First Week Over

I can barely believe that we´ve already been in Guatemala for an entire week already. It´s crazy how the time is flying. We just finished our first weekend of amazing activities, including climbing the Pacaya volcano and swimming in Lake Atitlan. Its absolutely gorgeous here. Everywhere you turn there are massive mountains or volcanos looming in the distance. And everything is green too. Plants and flowers cover every surface, plants even find ways to grow in the cracks of every roof.
Despite all of the beauty, its also really sad too. Many of the families in certain areas live in extreme poverty. When we climbed the volcano, children surrounded us, asking in broken english if we had brought lunch for them. I talked to my host mother about it and she said that after last year, people flooded in to help Guatemala for a week or so, but then forgot about the disaster. The government doesn´t help anyone really, so a lot of families who were hurt by the volcano and storms last year have just had an extremely hard time. When we were leaving, most of our class just handed our sandwiches to the kids, because we knew that we would have another meal in a couple of hours, but for them, it could be the only meal they ate all day. In Antigua, there is less poverty, but it still exists.