Well, we have had a hectic couple of weeks for us here in Guatemala. First though, a little about getting here. We made a pretty routine exit from Panama City, making our way to the airport from where we were to catch a flight to Guatemala. We went through all the usual stuff - taxi to the airport, check-in, security, wasting time waiting for boarding. We were all set for another routine flight, queuing to board the plane, when we noticed something interesting about our boarding passes - ours were the only one we could see with the words 'priority access' printed in big letters across the top. Also, our seats were suspiciously close to the front of the plane… could it be? On entering the plane and moving towards our seats, we almost jumped for joy on discovering that they were both upholstered in black leather! That's right, we had been bumped to business class, were we enjoyed unprecedented leg room, comfy seats and one of our best meals in recent weeks. It's a shame it was only a 3 hour flight! We arrived in the rather unexciting Guatemala City were we spent the next couple of days getting ready to do some volunteer work in nearby Rio Dulce. We didn't get up to much here (aside from an impromptu tour of the city by a friendly Guatemalan school teacher named Mario who wanted to practice his English!) particularly as Guat City is not great for tourism (the city of Antigua, Guatemala's original capital and located an hour south, is supposed to be much nicer). So on the 6th of September after a couple of days in the capital, we made our way to the little town of Rio Dulce right near Lago Izabal in the north east of Guatemala. We made sure to get off the bus on the right side of the river- our hostel was on one side of the river while the main part of town was on the other side- a 20 minute walk across what is reportedly the longest bridge in Central America! We soon found our destination- Hotel Backpackers a hostel run to partially fund the orphanage/school we would be volunteering at for the next 2 weeks. We would be staying at Hotel Backpackers for the duration of our time here and taking a small boat 20 minutes down the river to school (Casa Guatemala) and back each day. As soon as we walked in we were blown away by the view- the restaurant faces straight on to the river, so you can sit out front at the restaurant and watch the traffic pass (fishing boats, jet skis, yachts) and the water birds fly in low formations right past your table. We settled into our 8 bed dorm (fortunately only half occupied!) and soon met one of our roomies- Brittany from the states. She and her friend her Stephanie were also working at Casa Guatemala and would be staying for another few days before continuing their travels. The rest of the day was spent organizing our stuff and nervously anticipating the start of our volunteering the next day.

We woke up early on our first Monday morning and had breakfast at the hostel restaurant (we would be eating breakfast and dinner here and lunch with the kids at school) and boarded our little boat. It's a beautiful trip, past islands in the middle of the river, a lot of jungle and quite a few fancy houses (Rio Dulce is known to yachties sailing in Central America as a safe harbor should there be a hurricane or storm at sea). Some of these tourists have also set up holiday houses here- hence the cabins and houses with huge yachts docked out front. The places are beautiful and I'm sure these people bring money into the Guatemalan economy but it's a little disturbing to see on your way to an orphanage!

We soon arrived at Casa Guatemala- it's quite a beautiful setting there right in the jungle and immediately we experienced the wild life- tiny humming birds and even howler monkeys (which make really scary monster noises) in the trees. Of course there's always the down side of wild life- so many insects. Blood sucking flies called congas made multiple huge marks on our legs (Ryan managed to squish one once and yes it was full of his blood!) mosquitoes reign, tiny ants drop from trees and bite you and a friendly spider the size of my hand lived in the room where we taught. In the end we got used to these things and made best friends with the insect repellent and anti itch cream. Anyway back to our first day. We soon met Valeria, the volunteer co-ordinator at Casa Guatemala. A lovely Swiss girl who really keeps the place going, she showed us around what would be our work place for the next two weeks. Just to give you the whole story- Casa Guatemala is both a school and a home for kids. There are a few different groups of kids there- some live in the nearby town of Aldea Brisas and simply walk home every day. Some live further away and often their parents can't afford to keep them at home all week- so they live at C.G during the week and go home on the weekends. Some kids have been abused and taken away from their parents, some have been abandoned and some have been orphaned- most of the last three groups of kids live at Casa Guatemala 24/7- this is the only home they have. This means the population of the Casa varies but there's always at least 40 kids split between the Casa de Los Varones (Boy's House) and the Casa de Los Ninas (Girl's House). On our first day we also saw the school facilities- various class rooms, a soccer field and a cafeteria. In addition Casa Guatemala also runs a farm- they use some of the fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy to feed the kids and sell the rest at a store in town.

