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)
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and headed on a lancha to the village of San Marcos with 2 Spanish school friends.
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San Marcos has a new agey, crystal waving reputation of which we didn't partake.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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And on the shared tuktuk ride back to San Pedro, another example of world class Maya baby cuteness.
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You can find the complete photo sets for this trip HERE.
Happy trails!
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