The Cala's came to town!!!

They arrived!


Birthday breakfast for Evelyn.

We put evelyn to work for her birthday.

And Bob too.

The coffee plantation was a hit...the cultural portion, not so much.

Birthday dinner pizza and the pats!

Complimentary brownie dessert...she didn't even kill liz for telling them it was her day.

Bob hanging out in ruins.

Evelyn hanging out in ruins.

We just happened to be there for Day of the Devil. A day on which effigies of el diablo are burned in the streets...

and there are fashion shows...?

We all worked on our pool skills.

On our way to Santiago Atitlan...

the way back almost killed us...well at least it got us pretty wet.

All in all it was a pretty relaxing trip. Thanks for memories and the razzing. We already miss you guys!

Sports Camp!

Since school is currently isn't in session, we had a few sports camps in our towns. We introduced the kids to the exciting world of relay races, kickball, ultimate and 8 foot dunkball that only I could dunk.




This kid kept blasting it out of the park.


The girls loved playing ultimate and were much better with their hands than the boys. This is largely in part to the fact that girls tend to play basketball here and boys play soccer.



Its pretty nice being the tallest person around...even if it creates a bit of an unfair advantage for me...We also made tie dye shirts with our friend at her summer camp which we helped out with.

Thanksgiving...at the Beach!!!

Thanksgiving was a little different this year. We spent the day traveling to the coast and spent the weekend at a turtle sanctuary swimming in the ocean and eating fresh fish and shrimp. We had lofty goals of cooking a big Thanksgiving dinner when we first got there, but decided instead on fresh fish for dinner.

We did get our potatoes though, with a side of shrimp.

This is what most of the days consisted of. It was quite exhausting.

This is one of the turtle nesting areas that you can see in the back of the above picture.


The second day we were there we did get around to cooking our Thanksgiving dinner. It was superb.



We had a beach bonfire after dinner and roasted marshmallows to the sounds of crashing waves.

We loved all the pigs around and this is an example of the typical housing in this area.

To get here we went through an estuary and mangrove forests.

This is the estuary we had to cross. It was an amazing weekend. We survived bug bites, cockroaches, a rat we had to herd out of our room, liz swam with dolphins and we managed to not get too sunburnt. Can't wait to see where we end up next year. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Day of the Dead/Kite Festival!

November 1st marks Day of the Dead and in the city of Sumpango they have a huge celebration to honor the deceased. Like most areas of Guatemala, families go to the cemetery the night before and place flowers and foods around the family tombs. It is also common for people to fly kites in the cemeteries as a way of carrying messages to loved ones in the world beyond. The difference is that in Sumpango they have a contest to see who can make the biggest and most elaborate kites, which are then flown in the soccer field above the city cemetery. In the pictures above you can see the kids from the host family I lived with for 3 months in Sumpango. Their great grandma had recently passed away and they wanted a picture of themselves in front of her decorated tomb.



Here is one of the mid-sized kites taking off. As the kites start to barrel back down to the ground the crowd would sway and run in different directions. It was really exciting...and dusty. It was a lot of fun to see the family again and the kids each wrote cards for Lizzy and me.


It takes an average of 3 months to make each of the larger kites at a cost of up to 5,000 dollars. Which is quite significant when you take into account the fact that the average daily wage is about 6 dollars.

It was a really exciting day, the streets were packed with vendors of all sorts and we sampled the traditional dish Fiambre as well (which is basically a bowl full of cold cuts, sausages and pickled vegetables). We both really like the kite tradition and the idea that kites somehow communicate with deceased loved ones. Oh, we also learned that the tails on the kites are there to keep the bad spirits at bay so that the good spirits can enjoy the messages on the kites. So that is how Day of the Dead is celebrated in just one town. Next year we are hoping to go to Huehue where they have the drunken horse race...stay tuned.