q1.00, which is about 15 cents. Casa Hogar is a place where Camino Seguro places kids that would be better served away from some of the problems that they would otherwise face at home. It is much better environment for them to live in. They go to school across the street in the morning and then go Casa Hogar for activities the rest of the day. The program pays for their schooling, housing, and meals. After the tour, we took the bus back to the Camino Seguro office (without our tour guide, which was a little scary because we didn�t really know where we were since we�d only been in Antigua for all of 15 minutes!), and then walked back to our host family�s house, which we luckily found fairly easily. We took a short nap because we were exhausted because we hadn�t slept much during the traveling. When we came down for dinner, we met the our family: Thelma (the mom), Francisco (the 21 year old son), Diego (the 15 year old son), Tio Seco (Thelma�s brother-in-law), Manulo (the 18 year old son that lives with the dad), Lena (the grandma/Thelma�s mom), Jose Alfredo (nephew of Thelma), and Justin (a 23 year old from the US that is taking Spanish classes and will be here another 3 weeks).
The following day we spent most of touring the town. Justin had classes in the morning, but after lunch he took us on a tour and showed us what he knew about Antigua. Later, we stopped at a caf� and had coke floats and got to knew each other a bit more. The town of Antigua is very unique. The roads are all the original cobblestone roads from the late 1500�s, and there are many buildings from the 1700�s. Antigua used to be the capital of Guatemala, but it was destroyed by major earthquakes twice in the 1700�s, so they moved it to Guatemala City.
The next day we rushed off to the Camino Seguro office for the tour of the facilities in Guatemala City. It was about a 50 minutes bus ride on the chicken bus each way, and we were lucky enough to get seats each time. It only cost Q6.50 (not even a dollar) each for one-way. When we got there we walked about a mile to get to the site. When we got there we got a local to escort us for safety. We first looked at the dump and the homes nearby. Then we saw the various facilities: a kindergarten in a warehouse, a carpentry shop, and a brand new facility where they have the school that was donated by a wealthy family from the US. Somehow on the ride back to Antigua Alyssa managed to fall asleep on the chicken bus! When we got back to Antigua, we went to a caf� with the other volunteers that went on the tour and got to know them a bit better. Afterwards, we walked back home, but as we were walking it started to thunderstorm and rain very heavy. We huddled next to a building that had an overhang for about 10 minutes until the rain let up. It was still raining as we walked the rest of the way back, but not near as much as the torrential downpour before. There was a foot of water on parts of the road and the sewer was overflowing! Once we got back, we showered up and got some dinner.
On Friday, we got up at 6:15, ate some granola with yogurt & a banana for breakfast, and headed to the bus stop by the market to get there right at 7:00AM. We sat by Beth as she went through the Volunteer Guide and we chatted about our backgrounds and what we want to do volunteer-wise and different advice she had for us. When we got to Guatemala City we immediately started helping out. It happened to be family day, which they have once a month. The families of the kids came and Camino Seguro gave out the bags of food, did lice shampooing and combing, had arts & crafts to keep the kids occupied, served lunch, and had the families meet with social workers. In the morning, Pat was on kitchen duty and Alyssa was on arts & crafts, and in the afternoon Pat did lice shampooing while Alyssa did kitchen duty. Basically it was crazy all day. During our lunch period we volunteered to help out extra in the kitchen, so they gave us the task of cutting the talons off the chicken feet and separating chicken hearts from the feet from the little plastic bags they came in, in preparation for Monday�s meals. That was definitely a first! We met lots more cool volunteers and cool kids and had a good time. At 4:15 we left for home. We got back to the house in Antigua at about 5:45, had some sopa de frijoles, and went to Thelma�s school�s awards ceremony/talent show. (Thelma is a teacher.) We watched the kids sing and dance, Virginia (a.k.a. Vicky, Thelma�s niece) do a belly dance, and Thelma did a Broadway type dance with all her fellow teachers. Afterwards we came back home and hung out with Diego. We watched some TV, taught him to play ode to joy on the guitar, and played soccer on the playstation.
The food here has been great�and very unique! We�ve had �ropa viejo� (old clothes) which is a tasty seasoned beef dish, with rice and tortillas. We�ve had �gringas� (white girls) which is a soft taco with beef, tomatoes, onions, and mozzarella cheese. We�ve had lots of bananas and a bunch of new vegetables that we don�t remember the names of, we drank coke out of a plastic bag, but luckily we haven�t had to eat the chicken feet(we�re bringing our own lunch Monday :-) ).
Last Updated: 03 SEPTEMBER 2005
We'll be trying to update this weekly, so come on back and check it soon.
