first week photos

Just to throw some more images at you as I have not figured out how to integrate them well in the blog. We took a boat ride to Santiago, across the lake, to a large (40,000) town where I will work in the Hospitalito.(see puebloapueblo.org) My first day was today, but more on that later this week.
We first went to the house of one of Isaiah's classmates, whose mother is on the clinic board and whom I had corresponded with via email prior to coming. One photo is the walk from the dock to their house, through the neighbors bananas and corn.

Aden is seated on in the view from their porch, across a small inlet of the lake.

The indigenous community of Santiago is quite strong with a history of resistance to the armies occupations. It is the largest indigenous community around Atitlan and the people largely speak only tzutuhil. Each town around the lake has its own style of dress largely differing in their color scheme. Then of course there are the backpackers, hippies and such who add a different sort of color.

Monday was Guatemalan independence day which meant a long holiday weekend, lots of guatemalan visitors to the lake and an incessant barrage of firecrackers and fireworks (without color just noise). There were parades of school bands and lots of school groups who make a pilgrimage to Panajachel. Their visit entails receiving a torch from the mayor of Pana, and then symbolically running it back to their own town. In reality they run around Pana screaming, whistleing, carrying guatemalan flags, then hop on their buses, drive back to their towns around the area, and run the last bit into their town. It made for quite the spectacle here, our first weekend.

You can see the suspension bridge in the nature reserve (see jord's blog) and our gear for the zip lines.

Aviv is forever asking to ride in a 'tuk tuk' rather than walk, and these 4 stroke motorized scooter cabs are ubiquitous. I dont actually know what a 4 stroke motor is but it sounds cool and is written on the back of every tuk tuk.