Carla leaves Guatemala for Peru and football fever hits Ecuador

Guatemala
Sadly Carla finished her excellent stint as project manager in Itzapa and heads to Nicaragua for a couple of weeks to help start up our new Teaching Children and Adults project before taking up the reins in Peru.

In Santa María, new volunteers Sheila and Logan started full-time and settled in quickly. We are aiming to take in 30 new children in June, who have either never been to school or don't have the opportunity to do so, so Santiago is collecting info from the mothers!


Stoves
Five energy efficient stoves in Honduras were finished as well as two in Santa María. Each stove makes such immediate and long-term differences, with less firewood needed, elimination of indoor smoke and more time available for children to study rather than collect firewood, so many thanks to our recent short-term volunteers: Ai-Ling, Matthew, Mark, Brian, Shaun, Rocky (and two young kids!).



Honduras
It’s been a strangely quiet teaching week compared to the last couple of months, with only 2 volunteers though all well on the ground.

Katie, our combo volunteer who also taught children in our Guatemala project, has had a great final week in 2nd grade and Julia, who has been setting up our new English TEFL program in Guatemala, visited for a couple of days to get the English classes set up with Primary and Secondary school, as there are no qualified teachers to do so.

New timetables have been drawn up and the books that she has brought down will be really useful for exercises and teaching ideas for all the new English classes. Gabriel, our 6 month volunteer combo-er from Denmark, finished off in 3rd grade and now moves onto Nicaragua for a couple of weeks before heading to our project in Ecuador, high up in the Andes.

Full week of lessons in the GVI and the GVI Charitable Trust sponsored Secondary school, although one of the girls may be dropping out. The admin-side of the school is still in the lawyers hands!

Ecuador
Each Friday from last week until the end of the school year on 20th June all the schools around Otavalo are competing in knock out style soccer tournaments in their area.

Benn went to watch Larcacunga's girls team versus Tangali, and it was like watching 5 year olds play adults. Tangali breed them tall, and the girls were about 6 feet. Needless to say, our girls lost 3 nil.

The other schools did not fare much better unfortunately. It has been fun for the volunteers to cheer on their school each Friday, and sometimes getting face-painted and bringing cheer squads to support their schools.

There were sad farewells to long-term volunteers Gwilym and Lynn; Lynn also worked on our teaching project in Peru. Thanks for all their hard work over the past few months.

Peru
Aniversaries in our two communities outside Arequipa were amazing. The celebration in Maldonado was such fun, just like last year. The kids are truly in their element when they are dressed up in the dance costumes and dancing for their parents.

The parents love seeing their kids being involved in cultural traditions. Chrissie was sitting amongst the mums and they were laughing, smiling, chatting and loving every moment. The old people’s plan continues with great success.

Carla leaves Guatemala for Peru and football fever hits Ecuador