Dia 1

Antigua is great! All of the people, Guatemalan or foreign, are so friendly. I feel very safe walking around and chatting in my embarrassingly rusty Spanish. I was introduced to the staff here at Casasito this morning and was briefed on what my mission is here. There is a small village in the hills near Antigua called Santiago Zamora. Casasito has a project in the village there which promotes the textiles and handicrafts that the women there make, and they also I think have a school in Santiago Zamora. From what I have been told, the men and also women who are not part of the project in the village are not particularly happy with the empowerment this project has given to the women. My job is to take tourists on just that, tours, through Santiago Zamora allowing them to learn about the coffee growing/harvesting/roasting process and the Mayan culture and cuisine (the ladies provide lessons on tortilla making and then feed the group). The ladies offer their crafts and such for sale and I have been told on multiple accounts that those ladies' crafts in particular are the best around. Tomorrow I get to go on this tour conducted by the founder of Casasito, Alice, and learn more about the details of the tour. But the more pressing and challenging aspect of my job here is to go out and do some marketing here with the Spanish schools, hotels, and travel agencies in order to start creating more interest in our tour again. It sounds like it was a very successful thing at one time, but after some time one thing led to another and the tour stopped receiving interest. I'm working on developing a strategy for recruiting, so stay tuned for that.

Today I went with a group of volunteers from socal up to the project they are working on in the village called San Mateo. I forget the name of the project, but WOW! It is a school for, although my rusty Spanish limited my understanding, kids ranging from 3 years to 19 years old. All of the students' families live on less than $1 per day, and as such, I was expecting a Greg Mortensen school. I was shocked as we got off of the sardine can of a chicken bus and walked back behind some corrugated metal shanties and down into a skinny little stair well to emerge in this wonderful school. They had clean walls. That was the first shock. 40 shoeless children running in and out from recess and futbol and spotless, brightly painted walls just don't seem to go together in my mind... Maybe that's just me though. But then after a long talk about what the project does, we went and tried out the Spanish-learning programs. I was thinking maybe we would be looking through dog-eared surplus Spanish books with erased answers to confuse you. No. We walked into a computer lab with at least 20 flat screen computers. We booted these up and played for about 45 minutes on programs which I should probably be using myself. I've always wondered what the gaming industry had to offer the world in terms of international development. Well this is it. It is amazing and such a fantastic use of technology. Although the kids weren't present today due to our visit, many got word that "una fiesta de gringos" was walking around, and pretty soon they started trickling in. They don't get much cuter. And they had no problem making fun of my often misleading conjugations and vocabulary. Casasito is doing a very good job. After my visit to San Mateo I am confident that my experience here with Casasito and its partners will be nothing short of a life-long inspiration. I was told today that Casasito is helping over 4000 people here, but with a full-time staff of only 5, and a budget between $125,000-$250,000. Despite not considering myself partial to a single religion, I am reminded of that story where Jesus fed a bunch of people with only a little bit of fish or bread or something like that.

The volunteer house I am staying in is also so wonderful. I don't have to eat out and can live very frugally, while being surrounded by like-minded people. I think it is a great example that every person has something to contribute to the world. The range of projects is so large. Everything from a guy (who happens to be from Vermont) working on an accounting program for Casasito, to people just teaching English and playing with kids whose fathers or mothers are sick, alcoholics, or in one case, beheaded.

Sorry about the length of this post! Tomorrow will be a long one too because I am going on my tour!

Hasta!