5.3.12

hola amigos, today was my first day of work! so i am at a placement at Padre Antonio Rocco's day care where i am sort of an assistant teacher. really i just help out where ever they need me in the center. the center is in Guatemala City about 5 minutes from home base and they serve children ages 2-5 from underprivileged families. There are 3 classrooms but so far ive only worked in 2- the 2 yr olds and the 4 yr olds and they are both adorable. the children are so sweet and the teachers and nun who work there were all very welcoming, the only problem is that no one there speaks english so it was kind of a total immersion for me. the 4 yr old kids are really excited to learn english words though so thats good! the 4 yr old teacher where i was most of the day also likes to listen to english pop music, but she doesnt understand any english so it was funny to me because she didnt realize that most of the songs she was playing were definitely not appropriate for children. at lunch time i found out that guatemalans dont eat hot dogs the same way we do...they sauteed the hot dogs in a brown sauce and then chopped them up and served them over rice...it was strange and they called it chi chi but it smelled delicious.

after work we went back to the home base and then went on a city tour. the city is split into zonas which are basically neighborhoods and they are pretty much divided by class and/or what their major product is. one stop we made was at the largest public cemetery in the city and in guatemala they have the above ground mausoleums like in New Orleans. the cemetery was really beautiful except when we got to the back we noticed a terrible smell and our guide Juan Carlos had us get out of the car and walk to the  back end of the cemetery where there is a giant ravine and in this ravine was a huge dump where hundreds of people were making their living scavenging through the trash they could resell. the whole area smelled terrible and there were hundreds and hundred of vultures everywhere. after the cemetery we went through the zona where the people we saw below lived and it was just one room shacks full of other peoples trash basically. it was really sad to see. especially when we drove about 30 minutes later through a zona on the other side of town that was so wealthy. this area was filled with gated neighborhoods and houses and american hotels, stores and restaurants. the difference in the areas was staggering.

 after that they took us to get some ice cream and i tried dulce de leche ice cream which was pretty awesome! and then we came back to home base and ate and now we're just hanging out, sooo i guess i will talk to yall later! adios!

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