Day 9

We started off our morning at 8 am with breakfast at the mission. We then split into two groups, the engineers and the pre-pharmacy students and were assigned our jobs for the morning. The engineers returned to the clinic to continue working on the new garage for the ambulance. The group spent the morning making cement and filling metal columns with the cement. They also moved dirt and rocks to a better location for the workers.
 The pre-pharmacy students went to a new location where workers were building houses for the Guatemalans. The students started off by assembling the metal columns that would later be placed into the foundation and filled with cement, similar to what the engineering group did today. The students then helped to place the columns in the foundation and began supporting them with rocks. While working, the students met a young boy, Gustavo, carrying his younger sister, Angélica on his shoulders. He stopped and talked and we got a picture with him! He kept us company while we worked and he enjoyed listening to the music we had on our cell phones.
 

The students returned for lunch duty at 12:30 and then enjoyed their meal together. After we cleaned up, at 2 pm the students received a talk from a Chona, member of the mission staff who has been working with the mission for many years. She told us about the time she had spent with Padre Greg and the things she had seen going on during the Guatemalan civil war. She spoke of the things that Padre Greg had done for the San Lucas community and other communities of Guatemala, such as Atitlan.  She also spoke of the things that her and Padre Greg had done during the civil war to help those who were suffering as a result of the warfare. This included opening up an orphanage called Casa Feliz for children who had lost their parents in the war.

                Students then cleaned up and got ready for dinner. Once finished, we had free time to do some shopping and to hang out. 

Tiffany

Day 7

May 19^th, 2014

                Today we left our hotel at 7:45 am to go to the mission and set up breakfast for everyone.  The local cooks at the mission had already prepared oatmeal, rolls, black beans, and locally picked bananas. After breakfast a part of the group was on dish duty and then we all met in front of the church at 9am for our tour of all the missions San Lucas projects.  First we got a tour of the Colegio Privado Mixto founded by Father Greg.  This is the local school foe elementary and middle school students.  This original school, founded by the mission, taught about 90 students.  Currently there are over 600 local children enrolled of both ladino and Mayan descent.  Also, we had a tour at the Montessori school for children; the school prepares 4, 5, and 6 year old students for elementary school.  This ‘preschool’ has been proven to greatly increase students’ ability to focus and perform better in school.  Next our group and the other 2 groups that are working with the mission this week loaded up into the back of a pick-up truck and a van to drive to the women’s center which was recently opened in 2011.  This center teaches women trades such as cooking, sewing, and weaving so that they can have an income for themselves.  It also is a place where they have childcare available, and can gather to clean their clothes in clean water.  All the volunteers then loaded back into the 2 vehicles and went to the clinic that the mission had spent many years fundraising for and are still making additions too.  We toured the facility and Katie, the head coordinator, gave us background on the capabilities of the hospital.  This included seeing the emergency room, surgical room, dental office, pediatrics, and maternal health.  The tour next took us to the reforestation area which focuses on keeping Guatemala “the land of the trees”.  For decades local members of the community have worked to educate the community on the importance of respecting mother nature and replanting trees to replace the numerous trees that are cut down for firewood, to make room for farming, etc.  Our next stop was to visit Father Greg’s grave in the local cemetery.  This cemetery varies greatly from American cemeteries in its brightly covered tombs, and above ground graves.  After taking a moment to pay our respects, the tour took us to the coffee processing facilities.  Here, Katie told the groups the entire process through which coffee goes through from harvesting to packaging to be sold as ground beans.

After having lunch, the three mission groups were split into different areas of San Lucas to work at for the day.  Our group had the pleasure of working at the reforestation area.  Here, we followed orders by the reforestation coordinator, Toribio.  He had us package fertile soil into bags which were to be used for continuing growth of the local vegetation.  By splitting our group into twelve dirt packagers and two dirt collectors, it made our job much more efficient.  The packagers had small tubes made of plastic to funnel dirt into small bags until they were filled to the brim.  The collectors walked around picking up the full bags and lining them up along an area.  Over the span of an hour and a half, this process went on.  After this, the next half hour was spent making an assembly line out of the entirety of our group to hand off bags of dirt to one another to the nursery where they will be seeded.  On our walk back towards the mission, we took a detour through a local market to stop at a Paneria where we all had a cookie, a sweet roll, and a crescent roll type of bread product.

After going back to the hotel to clean up from working in the mounds of dirt, we went back to the Mission for dinner.  Following dinner, we went souvenir shopping at a nearby vendor close to the church.  We accidentally spent too much time perusing Jorge’s collection of handmade knickknacks; he is a true artisan.  As a result of this, we arrived late to the riveting movie about coffee bean processing which was interesting but a bit redundant with what we had learned in class earlier this semester.

Buenas Noches from Guatemala

Megan and Adam

Day 6

Today was the day we left Xela to head to San Lucas for the second part of our trip where we will be working at the mission.  We headed out early to leave time to stop and explore the Mayan Ruins in the city of Iximche.  We got a tour of the ruins and learned some of the important history of the Mayans.

After visiting the ruins, we stopped at the Hotel Restaurante Albergues de Tecpan for lunch where we walked around and explored the park for a while to get a break from the long bus ride.  We had fun playing on see-saws, swings, and other playground toys (releasing our inner-child and our built up
energy from sitting all morning).

We then got back on the bus where we had 3 more hours until we arrived at our hotel in San Lucas. On our way to the hotel we passed an amazing waterfall.

 After getting through the thick and scary fog, we finally arrived where we had to say our goodbyes to the friends we had made over the past few days in Xela. They gave us each a present to remember them by and to show their appreciation for our visit. They told us to always keep a part of Guatemala in our hearts and that we will always have a friend in Guatemala.

We then quickly got settled in our hotel and headed over to the mission for dinner and to meet other volunteers. At the mission we were given an overview of our schedule for the week and a brief orientation.  We concluded the night by watching a video of remembrance of Father Greg Schaffer, who recently passed away.  Father Greg served the San Lucas Mission for 48 years and had an tremendous impact on the people of the San Lucas area.  Everyone was exhausted after the long travel day and headed to bed shortly after the video. 

- Kara & Carli