Third World Countries

Guatemala is home to 13 million people and about 1/3 of them live on a few dollars a day. There's a small middle class and income inequality is high. It's funny because in a lot of ways things are the opposite here as they are in the US as a result.

• Clothes, electronics, appliances, etc. all cost more here than in the US because they know only the wealthier people can afford them to begin with
  
• The wealthier people live IN the cities (particularly with Antigua) and not in the "suburbs"
• There are enormous state of the art malls in Guatemala
  

Last weekend we went to Guatemala city to see Batman. It only cost us 9 Quetzales (about $1.25) to take a "chicken" (tourists call the public buses chicken buses because residents put chickens on top of them) bus there, which is great because the trip is at least an hour. We get off at our stop for the mall and right in the heart of one of the poorest cities in Central America there's this amazing mall, nicer than any in VA that I've been too. It was really strange, because I felt like I should be in VA Beach or Short Pump. It was actually pretty sad to see wealth and poverty so closely intertwine.

Espanol ha estado muy bien. Lately we've been going to a cafe near our house around 2:30 every day and studying until dinner at 7pm. They have great coffee here and I think I'm getting addicted.

Below our some pictures of a few places we've been to in the last few weeks. We went with a Students International team to an active Volcano in the area. We also went to one of the most beautiful places in the world this weekend: Lake Atitlan.



This is the view from the roof of our school. That's smoke coming out of the Volcano in the background...


This is also from the top of the school. That Volano is the biggest in the area and is directly south of the city. It's a useful reference point when navigating avenidas and calles.


Coffee...The plant


Lava. We climbed Volcan Pacaya last Saturday. Most of the hike is normal forest but the last 30 minutes was a trek across volcanic soil searching for places where lava was spewing out of the ground. We got to that point and I was literally walking on rock (hardened lava) and underneath me were lava rivers. This picture is where lava boiled to the surface where it immediately begins to turn into rock. This lava spew was about 3 feet from me when I took this picture. It was so hot that the soles of my shoes melted a little.


Antigua's Patron Saint day was July 25th. There was a big parade and all the area schools marched and their band played music.


These students had signs about different aspects of Guatemalan history.


Every year on July 25th there's a "clasico" between Antigua and Guatemala City's futbol team. It was an exciting game but Antigua lost.

A few photos

Caroline and I at a spot that overlooks the entire city of antigua


Caroline went to the market to practice Spanish with her teacher and they were doing some crazy dance with these scary masks.


This is Parque Central where we´ll frequently go to study in the afternoon.


This is the front door to our family´s house. It´s nice inside. Through these doors their´s a patio and then there are actually several homes where there whole family lives (aunts, uncles, grandparents).


This was Friday afternoon during a school parade. It was the equivolent to a homecoming parade and there were girls through candy sitting on cars.


This is basically the entire city.

La Primera Semana en Antigua

Our first week of Language school has been excellent. We arrived last Sunday afternoon and moved into our room. We´re staying with an Antiguan family that leaves right in the heart of the city 3 blocks from the school. They´re upper middle class by Guatemalan standards. We have our own room and bathroom. Senora Sandra cooks us three meals a day and normally at least a 2 of their 4 sons join us during the meals. Our daily schedule looks like this...

6am to 8am=wake up, shower, QTs, Breakfast
8am to 12pm=one on one spanish lessons with our teachers
1pm=lunch with our host family
2pm to 7pm=study spanish on our own, attend events at the school, (soon) volunteer with SI
7pm=dinner with our host family
8pm to 10pm=study and free time

God has blessed us because we have met several friends since we´ve been here. One family is going to run an orphanage here in Antigua and they´re studying Spanish for 6 months at our school. They´re in their late 20s and have 3 kids. We´ve gone over to their place several times to hang out and play games. They love to play Settlers of Catan!!

Learning a new language is proving to be a difficult task. Our comprehension of Spanish has already improved dramatically. If someone speaks fairly slowly or if we´re reading Spanish, we can pick up at least the main ideas. Speaking is proving to be much more difficult, but we´re learning poco a poco.

The city is very nice but there is a siginificant amount of poverty. In a few interactions Caroline and I have had with some of these people our hearts were just broken with their situations. One man is severely disabled and spends his entire day picking food out of the trash in the park. We´ve never once seen him beg for money though...It was heartbreaking to watch, but a reminder of why we´re here in the first place. We can wait to be in the DR serving people like this.

If you´d like to call us while we´re here we bought a Go phone...

The number is 011 502 53776038.

As soon as we can find a place with faster internet we´ll post some pictures

His,

Ryan and Caroline

Waterfalling

Caroline and I spent our last weekend in the US (for a long time) in New Hampshire. We went up with her family to go to her cousin Jeff's wedding. It was a long drive but a great time. We got to see my brother for a day in Boston and spent several days in the White mountains. One afternoon we went to the Swift River and left with quite a story to tell:

We're at a spot on the river called Upper Falls where you can sit down and let the river take you for about 200 yards. Bodysurfing is to Surfing what this was to Kayaking. It's probably a fun and peaceful ride when there aren't rainstorms earlier in the day. I decide to go for it anyway so I sit down, put my feet in front of me and go. It's slow for a while and then picks up some speed through white water. It's my first try so before it gets to the big-time rapids and 5 foot waterfall I bail out to the river bank (barely).

Emily wasn't so lucky! A few minutes after I give it a try, I convinced Caroline's 16 year old sister to do it. Her cousin Tom and I were going to wait for her before the waterfall and catch her. BAD IDEA. She starts off fine but then hits a rough patch and gets disoriented. She flies by Tom and I, and in order to catch her I let go of Tom and dive after her. Together we're streamlining right towards this waterfall. I manage to latch onto a rock about 3 feet before the edge and hold Emily with the other hand. She pulls herself onto this rock (that still has some water rushing over it) to collect herself.

At this point she apparently doesn't realize the immense danger we're in and she takes a few moments to look around at all the commotion we've caused. Meanwhile gallons of water are rushing into my face as I cling to this rock with one hand and maintain a vice grip on Emily's arm with the other. Eventually I say to her "Emily you have got to get over this rock before I lose my grip and we both fall to our death."

She finally manages to climb over the rock and jumps upstream to the outstretched arm of her cousin, who pulls her to safety. The water was going too hard for me to stand up without falling over so I just push off the rock with my feet and that gets me close enough to the side that I can grab another rock and pull myself out.

I would feel pretty heroic about the whole ordeal except that I was the reason she was in the predicament in the first place. I attached a few pictures that Caroline took as the event unfolded. Unfortunately once the situation got dangerous she stopped to help.

Our first day of Spanish training is Monday July 7th in Antigua, Guatemala. We're excited, but also scared, as we go into a new place, learn a new language...It's finally here.

Prayer Requests:

1. Traveling
2. Homestay accommodations: we'll be staying with a Guatemalan family and it will probably be a big adjustment and we'll really need to be flexible
3. Language-No hablamos mucho espanol.
4. Peace-saying goodbye is never easy
   

	Total Need	Total Raised	%	Remaining Need
Pre-Field Budget	$25,000	$21,000	84%	$4,000
Monthly Budget	$2,500	$2292	92%	$208

The drop wasn't as bad as the fact that we would land on that huge boulder


Emily Starts out happy


The white water throws her off her game


The water fall is about 8 feet behind us. What were we thinking?