Days 1 & 2

Hola Amigos!

The team arrived in Antigua yesterday beginning at the crack of dawn and ending late in the evening. For those with a head start we enjoyed the opportunity to poke our heads around town and get a feel for a beautiful city alive with history but obviously decaying with age. The colors of the houses are amazingly vibrant yet appear to have not been revived in several decades -- reds, yellows, blues ... contrasting against the cobbled roads yet complemented by the rich blue sky broken by the volcanoes pluming billowy white smoke.

After a trip to the local watering hole last night, we jumped into the "learning" portion of service learning with a tour of Antigua this morning and an afternoon lecture on development, with the highlight being a chat with a local development hero -- Rigoberto, who has founded learning centers and libraries to deepen an educational system that's most stunning statistic is that 60% of 1st graders don't proceed on to 2nd grade.

Tomorrow we'll head deeper into Guatemala where we'll stay on a coffee farm cooperative -- where roosters will replace car horns and a community bunkhouse instead of hotels.

Cheers