This past week I was in a rural stay in Cantal, Guatemala. It was a rural home stay, so I lived with a host family. It has problably been my favorite weeks so far. I stayed with an indigenous family and they were really nice and welcoming. The community was pretty small and we continued our spanish classes at a nearby church. We had spanish every morning then we had activities in the afternoons. One of the activities we did was cooking. Some women from the community came and we learned how to make tortillas and tomalis, we even got to grind the corn ourselves with stone.
My favorite activity we did was helping out with the Chico Mendez project, which is a reforestation project ran by local community members there. They plant 60,000 trees a year! We got the opportunity to help plant some trees and learn about the project. The man who runs the project, Armando was really inspirational. He donates so much of his time to this and it is hard work- let me tell you and he doesn´t get paid, he just wants to "give the world more oxygen". Which is amazing I mean here he lives in not vary good conditions but he wants to help make the world better by reforestating areas in the mountains!
This community was also largely affected by the civil war, one of the few communitys to resist the military. Because of cafta(The central american free trade agreement- with the U.S.) their water supply was privatized and also electricity. So they didnt have running water between 7 am and 5 pm. So it was also my dirties week. But I loved the people there, and it was overall a great week!
Saturday our group went to Antiguea, Guatemala. This was basically a culture shock compared to Cantal. It was a gorgeous city, but really touristy. Of all the cities weve been to this had the most tourists.. by far. The architecture is all colonial, and the night we were there there was an orchestra performing and fire works in celebration of the beginning of Lent- it was kind of magical!