Guatemala Update

Buenos tardes a todos el mundo!! (good afternoon to everyone!)

Well I've been here for almost a week already. After a full day of traveling on monday we arrived in Guatemala approx. 8:30pm and it turned out that only one of my bags didn't make it with us. But luckily I had the other one and Jasmine got both of hers. I didn't end up getting my other bag until friday, which is an unusually long time.

The week has actually been pretty slack. We've had some work projects to do around the compound, my tasks are helping out with extra dishes on monday nights after supper, cleaning the prayer room tuesday mornings and watering the plants wednesday afternoons. We also have classes during the week. So far we have started our spanish classes, and funny story...so we had to take a spanish placement test before we started the class because they are dividing our group into smaller groups depending on spanish abilities. There is a beginner class and a middle class and somehow I ended up in the middle class with one of the other people in my program. One of our leaders, Anthony, teaches the class and it's pretty intense but I'm learning lots. And the other class we've had so far is cultural differences, where we learnt about the difference between hot and cold climate cultures. There was also a team down here from B.C and they were a pretty big team, about 20, so it's been loud and chaotic and they had kids who ate alot of sugar. You can imagine....On friday night they put on a concert/banquet for the people involved with Fe Viva (the missions place) and it was awesome. Saturday was the kids program and all the Casa Esperanza kids (the orphanage kids) were there, plus all the neighbourhood kids came as well. They are all so cute! You can really tell that alot of these kids are poor because they come with tattered clothes and shoes that are too small, or worn out. But they are still enthusiastic and it's awesome. Today after church in the morning we went to the "Hotel Baru" which is a hotel down the street that has a pool and the Casa kids go there every sunday and so we joined them today and it was stinking hot and I got a little bit of a sunburn-which will turn into a wicked awesome tan! I'm pretty excited.