Thursday and Friday Update

Thursday was another busy and great day.
Mario, Donnisio, Carol, Cathy and Ann took a tour of a working cacao farm and saw all the stages of the process. They hiked up hills and through a rain forest. They saw both natural and hybrid cacao they ate fresh hearts of palm and limes and sugar cane straight from the plants. They learned about the medicinal properties of many herbs and foods.
The owner of the Cacao farm has 15 children (ages 32-2) so these things are keeping him plenty healthy.
Carol met up with some mud and took a little tumble down a hill, she was muddy but none the worse!
In Silver Creek Conde and Joan finished writing letters with the kids and did more geography lessons. They are invited to lunch tomorrow at the home of one of the teachers-and it is the 12th birthday of the teacher's daughter.
The construction crew thought for sure that they would get rained out today since it was pouring when they got to the site, but the day cleared and a l ot of progress was made. They are almost through the entire stack of concrete blocks. An additional load is ordered, but they don't exactly have Home Depot here! Steph joined the construction crew for the day and has probably decided that teaching is a lot less exhaasting! Sifting sand by hand is grueling work-you'll have to see pcitures to appreciate just how labor intensive this project has been. In the afternoon some serious sun finally came out.
In San Marcos Leslie worked with the youngest kids helping them draw pictures of themselves and their families to send to their penpals in the USA. Jack finished letters in the Standard 4 class (6th grade). Anita started a Reader's Theater project with boththe Standard 3 and 5 classes. The kids needed a bit of coaching to "act out" the parts, but seemed to have a lot of fun.
After lunch Tim joined in with the teachers to help the oldest kids pace out the planets. We started at one end of the soccer field for the sun and Pluto wound up at the opposite corner. We concluded the space lesson by flying two different kinds of paper airplanes.
After working all day, a group of people went to see the ruins at Nim Li Punit. Father Don reportd to us that he learned that the winner of the games was beheaded or got his heart cut out-talk about throwing a game! There are royal tombs at this site and views of Guatemala. This is one of the few Mayan Stellars still in existence.
In San Migeul Jan, Don and Shannon finished letters and read books to the Infant Class (kindergarten). The painted with the oldest kids and it was a huge, but fun mess! When Shannon broke out the bubbles there was a stampeded. The teacher was thrilled with the pictures books that were donated to the school.

-Posted by Anita Dutrow