On our first day we were assigned our task for the upcoming weeks- we would be taking over from Brittany and Stephanie as Manualidades teachers- Arts and Crafts. Ryan had a brief stint working in the library first and then we were on our way- trying to control any where from 10- 21 kids and convince them to create something neat and pretty which they would want to keep longer than two seconds. The recurring problem which anyone who'd been involved with art class here told us about was that the kids would paint or make something and either wanna leave it in the class room with the teacher or end up throwing out. Our idea to solve this at least somewhat was to try and make things which were A: useful for other parts for their school lives or B: interactive so they would want to continue playing with them after they'd made them. One of the first things we did with one of the youngest grades was make a huge banner for an event one of the teachers was organizing called the Mini Olimpiadas Del Saber - the Mini Olympics of Knowledge. We traced the letters and the 5-6 year olds colored in a letter each, resulting in a very multi colored sign. It was simple but when we emphasized that the whole school would see their work they seemed to get enthusiastic and everyone was excited to see the sign displayed the next day (well at least we were!) As our time went on we also made book marks with the kids to use in their library classes, which they enjoyed mostly because they got to cut the letters of their name out of magazines and masks which everyone loved and it was very cute to see everyone running around wearing them all day. They could be hard to handle though- we found if they weren't kept occupied and got bored we ended up with "walking on tables and fighting with rulers" incidents. All in all though it was a great class to teach- the kids are there to have fun and be creative and, if we're honest, make a bit of mess and they all seemed to leave happy at the end of the day.

We must mention that we really didn't have as many classes as we might have however because last Tuesday was Guatemalan Independence Day. The only thing we could think to compare it to was at primary school in Australia when it's the week before Christmas and all you seem to do is make Christmas craft, have concerts and eat junk food. Almost every afternoon of the week leading up to the day we stopped class for activities. These ranged from soccer games to singing competitions and much more. I think our favourite day was probably the dancing/gymnastics competition where every single class created a routine and performed it- even the 5 year olds- so cute! The only down side of all this celebrating was the fact that before every afternoon of fun we had to watch the bearing of the flag, say an oath about the flag and sing the national anthem- the whole rigmarole lasting about 20 minutes! Crazy!

A little more about the kids- as I mentioned before- some times they're great, sometimes they're a night mare but we really feel like we grew to know them over the last couple of weeks. They're aged from 2 to 14 there and they're all different. Some of them just loved being around adults probably cause they don't get that much individual adult attention. Some of them would love you one minute and hate you the next. Ingrid, the smallest 5 year old had a habit of begging you to play with her one minute and calling you "feo" (ugly) the next. One of the kids I really felt sorry for was an older boy who is in the process of being adopted by a couple from the U.S. However many adoptions in Guatemala have recently been put on hold due to a terrible case where a woman not too far from here essentially set up an orphanage, proceeded to buy children from their impoverished parents and then defrauded volunteers who came to help out. So this poor kid is kind stuck in this limbo where his adoption can't go ahead.

We have a especially great memories of C.G- one of them not even involving the kids at all! Last Wednesday we chose to stay at Casa Guatemala for the night as all the staff were having a party! It was one of the teachers birthdays, we made sangria and danced to a lot of random Latin American music until we could dance no more. (This was a particularly proud night for the two of us, as earlier in the week we had been commissioned to produce some lampshades to create some ambience in the fluorescently lit 'party room', with incredibly successful results!) It was so great to interact with the great people who work at Casa Guatemala outside of school and at the end of the night they got all three of us (another volunteer, Jordi, also left this week) to stand up on the bar while they sang us a Desperdite (Goodbye) song in Spanish- quite emotional! Also last Friday there was a public holiday for Independence Day and many of the kids went home and the remaining kids got an excursion. We took an hour long hike (ok this part wasn't so fun- it rained the whole way, we slipped in mud and got thorns in our feet) to a place called Rio Frio where you can swim in a very refreshing water hole- heaven! (After complaining about the warm waters of the Caribbean for the past few weeks, we were finally rewarded with an ice cold swimming experience!). All the kids were very relaxed, we ate lunch there and played lots of games. The three year old Jessica particularly loved playing a game where Ryan was a shark (Tiburon) and she would yell "Tiburon! Ven aqui!" (Shark! Come Here!) before screaming and giggling hysterically when he got near and pretended to start nibbling on her.

All told, we were quite sad to take our final boat trip back to the hotel, watching CG disappear into the distance and thinking of all the little faces we had gotten to know during the past two weeks that we wouldn't get to see again. WAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Once again that brings us up to date. We write to you all from our last night at Hotel Backpackers - tomorrow we begin our travels around the rest of Guatemala.

Love to all

Ryan and Hayley