As of yesterday afternoon, we said goodbye to the last of the SSTTers, who left from Goshen’s campus after two days of reorientation and debriefing. Sunday we talked about how our “single stories” about Guatemala had been complexified and complicated; sang together; finished writing our pilgrimage journals; did a “thank…
Our last 36 hours in Guatemala were filled with card-playing, hiking (including a 5-hour mountain hike for about eight of the students and a shorter hike for another eight people), shopping at various women’s cooperatives in San Juan la Laguna, worship led by Ali, Dion, Isabel and Valeria, hearing from…
This evening we don’t have time for a full blog (exhausted from lengthy and congested travel, as well as playing and packing), so this is just a brief farewell to Guatemala from the 2019 Study-Service Theology Term group. We arrived back at CASAS around 7:30 p.m. this evening after boat…
We began today with breakfast at Uxlabil Hotel overlooking Lago Atitlan (gorgeous) and then disbursed into various affinity groups for self-selected activities: an hour hike, kayaking, shopping, exploring the town and other activities. We regrouped around noon and then headed off in about nine tuk-tuks for lunch at a fair-trade…
This morning we left the CASAS campus at 6 a.m. and headed out for Iximche, a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican archaeological site in the western highlands of Guatemala. Iximche was the capital of the late postclassic Kaqchikel Maya kingdom from 1470 until its abandonment in 1524. Iximche was called Guatemala by the…
As per usual, the last two days were full of activities. After our morning sessions Monday on “Youth and the Fullness of Humanity” (already discussed in the previous blog), we took a field trip to UPAVIM (United Para Vida Mejor/United for a Better Life), a women’s cooperative on the outskirts…
Yesterday was filled with stimulation, with Sunday’s visit to the downtown polling plaza where Guatemala’s elections were occurring, a spontaneous 20-minute visit to Catholic worship when we realized we had a window of time, and then a lecture about politics from sociologist and professor Jeremias Ochoa. Since Guatemala’s national and…
Saturday afternoon the SSTT group joined with a group of late-teen and 20-something Anabaptist leaders from all around Latin America for dance lessons with a professional instructor. We learned some of the steps for merengue, bachata, salsa, chachacha and other dances, most of which originated in one or another Latin…
We just returned this afternoon from an overnight trip to nearby Antigua, a colonial city just outside of Guatemala city and the original capital of Guatemala. Antigua, originally known as Santiago de los Caballeros, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is known for its Spanish-Baroque-inspired architecture and…
Today we headed out early for a morning of volunteering, at the request of Camino Seguro (Safe Passage), an organization that serves children whose parents work in the city landfill that we visited yesterday. The non-profit organization was founded in 1999 by Hanley Henning, who sold her personal belongings…
