The next portion of our day continued on the waters; we took a “lancha” across the lake to the larger and more touristy village called Panajachel.  This city differs greatly from San Juan, and we could tell immediately.  The people of Panajachel seemed to be catering to tourists, with street vendors and markets everywhere, but before we experienced that side of Panajachel we were able to meet similarly-aged students that live in Pana.  They were studying tourism, business, and English.  We met them in the house of one of their teachers. The house was beautiful, and quite large compared to the houses we had seen, reminding us that in larger cities there is a large range of wealth.

Our meetings with the students from Pana were filled with tours of the city, language exchanges, and a showing of a new piece of land that was donated to their school.  This new land was undoubtedly the most intriguing part of the day.  A wealthy man gave the school this land, which is very large and has a waterfall and great views of the city, for fifteen years and the students can do whatever they want with it.  We exchanged many ideas and the most popular idea seemed to be for a cultural community center that would help preserve the culture of the city, while also being open to tourists.  It’s exciting to know that these students have the ability to change the future of Pana.

Eventually we made it back to out home across the lake.  We collectively decided to go to a nearby village to experience the nightlife.  The village is San Pedro, home to many restaurants catering to tourists.  As soon as we walked in it felt like we were in the United States again.  A college football game was playing on the television, all the customers were white, and everything was in English.  Ironically, that experience added to the theme of the day, tourism, and especially its effects on a village.  This complex phenomenon that sustains many economies kept our minds wondering what we would see next on this wonderful and surprising trip.  Hasta en dos semanas!

With my mind reeling over that discussion, with theories about the lake from my ecology class, our group met back up and went on an awesome and quite informative scavenger hunt around San Juan. With Parker and Ilian by my side, we conquered that hunt, eating fruit that we, nor Courtney and Owen, recognized, and getting to know the traditional traje, or dress, of the people in Guate.

After a hearty lunch and a little jam sesh to muse with my host brothers, we went to make beaded bracelets with one of Rising Minds’ partner cooperatives, Association of Economic Development for Widowed Women. We were each paired up with a woman who taught us what to do, which was a very complicated process, for me at least. It was awesome getting to know my instructor Gloria, and her son, Headie.

After a hilarious photo shoot with the cooperative, we had a communal dinner with all our host mothers and children. They prepared tosadas and ponche, a traditional Guatemala meal for the celebration called the Epiphany. On this holiday they celebrate the three king’s journey to see baby Jesus all day long with processions through every house. When we were half way through our lunch all of a sudden everyone started covering their food and ran into the other room to prepare the alter for the procession. Minutes later, at least 20 boys, both young and old, piled into the room with a baby Jesus holding the earth in his hand. We all got down on our knees, said a prayer, and kissed the earth Jesus was holding. Then Carmen came in holding a smoking lantern that was cracking the loudest bombas I have ever heard. It was quite the experience, and it sure made me realize I’m not in Minnesota anymore. There is so much to learn about this place and these people, and I am ecstatic for these next two-weeks to be utterly immersed.

One of the projects I completed for Rising Minds in June was putting together a database of all the high schools in the Twin Cities area including public, private, and charter schools. I also compiled a list of the colleges and universities in the Twin Cities. The database included the location of the school and the contact information of either a principal or an office in charge of international programs. The idea behind this database is that we will create a letter to send to these schools to inform them about Rising Minds and get local schools involved with the organization and hopefully committed to sending kids on an expedition to Guatemala in the future. I had the opportunity to go on a Rising Minds Expedition this past January with Macalester, and would love to help other students have the same incredible opportunity I had!

The other project that I am currently working on with another Macalester student is raising funds for Rising Minds through grant writing. Since neither of us have any experience with this as of yet, we hit up the library and began researching to try to understand what this very big and important concept is all about. After much research I will hopefully soon feel confident in my knowledge of grant writing to be able to go out and look for possible grants that could be awarded to Rising Minds. It is a process which I have learned is quite long and competitive, but I am confident that we will be successful with it. Although there is much I still need to learn and a lot of work to be done, I am excited to keep learning about grant writing and working with Rising Minds!

The main event coming up is the all day fundraiser for Ayudame today. For the past few weeks, the brothers who run the program have been painting an environmentally-focused mural with the kids. Its going really well. We´ve had volunteers helping each week and we have more today to help with the event.

It will be held at ONE, a bar and cultural centre in San Pedro. The day will start with an exhibition of the childrens´ work, followed by a live art show. In the evening, the guys who run Ayudame will get the ´latina´night started on the turn tables! We´re hoping to raise both money for the mural and awareness of the project. Should be a good night!

It´s all go next week too. As well as a fair few visits to the ferris wheel looming over the Santiago dock, I´ll be meeting more homestay students and bringing them to the very excited host-mothers in San Juan. Our first aid training begins next Saturday  in Jabelya for public school teachers. Stephanie Gervais, our newest volunteer here will be instructing!

Im also looking forward to welcoming our latest volunteer, Heather. Very excited at how the Rising Minds team in San Pedro is growing by the week!

One thing I find great about volunteering with Rising Minds is that my internship is tailored to what I’m most interested in. Each week, I set goals with Rising Minds to guide my work and explore what can be done based on the needs of the organization. Because my work is largely self-directed, I’m learning how to be more proactive and manage my time well. This month, I’ve been concentrating primarily on learning more about how grants work. What makes a good grant proposal? How should it be approached and formatted? Grants are an extremely important source of funding for nonprofits, and the requirements for proposals can be quite extensive, so it is important to know what funders expect inside and out.

So far, I’ve found my internship to be a very rewarding experience, and I can’t wait to see where it ends up taking me over the course of the summer! More to come soon!

On Saturday, I held my first Meet & Greet at ONE. With the help of Aimee and Taylor, two very sociable volunteers who were chit-chatting away, I received the contact details of five people all interested in getting involved, though in completely different ways: English teaching, self-defence classes, first aid, drumming workshops, working with the San Juan elders with our partner organisation Centro de dia para Adultes Mayores. Very exciting!

One of our projects has been especially busy for the past couple of weeks: Ayudame a Pintar mi Futuro. Having explored environmental awareness with the children during previous classes, Jose and Henry have begun a mural developing this focus. While the older kids paint with the help of Jose, Henry and Aimee, Taylor and I gave Miranda a hand supervising the younger ones in the gallery. It will take a few more Saturdays to finish but looks great already. To support this project, Ayudame are holding a fundraiser in ONE to help pay for the supplies.

Our language-exchange programme is going really well. There are three going on this week and more to come.  I’ve been having a exchanges with Rosario, possibly the loveliest woman on Lake Atitlan, who practices her pronunciation while she helps me with the grammar I slip up on. There is a good mix of people taking part and it’s a fun way to practice a language for an hour with someone in the same boat!

Lots more coming up in the next few days here. Nickie, who through Vision Guatemala provides interest-free micro loans to over 80 women in Xela and San Pedro (!!!), is celebrating the first anniversary of her bar Coco’s on Friday. Aimee’s helping with promoting the event. Coco’s has allowed Nickie to maintain zero overheads for Vision so we’re really excited to be able to be a part of what she’s doing.

We’re going to busy with Jabelya for the next few months too with first aid training for public school teachers and sex education classes for women. Also, one of the men from the day centre for the elderly in San Juan has been asked to give a lecture at Jabelya next month for young people. It will be given in Tzu’tujil and will focus traditional culture and values. I think it’s a fantastic way for not only our partner organisations to be interacting but also the different generations living on the lake.

More to come next week!