Play and Work

We decided to give the kids a choice; either work or active interaction with the community. Willa especially took advantage of the latter option, playing soccer with her friends from last year as well as playing with the Mayan Hope School kids. The three pair of pictures shows Willa at play first with the Mayan Hope kids, next with her neighborhood soccer friends and last at work painting.

We made a total of three hikes during our stay in Nebaj, the next shot shows Michael and Kai walking from Chajul to Cotzal on one beautiful, lightly breezy day. We also had a hike to Acul, the town where an Italian family escaped Fascist Italy in the 30's to start a

new life here making cheese. They are locally famous for their cheese three generations later.

Tias set up the computers here. We now have a functional network of computers with an internet connection faster than most of the internet cafes! Kai did some fun screen savers. Thanks to all who made the extra computers available, Julie and Rick!

One other experience needs to be mentioned. Don's former building was located on a steep section of a busy road. Traffic was not continuous, but any type of vehicle laboring up the steep road was very loud successfully drowning out conversation. We were looking forward to the quiet street of the new location. Well, traffic noise was very little, HOWEVER, the new location is right next to a brand new, very large, completely cement block church. Church music there is amped to the max, perhaps that the music could be heard all the way to the heavens. Combine max amps setting with a totally cement building and very few attendees to absorb sound. Then realize their wall is 6" from Popi's wall. To top things off, we were there Holy Week during which they apparently felt this music had to start at 530 am. The same music, literally. Repetition ground this one tune into most of us. Despite our feelings of great annoyance about being forced to hear this so often, eventually some of us got to tapping our feet and perhaps humming a bit of it. After Holy Week for the rest of our stay, we endured the high decibel level just three times a week during more reasonable hours.