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| The children welcome the QU Guatemala delegation to Joyas de las Flores |
By Lindsey Mazzone
After our adventure-filled weekend of a boat ride across “El
Lago Atitlán” and sight-seeing in Antigua, we headed to our second set of host
families near San Juan Sacatepéquez. We
all got a great night’s sleep, so we were all extremely ready and excited to
go, although we were sad to leave the “Hobbit Hotel” (Albergues Tecpan), as it
was where we spent our first night in Guatemala.
A two-hour bus ride later, and we were in the village of Joyas
de las Flores being greeted by what seemed to be a thousand children. They cheered for us all individually while
making funny faces and saluting us at the welcoming ceremony. We were then split up to meet our host
families.
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| Lunch at Ana's House |
Mariana, Sarah, Dana and I were very happy to find out we
were all living together… along with the 12 children in our family. After 8 hours of being with the family, we still weren’t
sure which children live with us because there were always so many in the
house. We all had lunch together,
prepared by Ana, one of the mothers. We
tried to fuel up as much as possible to prepare for our work-filled
afternoon.
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| David Ives with Ana, one of our host mothers in Joya de las Flores |
Our project for our time in the village of Joyas de las
Flores is to build retaining walls for the community’s meeting pavilion. In order to do this, we dug the foundation
during our first day of work. What would
have taken one hour in the United States with the equipment we have there, took
2.5 hours to dig 30 cm on one side of the pavilion. We used shovels and pic-axes and a lot of
muscle. The soil was very rocky and full
of tree roots, which made the work extremely difficult. A ton of children gathered around us,
offering to help and asking how to say certain words in English. We worked very hard and then went home for
dinner.
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| Lindsey gives Mike a shoulder rub after shoveling the foundation for the project. |
At home, the children were poking their heads through the
curtains and door, watching us like we were animals at the zoo, so we performed
the “Gringo Show.” This consisted of us
posing for ten seconds like mannequins, and then changing poses. They might have thought we were crazy, but we
definitely gave them something to stare at.
Everyone reconvened for a huge basketball game after
dinner. It was a great way to spend our
first night! We all headed in early to
get some rest for our second day of work.
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