Sunday 5.2.10
I'd like to take you all on a little photo-tour of my site. There is one main road that you take from Nebaj, the closest larger municipality, through my town to the next municipality called Chajul. This is the road coming from Nebaj going towards Chajul, heading roughly NE.
This is the avocado tree that I drool over each time I pass it. It is found on the right hand side of the road just before you get to the entrance to the institute (my school).
The sign to the entrance to the institute.
Everyday I walk down this ramp to go to the school and my office. Other frequenters of this road include: men and children carrying wood for their stoves, children and dogs herding cattle or sheep or goats, horses carrying wood to bring to the carpenter's shop on campus, and various other people just passing through.
View from halfway down the ramp, off to the left, are a bunch of classrooms, the basketball/soccer court (whose hoops are actually quite short), and the building on the right is the boys' dormitory.
View from almost all the way down the ramp, off to the left is the cafeteria, other classrooms, and the girls' dormitory. Out of sight to the left is a greenhouse and a multi-purpose room. Straight ahead hidden is the "hotelito" where tourists are housed, the office, and a couple small gardens that the children tend to.
One of the gardens where they are planting raddishes and some type of lettuce. They dug trenches in geometric shapes so they could count this as part of their math class. I taught them the words for square, rectangle, triangle, and circle in english so it could count for their english class also.
The hotelito has four private rooms fully furnished with private bathrooms and a kitchen common to all four rooms. However, there is usually no water during the daytime so I've been trying to explain to them how they can't host tourists until they figure out a solution for this problem. They think it's important to have TVs in all the rooms. I say water first.
This is another garden of raddishes started by a different classroom.
Our office. Usually there are 3 of us working in there full-time, but students and other members of the organization filter in and out throughout the day.
The greenhouse where they have started planting chili peppers and a few tomatoes.
The building on the left has a "comedor" or cafeteria on the bottom floor and classrooms and a large sewing room on the top floor. The middle building has more lodging for visitors on the bottom floor, and on the top floor is the computer classroom, library, and music clasroom. The building on the left is the girls' dormitory. Below is an area where they want to try and farm fish.
This is the inside of the multi-purpose room, which was completely filled with chairs and desks and students during my charla last week.
A mural on the outside of the multi-purpose room
The downstairs view of the main building complex and courtyard. Beyond the building on the left is the kitchen and the panederia, the bread-making building.
The view of a meadow from the main floor
Returning on the main road, the view continuing on towards the main part of town
All the families, or almost all, have their own "terranos" or terrains, where they farm their corn and beans. This is a small terrano on my walk today
This is another small farm that also has potatoes
Almost to the intersection of the two main roads. The yellow building is where they sell the things made at the institute (furtninture and woven goods). The pink building up top belongs to my counterpart and is where he and his wife and daughter lived while they were building the house we live in now. The pink house is right now unoccupied and also without electricity. The white building is, obviousy, a church. Catholic, where my family attends mass every Sunday.
Facing the opposite direction; the road on the left is where I came from, the road on the right is the direction I'm going.
The store on the corner. Managed by one of the aunts of the family who also live in the same building. I buy sodas, cookies, beans, rice, sugar, and not much else there because they just don't carry much stuff. However, they have more selection than any other store in town (of which there are 5-6).
Continuing down this road toward the soccer field. It is said in Guatemala that a man or woman never goes to work in the field without his/her hoe and machete.
This is one of the 4 Evangelical churches in town that blesses me with its music for the majority of the day.
One of the friends I encounter daily on my walks
On the right: a house in the process of being built. In the street: lots of trash.
One of the side-streets. There are only two roads here that are suitable for cars, the rest are all foot paths that get washed out daily with our afternoon thundershowers.
