Hola.Adios.

Hola. Adios.... is the repeated greeting we get from little kids in San Lucas Toliman, Guatemala.
As expected, people here are generally friendly.
I gotta make this quick, so here we go.
3 cups of coffee, one at every meal. Coffee here is delicious, again as expected!
We worked yesterday and today by helping to move bricks. Yep, bricks.
They´re going to be building a couple of structures since coffee production this year has doubled to help facilitate with the cleaning and sorting of beans.
We have met with different community members from the mission here who have been kind enough to give us a few tours. Tours included la comunidad de San Andres, Casa de Cafe-Casa de Miel, the various projects that the parish has helped with including a Women´s Center, and a Reforestation project. I´ll be going into more detail about these later on.

We´re staying at a local family owned hotel that has been quite beautiful and conveniently located near the parish where we receive our meals. Other university groups from Rice and Marywood are also here, so they make for delicious conversations at times.
As a group we´ve slowly come to grow closer and laugh together and make fun of Patricio (our coordinator).

Being here, feels like being home.

There is no obvious violence going on, although we haven´t had much opportunity to go exploring at night since ít´s been pouring. Only violence I have witnessed was the stupid mistake of leaving my unbreakable water bottle behind, the one with 20 different
stickers on it :(

Cool quotes I have overheard and jotted down these past couple of days

¨The one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world¨
¨Si no respetamos a la tierra no nos respetamos a nosotros mismos¨
¨Ser un amigo a la tierra y ser un amigo de la humanidad¨ asi es como se describio Don Torribio

I have witnessed a lot of projects and good things that have been successful thanks to the Parish here at San Lucas. This past year my faith has been very confusing and I had some trouble putting into words what it is exactly I believe in. So being here has in a way made me see how great organized religion can be for a town and its people.

So we´ll see, right?