August Update

Haven`t had the chance to sit down and write a blog entry for a while, I`ve been busy with work as normal. A few weeks ago, my English classes organized a soccer tournament to raise money for a trip and to buy (photocopies) of textbooks to continue studying. It was a huge success. We organized everyone into work groups, each group sold something different, like snow cones, pupusas, watermelon, fresco, etc. We invited over 30 teams from the entire municipality, and 14 showed up, so a pretty good turn out. I thought we`d make about $150, but we ended up making slightly over $300! Everyone was pretty happy about that. So last Tuesday, we all went to a nearby waterpark. And we still have almost half of that money left to buy more English materials for the class.

A few weeks back I went to Guatemala for 3 days, my first real vacation in almost a year. It was great to spend a few days away from my community, just to take a breather. We went to Antigua, Guatemala, a beautiful colonial town not too far from the capital. The highlight of the trip was climbing up a volcano and seeing this crazy river of lava. There was literally a river of lava pouring out of the top of this volcano, it was one of the coolest things I`ve ever seen with my own eyes. The lava was so hot that it was difficult to take pictures because hot fiery wind kept blowing on my face. I attached some pics below.

It continues to be extremely hot here, I literally sweat all day long, even when I`m sitting in my hammock, it`s ridiculous. That`s probably why I`ve lost so much weight, I`m walking up and down my commuity all day long sweating a ton. I`m excited about the upcoming weeks and months, I`m organizing a sewing workshop for 20 youth in the community, the idea being that I`ll help them form small businesses so they can sell their products in the departmental capital. I`m planning on starting a reading program in the school so we can finally start using the small library we have. And the biggest thing that I´m planning with the local community organization, called the ADESCO, it a large infrastructure project. We`re thinking about building a cement bridge over one of the rivers. So if we actually get that going, this bridge project will surely become my main project. But, I`m super excited about that because it`s such a big necessity in the community.

Here are some pics from the past few months:



Action shot from the soccer tournament.






Another pic of me on the volcano.









Me and my 2 counterparts at a hotel on the beach. Peace Corps put on a training workshop in project management and design so I invited my 2 counterparts. It was a good bonding experience.

This is me and my nephew eating watermelons.

This is me scaling a climbing wall. The record was 25 seconds to the top, but unfortunately, I missed the record by 1 second.

This is me roasting a marshmellow over the river of lava. Hot fiery wind is blowing on my face, it was so freakin hot, holy shit, but it was worth it.

Another pic of the lava.