Been there

Well it's been a long time since I wrote, but I wanted to write about something that happened to me, I was watching the movie "the Ultimate gift" (I have seen it like 7 times or more) and it caught my attention because as the movie went on, I could notice that many of the places shown there were from Charlotte, in North Carolina, and it felt amazing cause I saw some of the places where I had walked.

This is the movie I was telling you about and if you have a chance watch it :) the story is really good, and it can make you cry, it is a bit emotional so be ready.

The interesting thing is that after being in a place, you see things in a different way. I remember reading about NY in text books, and reading about the touristic places there are, but it wasn't as special as it is now, you see all the information with the students, but it represents nothing to you, but after being there and meeting the place, you can feel something completely different. I am glad cause now I can tell my students what the weather feels like, what it looks like and the feelings that you get, it's not just a text anymore, it is meaningful.
I hope that in the future my students can also get the opportunity to travel and experience something like this.

It is the feeling you get when you hear the name of your country in a famous movie or show, or when you hear the name of the country where you have friends :)

Like in the movie RED where they mention the name of Guatemala several times :) and like when you see it for the first time and you hear it, you say wow, and you feel good cause it is your country :)

This is the movie RED also a good movie, action and comedy, it is really good

And after meeting so many wonderful people from different parts of the world, I see things differently, like when I saw in a store a Polish vodka, or when I saw in a magazine  the words "Koer Lotte" which are Estonian, I remembered all of my new family and the moments we spent together, and how much I miss them.

Sunday

Well today was a tough day, I got up at 4:20 am and I was supposed to get up at 3am, I had to do this because we had a camp today with the kids at school, anyway I got up, I took a shower and I headed to the gathering place, when I got there, there were a lot of students waiting, so I took list and checked that everybody was there. The bus was supposed to leave at 5 but not everybody was there so we waited and ended up leaving at 5:20, and I was worried about being late J

 This is a photo of the kids we had in the bus, ours was bus number 3, they were feeling sleepy, it was really early in the morning.

 A photo taken early in the morning, you can see the fog covering the city, believe me it was really cold.

 We got to the place really early, and there was no one from the staff there to give us the information so we waited a couple of minutes.

 We got to the place really early, and there was no one from the staff there to give us the information so we waited a couple of minutes.

 Then they took all of the kids to the auditorium in the University and they gave them the welcome and they explained about the order of how things were going to be, there were 8 groups of 44 students each, from different regions of the country.

 I was in charge of the rally, they gave us some activities to do, but the time they had predicted was not the correct one so we had to improvise a bit, it was good cause the kids didn’t get bored. We divided the groups into smaller ones of 15 students and each volunteer was in charge of a small group.

This is me after ending the first group :) a bit tired but I was just posing that face of exhaustion :)

 Then we all had lunch, by the way they gave us breakfast and lunch and on both occasions we got a big sandwich, I would call it American size, cause portions here are smaller, and they gave us juice and fruit, it was good. After lunch we had the award ceremony and they gave the students their diploma for participating in the program, they gave the teacher one too and the volunteers got one as well, I got two because I was both a volunteer and a teacher J

 Some of the kids I gave classes to, they are very bright and they were really fun to be with, I will miss them.

 By the way this is a "chicken bus" I think the nickname came because they used to, and sometimes still do, transport chickens or other animals inside, with all the people, and they are usually crowded too.

 After the ceremony we went back to the bus some kids were sad because it was the last time we were going to see each other, but when we got on the bus, everybody started teasing and having fun, the trip we took was a 4 hour round trip, approximately, we didn't feel it cause everybody was laughing and taking pictures.

 The view in the afternoon on the way home, this is the landscape you can observe when you travel from Quetzaltenango to Panajachel.

 No corn or plantations, cause it is too cold on this time of the year to harvest anything.

When we got back, we had to wait for the kid’s parents to pick them up, so we waited like 2 hours, finally when the last kids were picked, I walked to the bus stop, I had to go through the park. In the park something amazing happened to me, I was thinking about life as always, and then I heard in the park a group playing, and for my surprise they were singing the song: “Luz de dia” by Enanitos Verdes, it’s a very special song for me, I like it a lot J I love signs

The group singing the song Luz de dia

 This is a picture of the decoration in the park, Christmas is coming so they always decorate the park with lights, they do it in almost all the parks in Guatemala.

And here is the Christmas tree; it is at the beginning of the park.

well that is all for today, have a good day and take care.

Saturday Evenening

Hello again, I wanted to show you one of my favorite places to go, because of time I don't go that often, but this is a place where you can buy and play with cards, the name of the game is Magic. But the real reason why I go there is because of the people that go there, they are all good friends of mine, and we usually talk about nonsense, but it's fun, the good thing about these people is that we can spend years without calling or going out, the friendship remains, and every time we manage to get together, it's like if we had seen each other yesterday. There is always a nice environment here.

 I took this picture after we had been beaten in the game of cards :P no hard feelings though :D

 This is the counter, they have a lot of products and junk food, amazingly it doesn't last long cause everybody here loves to eat junk food and drink sodas...... smoking and drinking alcohol is also done on occasions :)

Again a photo of my friends but with me in it, we are still missing a lot of people, it was weird cause you can usually find 20 to 30 people here :D
That's it, tomorrow I have to go to a camping thing with the students since it's their last year :) I will take some photos and share with you what happened.

