Hasta Luego, Guatemala!

By: Liz Aycock, March 25, 2011


Our group in front of Lake Atitlan.
Surrounded by Volcanoes San Pedro, Santiago, and Toleman.

Saying goodbye to Guatemala was incredibly difficult. I know I’m not the only one who felt so at home there, even though we didn’t really “fit in.” Getting on the plane I couldn’t believe it was the end of such an amazing week. There was laughter, intense discussions, hard work, lots of lacquer, extreme games of catch phrase in which we all bow down to Ginny as the winner, cold showers, delicious street fruit, delicious food in general, beautiful skylines, being enveloped in clouds, kids stealing cameras, kids screaming, kids that were all adorable, too cool for school six graders, girls beating the boys in basketball, a ceremony thanking us for our work that moved me to tears, Daniel being used as a human jungle gym, beautifully woven bags, scarves, and more, and the list goes on. Returning to UGA after such an awesome spring break seems unreal. I’m going to steal a quote from Ian: “I feel like we’ve left the real world by returning to UGA.” But our world is real- we just have to burst the bubble that is college and see what good we can help here. We just have to keep everything in perspective. Start small. Maybe then we can make a lasting impact on the world.

Our trip could not have been as successful as it was without the wonderful guidance of our amazing program directors- Karen and Ginny. Y’all are the bomb.com. I still have “Karen! Karen! Karen!” ringing in my ears from all the third-graders screaming your name. Thank you both so much! Also both of you, Dana, Jared, Hudson, and Cat all need to come to Athens so we can take you guys out Georgia style.

Lots of Love and GO DAWGS!,
Liz


Liz and girls from Cooperativa in front of some of our book cases.

Time For Celebration

By: Jessica, March 17, 2011


Liz and a group of 5th grade girls at Centro.

We all sincerely apologize for the delay in an update! We are just having entirely too much fun and haven’t had the down time.

You’ve read about the painting and the arranging, the teaching and the playing, but today our experience came to full fruition.

We began our day back at Central, this time experiencing the 3rd grade and 6th grade classes. I was particularly impressed with some of the 3rd graders knowing their numbers in English. A nice girl named Lillian attempted to teach me how to make the throaty sound in Kaqchikel. With no time to play with our new friends at recess, we rushed up to Cooperativa for the opening ceremony of the new biblioteca we finished Tuesday.


Our group looking in on our finished project!

The kids were ecstatic when we arrive. The picture frenzy and endless question began once again. The girls were definitely enjoying the “fotos locos” I asked them to take with me. It’s amazing to me how kids everywhere are so similar. The girls still pose the same way and the giggles sounds exactly the same. Boys, too; they would run up to poke a gringa then run away laughing as one of them took pictures on his camera phone…serious, a camera phone.

Our whole group was called up to the stage to begin the ceremony.
WOW.
We all were talking about how difficult it would be to describe the experience, but here’s to my attempt.


From the little Spanish I know, the director of the school made a touching speech of thanks about how invaluable our work had been for them. It was muy emocionada to hear how much they appreciated the project. Next was a series of dances by a lot of the kids. Some traditional, and some…not so much. There were two groups who performed HIP HOP dances in our honor. Snoopdog pumped some jams for their fly moves. I do believe break dancing occurred…

When the director Celso took the stage once again we though it was over. But he announced that the parents had gifts for us. Each of us was given a woven scarf made by the women of the families. It was the parents who bestowed this gift on us individually. I received mine from a woman who was absolutely beaming and once again expressed her thanks. This act of generosity was only countered by the meal of chicken, soup, and tomales they made for our lunch.


Chicken soup and tomales with some refreshing bottles of soda. There was a hilarious debate within our group if we were suppose to eat the leaf wrapping…turns out No, we were not.

The PD’s later explained that everything about that ceremony was not usual. The dancing, the gift, and the meal of meat are all incredible honors. Every aspect of the ceremony evoked indescribable emotions and we are all so grateful.


Chaquiyja is not to be pitied or looked down upon as ‘undeveloped’. They are a community of kindness, selflessness, and hope. Someone in our group put it best when they said, “Things don’t make you happy, so we shouldn’t just be trying to give them things.” To be honest, I didn’t even think about how I was doing them a service. They needed a library and we were here to make it happen. But what they have given us is perspective. The genuine benevolence of the community at Chaquiyja is overwhelming.

With tears in our eyes, we all agreed that there couldn’t have been a better way to say goodbye to Chaquiyja and Cooperativa.

We finished our day relaxing and shopping in Pana and danced the night away. Half way through the week and we can’t imagine leaving this beautiful place.

Talks, Trucks, and Tortillas

By: Liz Thorpe, March 16, 2011


Greetings from Hotamala! (Don’t worry; I really know it’s Guatemala..)
Today was a chill, relaxing day. I woke up to a sunny day and a beautiful view of Lake Atitlan. I am still amazed at how beautiful it is here. We enjoyed a delicious fresh fruit for breakfast. The peaches were my favorite, even though they look so different (here they are a dark, purplish color).

While we waited on two ladies to give us a tortilla-making lesson, I sunned out back with the rest of the group. It was great just basking there, chatting, and attempting to read my boring book for international affairs,A Nation of Enemies. It’s great that even though I’m on a service trip, I can still get some sun on spring break J Formal is next weekend..


While making our tortillas, we came up with a brilliant idea: we are going to start a new tortilla business venture in Athens and sell them on the street! Everyone will help make the corn tortillas except for Jessie; she will tend to the financial aspects of our business, since she dropped 4 or 5 tortillas on the ground!

