Day 1 in Antigua
We are staying in a B&B while in Antigua - a B&B with 11 bedrooms. It is a private home where the owners only stay part of the year, so our tour company convinced them to put up tourists when they weren't here. Although quite grand, it feels homey.
From the second floor balcony, we can see one of the three volcanoes that are in the area. Yes, this one is active.
Today we hopped on to a chicken bus and traveled to a village outside of town to experience "a day in the life of" - something the tour company arranges in all of their tours. Our guide encouraged us to interact with people on the bus. (This bus was not as hair raising as our previous chicken bus ride.)
When we arrived in the village we visited a school, and although school was not in session, a class of preschoolers came to meet with us. They sang several songs for us, including their national anthem, and then danced and performed for us. They were delightful! Our tour company supports the school by providing $10 for every traveler on their tours to Guatemala - 150 tours per year.
We then broke up into two groups and separated for lunch with families of two of the kids. My group ate lunch with an extended family of father, mother, aunts, grandmother, grandfather, and kids and cousins. The kitchen was in a lean-to next to the house and we ate outside. Our mean consisted of roasted chicken and steamed veggies with a sauce made out of pumpkin seeds and spices.
Although no one in our group could speak more than a couple of words of Spanish and they knew no English, we did quite well communicating.
Guatemala has a problem with keeping kids in school because the families put them to work in the fields or the markets at a young age. So to encourage school attendance, the government, with aid from Brazil, began a program for preschoolers where they would receive a free lunch. But this meant building more schools and hiring more teachers, and soon the money dried up so out of 80 schools, only a few remain open today.
From the second floor balcony, we can see one of the three volcanoes that are in the area. Yes, this one is active.
Today we hopped on to a chicken bus and traveled to a village outside of town to experience "a day in the life of" - something the tour company arranges in all of their tours. Our guide encouraged us to interact with people on the bus. (This bus was not as hair raising as our previous chicken bus ride.)
When we arrived in the village we visited a school, and although school was not in session, a class of preschoolers came to meet with us. They sang several songs for us, including their national anthem, and then danced and performed for us. They were delightful! Our tour company supports the school by providing $10 for every traveler on their tours to Guatemala - 150 tours per year.
We then broke up into two groups and separated for lunch with families of two of the kids. My group ate lunch with an extended family of father, mother, aunts, grandmother, grandfather, and kids and cousins. The kitchen was in a lean-to next to the house and we ate outside. Our mean consisted of roasted chicken and steamed veggies with a sauce made out of pumpkin seeds and spices.
Although no one in our group could speak more than a couple of words of Spanish and they knew no English, we did quite well communicating.
Guatemala has a problem with keeping kids in school because the families put them to work in the fields or the markets at a young age. So to encourage school attendance, the government, with aid from Brazil, began a program for preschoolers where they would receive a free lunch. But this meant building more schools and hiring more teachers, and soon the money dried up so out of 80 schools, only a few remain open today.
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