Good Morning

Hello everyone, it is 7:30 in the morning, and I am in the class waiting for the meeting to start. I took my camera today to take some pictures of my town, and share a a bit more :) I hope you like the pictures and if you have questions about it don't hesitate to ask. 

This is the view I have when I am walking to school, from this point, I have to walk 2 more blocks. It's really foggy near the mountains, and you can barely see the volcano we have here, I will try to take a better photo later. The name of the volcano is Santa Maria, it's not active right now, but it has a smaller volcano next to it called Santiaguito, which is active, but it's ok it's safe :P

This is a photo I took of the theater in Quetzaltenango. People here love to go to the theater when they are presenting comedies, and once a year we usually have a Jazz festival, so different countries come here to show their jazz, people love jazz and the tickets run out fast. 

This place is also used to host the election of Miss Quetzaltenango, it's a comfortable place.  

Classes

Today was an interesting day :) I taught a part of Fox in Socks to the students. They liked it, and I liked teaching it too. I didn't have any flashcards that could represent it so I had to make mine :) they are not perfect but I tried :P

 Drawings I made :D I am not an artist but the kids didn't mind

:D the poodle I did looks really bad, I have no idea on how to draw, every time I tried, I didn't like my drawings so I never practiced. but the good thing is that the kids tried saying the tongue twister and that they had fun doing it. Here is the part I taught:

What do you know about tweetle beetles?  Well...

When tweetle beetles fight,

it's called a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they battle in a puddle,

it's a tweetle beetle puddle battle.

AND when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle,

they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.

AND...

When beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle

and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle...

...they call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle.

AND...

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles

and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...

...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle

bottle paddle battle.

Dreams

I was thinking about a couple of things, Dreams to be more precise, and I thought, what happens when a dream seems so hard to reach?, do you let it go? do you forget about it? and I discovered that you shouldn't. It doesn't matter how difficult it may seem to reach a dream, hope is always a great thing to have. I have a dream that I will not let go, and I will do everything I can to reach it.

I wanted to say that it is okay to aim to the stars, the only thing is that you have to work hard to achieve your dreams.

Don't let go of dreams as they are what changes the world 

Parade in Quetzaltenango

Well hello everyone, I wanted to show you some pictures taken today. This was a Christmas parade, it stated in the afternoon. and ended at 9 pm it was nice, there were a lot of people, it was a bit difficult to find a place but in the end we managed to stay in front :) People in Guatemala love parades, and at the end of the parade, there were fireworks.

This is one of the bands, they were playing Christmas songs, all the kids were dancing and laughing.

Sometimes they decorate cars, this one was decorated as a mushroom and on the back they had kids dressed as smurfs

Here are some of the smurfs that were waving at the people.

These kids had Christmas clothes, and they were waving at the people in the parade.

This was the float a music school had, they were playing some songs and asked the people to participate singing.

This was one of the clowns that was here, he took a kid and placed him on his shoulders and took him for a ride on the mono cycle, the kid was brave, then he was going to take another kid, but that kid started crying, so he gave him a stuffed bear instead.

This float represented when Jesus was born, as you can see the sheep is real. So are the kids.

A float they were not giving gifts but they gave candy, I caught some.

Some of the people that were on the parade, it was fun and as always, when boys here see girls they always whistle at them.

Well gotta go I am about to go to class, Have a good day, or as they said in Boone, "Have a good one"

So you can Know about me

Well I wanted to show you a little bit of my city, I thought about sharing first about the place where I work. My school is located in the center of the city, and it is in the historical part of Xela. We are using two buildings now, but starting next year IGA school will be located in a different building, and IGA courses will remain in the same building, I work in both programs.

 

This is the side of the building, I took this picture in the morning, that is why it seems so quiet.

This is the front of the building, you can see the poster that has some information about the vacation course we have in school, courses are always started in November and they end on December 7th, these days are the noisiest days, because we have a lot of kids in school, ages 5 to 15, but we miss the noise in January :)

 this is inside the school, you won't see any students because it was taken at 6:50 in the morning and classes start at 7:00. 

This picture is from the other building, it is also an old house, by the way most of the houses in the past were built this way, they have all the rooms around the patio, and the bathrooms were in a different room, that means that at night you had to go outside to get to the bathroom, scary right.

This is upstairs in one of the big rooms, the view is nice from that part, most of the rooms are small but the environment of the house is calm and at night it gets a bit creepy, old houses are scary by nature.

This is inside one of the big classes, we have a maximum of 30 students in this room, and we do that cause the house is old and the floor is made of wood, so it's not safe to have a lot of people there :)

This is one of the halls, in the house, because the house is part of the historic center, we can not change anything in the building, we can restore it but not change it.

This is Central Park, it was a sunny day and there weren't a lot of cars because they were going to have an activity there.

This is our City Hall, it is located in front of the park, in the past most of the main buildings were built around the park, and in all of the cities in Guatemala you can see the same thing.

This is another picture of the park, the place you see there is used by a lot of people to play songs, juggle or just hang around with friends, it's comfortable.

This is one of the things they use to make the fabric that is used in the traditional clothes here in Guatemala.

Pictures of the park, it's a nice place and you can feed the birds that have their nest on the trees.

This is the Church, well part of it, you see in 1976 Guatemala had an earthquake that destroyed some buildings and what you see is what was left of the original church, just the front part, then inside if I am not mistaken, it was rebuilt.

Well that is it for today as soon as I have more pictures, I will post them and tell you a bit more about my city. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Take care.