So guys and gals, we have come to the end of our month in Antigua...and what a month it has been!! We both agree that it has been the best month so far...despite the sweat, dirt, paint, blood, tears and starvation. We have met some amazing people (Maddy we are REALLY going to miss you!!!), made some great friends and finished building 3 houses for people that you know it is going to help enormously. We have also found the Guatemala families we have been working w...

Yesterday we started our 3rd and final house in a town called Santa Maria de Jesus. It is a much bigger town than the last one we were in and much more diverse in its wealth. The community that we are working in is mainly Mayan families, including the family we are building a house for. The speak Spanish to us and the other guys but they have their own Mayan language that they speak to each other. They tried to teach us a few words but it is incredibly hard as it...

After a very relaxing weekend of doing nothing in Antigua...(reading, wandering round shops, buying a painting, watching a film and eating a yummy bagel at the bagel barn), we started our final week of house building. We have about 8 more volunteers so to make sure all the groups were even Ian I had to change groups. We were a bit disappointed as this means we won't be working with Maddy for the final week, and we had a really good wee team! However, it's great t...

We finished our 2nd house today, and what a day it was! In the morning we were told that we were going to paint houses elsewhere in the village but that we would be back for 2pm to finish our house and see the family. As the hours rolled by we came to realise that we were going to painting 12 houses and weren't going to arrive back to the main site until 5pm! It took 8 hrs to paint all the houses, which was very frustrating since we wanted to be with the family f...

Today we climbed Volcan Pacaya (With other volunteers Maddy, Doug, Kate, Simon and Shana). When we arrived at the car park at the bottom we were swamped by children selling sticks and guys trying to hire horses. It was like a scene out of a zombie movie, the bus was surrounded and some of the kids even clung onto the side of the bus as it was reversing!! Once we had fought our way through the kids and horses we made our way up the volcano with our guide who look...