Hello family and friends!
We are back in Guatemala City now after a fun weekend in Chichicastenango!
It was a 3ish hour drive through mountains over the edge of ravines and quite the trip. !! We visited a women's cooperative called Ruth and Naomi and were treated to a delicious second lunch made by some hospitable women. They told us about their project and showed us all their beautiful creations, which many of us decided to buy. They also had very cute children who enjoyed taking pictures of us and playing with our hair elastics etc. We also visited some ruins called Iximche I believe which were really interesting!
But Since Joel is talking more about our chi chi weekend, let me tell you about CASAS!
CASAS is so far a really great place to be. There are many ¨mission¨groups here from the states that stay at CASAS and they are very interesting. We also have really neat speakers most days at CASAS and are learning a lot of interesting things, including spanish! Our group is divided up into a couple classes and I think we are all really happy for the chance to learn more of this language.! After our week in El Salvador at the forum, I know we all wished we could speak Spanish a lot better since we were quite handicapped in those regards. So we really apprecitate our spanish teachers and the useful lessons they are teaching us .
Last week we had 2 really interesting speakers. One of them was named Hector. He was a VERY intriguing speaker who began his speech by forcing us all to introduce ourselves in Spanish. We all laughed as we struggled . .. this is another reason why spanish classes are handy..! Hector spoke to us about the history of Guatemala and the leaders and his experience in it. He was very optimistic and hopeful, which was nice because we are learning so much information that is often sad and depressing. But he pressed how WE are the change that will happen and change the future and that it is in the hands of these next generations. Anyways, he was a great speaker.
Another speaker that we also had was a professor from the Guatemalan univeristy at a Ph d level. im sorry I can´t remember his name! He talked to us about the Mayan history of Guatemala and was very intelligible. He had a lot of information about all the different Indigineous groups and it was neat to hear about. Guatemala´s history is very interesting, thats for sure.
This morning after Spanish we went to an organization that was of the families whose members had been separated. It was called GAM. It was sad to hear about all the people they work with. They are trying to connect children from aunts, uncles, parents and other relatives that they gor separated from during the violence. Its really neat that they are trying hard to reunite people when it is a bit of a risky business for them! After that we went to a park where there was a huge map of Guatemala´s terrain. It was awesome and a really friendly guide helped to answer any of our questions.
During the evenings we have been watching videos having to do with peace or violence or a totally random one that CASAS has lying around. ha ha. Either that or having latin dances with Nataly, Melany and Pablo who go to one of the Mennonite chruches here in Guate. city.
We are having a great time and really looking forward to leaving the city and going out to the country. Thanks for your prayers and thinking about us!
Sarah :)