Post by Kevin Roth

At the beginning of this week, all the groups rotated to their last work locations. Yesterday, my group started working in Santa María de Jesús, a mostly Mayan town with a population of 21,795.  It is about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) south of Antigua, and both municipalities are in the department of Sacatepéquez (a department is the Guatemalan equivalent of a state).  

The Guatemalan & Department of Sacatepéquez flags

Today we continued our job of painting the outside of the classrooms at the school of Jardín de Amor (Garden of love).  After making a good start yesterday on the blank canvas of the wall, this morning we picked up right where we had left off. Although we were a shipmate short, the three of us had our moves down and painted almost as much as we did the day before. Right before our break, we had the chance to teach a little English to a class of about 35 second graders. We were helping them color in and pronounce the words “hello” and “goodbye.”  It was pretty cool to see them speak English so enthusiastically. They were screaming “HELLO” and “GOODBYE” at the top of their lungs. Once we finished teaching, we said adios.  In unison, they all yelled “GOODBYE.”  We had to get back to painting the walls, which was not quite as fun.  As soon as 1130 rolled around, we started cleaning up the worksite and preparing to return to Antigua.  Fortunately, CAPT Lennon, Prof. C, and Smitty came to pick us up, so we did not need to ride the chicken bus home. 

After we got back to the hostel, it took a long shower to get the paint off.  This was followed by a quick tanning session before crossing the street to the Ixchel Spanish School for our afternoon lessons.  My Spanish teacher and I got straight into learning about verb conjugation in the past and present tenses. After 90 minutes, we formed a group with other students and played a few games of loteria (Bingo).  This was followed by the world’s longest game of UNO that lasted about 30 minutes.  We ran out of time, so no one ended up winning. 

For dinner, we hit the town for some Italian cuisine at Hector’s Bistro. The food was spectacular, but the check was not. After dinner, we took a new way back to the hostel to get a different view of Antigua’s historic city streets. Everyone then went to the roof, wrote their daily journals, chit-chatted, and called it a night. Overall, the day was a ten out of ten. 

David Krise (left), Kevin Roth (middle), & Olivia Coffren (right) hard at work

Learning is occurring