Last weekend brought a big transition for me. After the shared celebration at the Beca Project luncheon and saying goodbye to the sponsors who had joined me here for the week, I moved my things from hotel to a host family (more on that in a future post)
and headed on a lancha to the village of San Marcos with 2 Spanish school friends.
San Marcos has a new agey, crystal waving reputation of which we didn't partake.
The highlight for us was a hike in the beautiful reserve; cost to enter was 15 quetzales, about $2. There were some beautiful altars and views and great places to swim (though we didn't partake in the latter, either).
We headed back to the dock for the ride back to San Pedro and caught this glimpse of the knoll where we'd been hiking.
Monday brought the start of 4-8 Beca family visits per day. Part of the preparation for that includes sorting through and organizing the gifts and photos that sponsors sent to me before I flew south. I share my own photos of family and favorite activities (my scuba diving photos are popular) and give each new student a flash drive for storing school work. Many of the families offer us food so Mynor and I have learned to avoid eating too much breakfast before heading out. If the photos are bright, the setting was outside or we used a flash; many of the houses have no lights and few windows.
Here are some favorites from Monday's and 2sday's visits.
Mynor and I are also heading between schools and the bank to pay tuition and fees for the kids for the rest of the school year which ends in October.
This is the Bilingual Secretarial school in neighboring San Juan, with details of a class schedule, an inexplicable ceiling light fixture, and some cute chickens feeding under coffee and avocado trees on the walk back to the main road.
And on the shared tuktuk ride back to San Pedro, another example of world class Maya baby cuteness.
You can find the complete photo sets for this trip HERE.
Happy trails!
