Pollo Chicken!!! Lets just say we all had to get out of the van!!! It was a long drive back here to Semilla. While we were in Santiago Atitlan we had many unique experiences. I'll start at the beginning.
We started off Wednessday by waking up, eating breakfast and then hopping into the van to drive to Santiago Atitlan. We drove for about 2 hours and then arrived at a harbour. We gingerly stepped onto the boat and were once again on our way. We arrived at the Atitlan harbour and waited a few minutes for our ride. To our surprise we got to use a local form of transportation. Our ride was a quarter ton pickup. We all piled into the Toyota truck and we were driven to the ANADESA compound. The first thing we did when we arrived is went to the site of yet another massacre and were given the information about it. After this we went and helped out in an after school program at a local school. This was a lot of fun as we got to sing and play with the children. We did this until 4:00 and we all were divided up into pair and were taken by our host famillies.
We all had an alright sleep to my knowledge, except for the fact that there were about 10 roosters that kept Tyler, Larry and me up for half the night. Anyways we all had breakfast at our respective host famillies and then gathered at ANADESA to start our work project. This year our work project was to plant 300 pine trees. We did this so quickly that as a reward they gave us 80 more trees to plant. After lunch we went to ANADESA's work site where we spent an hour leveling off the ground. Then we got to go swimming in the lake. After swimming we had a cultural presentation. Some local people did an ancient dance and then tought us how they traditionally made tortillas, which included grinding the corn and then patting the dough to make tortillas. This was lots of fun. The day ended with the groups splitting off, once again, to thier home stays.
The next morning came and we gathered at the same plot of land to do even more leveling. That is everyone except for Tyler because he had been diagnosed with sun stroke. After the work we all had a chance to try our bargaining skills at the local market. The market time came and went and we quickly found ourselves on the way back to Semilla. Although this time we took a detour to some Mayan ruins. This was a cool and very interesting experience. After the ruins the rest of the day was spent travelling back to Semilla where we are now.
Tomorrow is our last day here and it should be good as we are hitting up another market. Then it is back to home sweet snow. Or maybe its just flooding now. Anyways, goodnight and thanks for the support.
Nathan Hebert
