Guatemala Trip - 2016: Jan 19th

Blog 3:

Jan 19^th (Day 8):

Quiet day today. We catalogued the new books that we brought for the library. Heath helped bring the school supplies up to the new building.

Seth's adjustments: Amazing, he is sleeping until 6:30 or 7am everyday and by 7pm is exhausted! He has been asking to go to bed, and falls asleep within minutes – always before 8pm. He naps when we are able to get back to the house before 3pm and still goes to bed early.

Guatemala Life:

Food – Seth's favourites include – pasta, rice, eggs, bread, meatballs, all meats, leche, and more. He is finally eating well and a lot (another growth spurt?). I LOVE the food. Clara is a wonderful cook, so my hope to lose weight may not happen. She has made something different for every meal for 8 days, amazing. The vegetables are so fresh and everything is cooked in a healthy way. She made broccoli without butter or anything taste extraordinary! I will be trying to learn how to cook rice like she does and several other dishes. She makes 'chow mein' – a vegetable stir fry served with rice, that is healthy and 100 times better than 'chow mein'.
Free Time: In Guatemala, there is often a lot of spare time. Which is such a blessing and good lesson for we Canadians. So in our spare time we as a family do some of the following

Go for walks...up and down hills!
Sit on random steps or sides of people's houses to hangout (and eat tortrix)
play soccer with Seth
draw and colour a lot
do Bible Study (as Seth calls it), we read Bible stories to calm Seth down
January 20^th Thursday (Day 9):

Today we made some decorations for the school Grand Opening on Saturday. I, Diane, got a chance to get to know some of the teachers more and hear about their methods of teaching etc. All the teachers are sooo excited to implement our new reading program. It's going to be interesting, as space and resources are limited.

In the afternoon, we went with Julianna and her family (her girls are 4 and 2 years old and Seth loves them) to a Coffee Farm tour. Our pictures should tell the story! Basically the kids bathed themselves in coffee beans and we adults enjoyed a fine cup of coffee. Although, it is worth noting that most Coffee farms under pay their workers...the workers that pick the beans get paid by the amount they pick. Keep that in mind when buying non-fair trade coffee.

January 21^st Friday (Day 10):

Today had an early start and we climbed our way up the massive hill to the new school. The workers were there already, but we had to kill a bit of time until the teachers got there so we knew what needed to be done. We ended up doing quite a bit of cleaning of tables and chairs in order to prepare them for the kids on Monday. There is so much dirt around that they will probably need to be cleaned again on Sunday. The rest of the day was fairly relaxed and not much to write about...although Heath is thinking of boycotting a certain tienda as he is sure the prices suddenly go up when they see him. :)

Here are a few more pics...