Guatemala!(Part 1)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! In this newest series I'll be talking about my first ever international trip that I have embarked on without my parents or family. This trip was with my art teacher and about nine other classmates to Guatemala to work with Xela Aid in Guatemala for a week.

Xela Aid is a wonderful organization that support underprivileged communities in Guatemala, and their headquarters is located in San Martin Chiquito, which was a lengthy ride from the airport! The headquarters consisted of two main buildings, one which consisted of the kitchen and clinic, while the other one consisted of two floors full of classrooms, and the third floor which contained the lodging myself and my classmates stayed in. The coolest part of the education building was that it contained an artificial turf field at it's center, and all of the floors had an opening in the middle that opened up that turf to all three floors. So when all of the children came for classes, we could hear their laughter and playing soccer on the turf which made such a fun environment to be in! Oh my goodness, and don't even get me started on the amazing traditional food that we ate, I look forward to every single meal.

Now lets backtrack, back to day one in Guatemala! We landed in the evening, so we just stayed in a hotel in Guatemala City for the night and the following day we hopped by a grocery store to stock up on snacks for our lengthy 4-5 hour car ride to San Martin Chiquito.

Here’s a picture from the entrance of the headquarters!

When we arrived learned that the local community in which Xela Aid was based spoke both Spanish and their Mayan language called Mam. I even tried learning some, but unfortunately I just suck because there are certain sounds I can't make, it was so hard!

On the third day, after a introductory session to learn about Xela Aid, and a great night of rest, we headed out to the nearby Laguna Chicabal. Chicabal is a very sacred lake and many people come to pray for rain. 40 days after Easter everyone comes and performs Mayan ceremonies at the lake! And since its so sacred, no swimming aloud!

After we learned all about the lake we embarked to descend the 400 stairs leading down to the lake. And we painted with our adorable mini watercolor pallets! But standing and painting is actually really hard.

We enjoyed our visit to the lake, but then came the treacherous hike back up all those stairs ( my legs got super sore!) From the picture, the stairs might look easy, but trust me, it was insanely hard!

Well, that concludes part one! And sorry about the low quality of the pictures, unfortunately I couldn't bring along my camera. Regardless, see you in the next part!