Breaking Ground

Hello family, friends and followers!

Today is our second day in Guatemala! The day started off abruptly with Drew being woken up by a giant German shepherd licking his face, and it was all uphill from there.  The owners of the hostel served us a delicious breakfast of giant pancakes and some of the freshest fruit we have tasted in months. A few of the boys went to the community early with Hudson to meet the mayor and learn how to mix cement, and the rest of the group got a little more time to relax in the morning. On our way to the community, we were caught in a giant Carnival parade full of adorable little kids in costumes  (Pictures to come). There were a few scary masks, but most of the kids looked pretty cute. After making it to the community in a VERY full microbus (so full that a little man wearing a cowboy hat had to practically sit on John’s lap the entire way), we headed to the school to start our service for the day.

Our plan was to start installing trashcans all along a newly paved road that runs through the city in order to encourage throwing away trash rather than littering. The bottles will then be used in a new project the community is starting which will use them and the trash as building materials.  Before getting to the project, we played with the kids at the school during their recess. The kids were very excited to see us, and decided to show this by throwing glitter, confetti and eggshells at us in the spirit of the Carnival holiday. Things got a little awkward when a little girl poured glitter down Allie’s shirt and a boy brought out scissors to cut Amanda’s hair off, but a quick game of basketball and soccer smoothed things out.

 As the day went on, we made incredible progress installing the trashcans, and created a great stencil to decorate them tomorrow. As the boys were finishing up with some of the trashcans, the girls headed back to Sololá to run some errands, including getting all the fresh ingredients to make Guacamole from the market. We tried some delicious soy ice cream, and totally demolished the Guacamole once we made it back at the hostel. We are definitely not going hungry on this trip. The boys played a few games of soccer (which they want you all to know that they won) against the boys in the village, and then headed back to finish the Guac and take a nap. The hostel is cooking dinner for us—hope it's good! We are headed there now. Miss you all!

(PS. anything that may have concerned you in the last blog was a joke, we promise! Tyler thought it was funny. No gunshots or anything!)

Hasta luegooooooo,

The group!