Xela

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okay, so mom, maria olga and her husband jaime dropped me off at the location where i was meeting up with the rest of the students. Before dropping me off, we had lunch at Richard´s beautiful house with his sisters, my aunt olga, elaine, stephanie, and margarite´s husband thomas.

everybody has been getting along really well and we seem to be meshing. so yesterday was really the first day of the program. it started off with a little bit of a tour of zone 1 where we were staying. Richard and everybody thought i was nuts for staying in zone 1 and unfortunately mom heard all about it, but it was FINE. then there was a speaker from the jesuit university in guatemala who came to give a history of guatemala. then later there was a speaker from FAMDEGUA which is the organization of women and men that advocates for victims and families of those who were detained and disappeared during the civil war. it was a pretty instense experience to hear her speak and to watch a video of the work that they do. last night was a birthday of one of my fellow student´s here who turned 22, so we had a cake and a little bit of a celebration that consisted of a pretty sweet dance party.

pretty much all the other students are fluent in spanish, i´m of maybe a handful of students who really need to practice spanish more but i´m doing okay. a lot of the students are SUPER liberal, waaayyy more than me, so at times even i disagree with them on some things, but for the most part everybody is here for all the same reasons and has the same opinions.

so this morning we left at around 8:30 in the morning for Quetzaltenango aka Xela. i think we took the longest route possible because we didn´t get in until around 1:30. so we´ve now broken into groups to try to figure out what we are able to buy with 25 quetzales. my group was in charge of medical supplies, but we finished early, so i figured i´d post a blog. tomorrow i move in with my homestay family who i still don´t know, but i have high hopes and fingers crossed.

i hope everybody else is doing well and i´ll get around to more pictures soon!

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