We spent our afternoon in Pana; the ride down was quite exhilarating and almost like a roller coaster ride: we rode in the back of pickup truck that zoomed down the mountain towards the lake. The view was amazing!


Zooming down a mountain in the back of a pick up truck!

Pana was quite different from Sololá, where we have been for the past few days. It’s much more touristy and liberal but still fun, of course. There were more gringos than us, quite a few hippies actually. I bought a few souvenirs at the market, which I will refrain from describing considering who might be reading this blog..
We had an interesting discussion at a bar about sustainability and development in Guatemala. I enjoyed that I could contribute to the conversation after taking some international affairs classes. It still amazes me how happy and positive people here seem even after the war that only ended 15 years ago.

Now I am freshly showered (the warm water worked finally!) and we are about to play Catch Phrase. I can’t wait for what the rest of the trip brings!

Leaving Our Mark

By: Kelsey, March 15, 2011

“Abi Kelsey”, “Abi Anna”, “Abi Jesse”, “Abi Liz”… This is how we introduced ourselves to the 5th grade class of Central using our only knowledge of Kaqchikel. From there, we separated into four groups to review color, numbers and food all in English. All the while, the rest of the group was working hard to finish up the library at the Primaria Cooperativa down the road.


This is Moses. He is ten years old and is awesome. He’s in second grade, likes soccer and had great hula-hooping skills. He was one of many great kids we got to know today. All were super interactive, energetic and just overall loving towards us. Despite the occasional language barrier we seemed to get into long extensive conversations. Many of the girls could not understand why us 20 year old girls did not have “esposos,” or husbands.

The library looks fantastic. The two creative men of our group designed an artistic logo that will be forever displayed on the wall of this school. Now the children have new tables and chairs as well as new bookshelves to house the books that have been sitting in storage unused. We are looking forward to the big reveal on Thursday morning!


More tomorrow!
-UGA

First Day Wrap-Up

By: Ellie and Daniel. March 14th, 2011


It’s hard to believe that yesterday we were sitting at home, anxiously awaiting our trip, and wondering what we were going to encounter. Flash-forward to today and we can’t even imagine not being here. The past day has opened our eyes to such happiness, culture, poverty, and pride than we could have ever imagined. Last night we spent our time in the beautiful city of Antigua. The cobblestone streets and multicolored buildings are so hard to describe and must be seen first-hand to truly appreciate its beauty. We left Antigua early this morning for our 3-hour microbus ride to Sololá, an amazing lake town populated by indigenous people. We stopped at our hostel and were extremely surprised by the INCREDIBLE view out of our window. The town is situated next to the lake with pristine views of three volcanoes.



A microbus fits around 17 or 18 peoples, so imagine our surprise when we fit 26!!

After eating a fabulous breakfast of fresh fruit and pancakes cooked for us by the hostel, we headed out to town and then off to the Cooperativa school in Chaquijyá. We were greeted with open arms by the community and began lacquering the tables and chairs made especially for the library, cleaning and painting the walls of the library, and interacting with the amazing people that call Cooperativa their home. After a lunch packed by the hostel, we finished up our work for the day and walked around the town of Chaquijyá and had the opportunity to experience the reality of rural Guatemala. It was more than eye opening and truly an experience we will never forget. After climbing the hill back to the highway, we hopped into a crowded microbus- crowded is a complete understatement. In a bus for about 12 people, we piled in 28 people. It was cramped to say the least!

After a short ride, we stopped back in Sololá and walked around the town, grabbed some street food, and finally made it to the Manna house! Kat and Dana surprised us with a DELICIOUS blackberry and mango pie, and we all chatted and got to know each other better. We headed back to the hostel for a dinner of spinach and egg pie, sauced vegetables, and corn tortillas. We all caught up about the day and expressed our each individual views of Guatemala so far. Our journey has just begun, but from the mere day we have spent here, we know it will be life changing.

Peace, Love, and Manna

Ellie and Daniel

Wheels Up, Guate Bound!

(Hi guys! Just wanted to pop in and introduce myself really quickly. I'm Cassie, and I'm the new Director of Communications for Manna UGA! I'm super excited to keep you informed of the great things we have going on, but first I need to update all of you on the fantastic work our people did in Guatemala this spring break. So the next few posts will be recaps of things written by Guatemala spring-breakers during their trip. Peace, love, and Manna!)


Hello families, friends, lovers, Romans, countrymen, and everyone else!

So I’m the first to kick off the blog. Here’s a little pre-trip ramble for your enjoyment:

I think it’s finally sinking in that this time tomorrow, we’ll be in Central America. Craziness! We can’t wait to get to Chaquijyá and get our hands dirty doing some good work, not to mention getting to run around Guatemala experiencing the culture and seeing everything that this beautiful country has to offer! Personally, as the University of Georgia chapter president, I’m really excited to be sending our first team to MPI-G so that we can begin to establish relationships with the community here in the same way that we were able to do in Nicaragua last year.



On our side of things, we’ve all been doing some research on Guatemala and its history, both political and cultural, which we’ll be discussing as a team during our trip down. Throughout the week, we’ll be updating the blog every night with what we’ve seen and done that day. It will of course be rife with ridiculous nicknames, sweet inside jokes, censored accounts of pillow talk, and hopefully some tasty personal epiphanies. Get excited.

Keep our team in your thoughts and prayers as we make our way down tomorrow!