Today we started our assignment at the school. There are 3 classrooms, and we got to work right away, becos later in the morning we were going to have an opportunity to spend some time with the children. We are quite pleased with our progress, got almost one wall completed and partial on 2 others. I'll have some photos tomorrow of what we did. We had a blast with the kids. They are from a local impoverished neighborhood. At first they were very shy and stayed close to their teachers, but we had some little toys. and plastic balls so it wasn't long before they ventured closer and became fully engaged. I had a couple of them do some of the painting, and before long several others were waiting for their turn. The school has the bare minimum of everything, but we are prevented from making donations of any sort other than the work we're doing, because it can compromise the relationship between volunteers and the communities they serve, and damage their partnerships with local organizations. The spanish lesson we had on Sunday came in handy and made it a bit easier to communicate with the children , while we were painting and playing games. Some of them had new backpacks and they were so happy to show them to us. After lunch, another spanish lesson, then a tour of the city -Quetzaltenango.It 's not a pretty city, and nothing of great note to see as far a tourist attraction. We went to a market where there are some very colorful items for sale.Many of the buses used for transportation all around the country look pretty familiar to Americans. They are the old yellow school buses, so you could say old school buses don't retire they go to live in Guatemala. A few coats of paint and they end up looking quite different, and add a lot of colour to the road scenes.
