Ancient Mayans had Jade Grills

Yes, it´s true some of the anient Mayan people wore Jade grills on their teeth to show their status. Today we went to the Jade Museum and Factory in Antigua and the guide showed us some old artifacts with the Jade in the teeth. Love it!

Monday was El Dia de La Madre here so my group decided to throw a mini fiesta. We went to Antigua and bought a delicious cake and then had cake and ice cream and helado with all of our host mothers. We mostly just sat around and chatted and it was nice to have everyone together.

Thursday we got to go visit a real volunteer in her site. We visited Ellen who is currently finising up service in Santa Apolonia in Chimaltenango. It was awesome to see someone being so successful in her site. She has built 37 latrines between two small villages outside of her main town. We went up to the indigenous village where almost all the people only spoke Kakchiquel. We saw Ellen present a health talk to a women´s group and then we got to tour the womens´ houses. This was the definition of rural poverty. However the women were so happy and you could feel the love they had for Ellen. The women´s group wanted to cook for all the gringos so we had a delicious chicken soup and tamalitos which I LOVED! (I ate waaaaaay too many) We all also recieved some good advice from Ellen just on general stuff like living situations, buying food and getting the health talks going. It was a great day and made me excited to serve.

Other than that I have just been contining with all my Spanish classes and technical training. Right now all the information is very overwhelming but I know once I´m out there I´ll get the hang of it. It´s been about 3 weeks since I left home and time has flown by. I really do like it here. Riding the camionetas are terrifying and exhilirating at the same time. I´m also working on just being ¨tranmquilo¨here with everything.