o mi vida...: coffee lovers, scheel center, and saturday in the park

I'm WAY behind on blogging and feel like I have so much to blog!!

But that's because this past week has been super busy and now we're about to start another one and I just got over some crazy 48-hour horrid sickness :-O!

Anyway, before I get too far behind, let me recap:

Last week Friday = Trip to La Azotea (coffee plantation, mayan music museum, etc. place)

and these, are coffee beans... drying in the sun... lots && lots of coffee beans!!

I enjoyed this trip, it was interesting to learn more about the coffee making process & sadly, how American's consume an insane amount of labor every single day by sipping on one (but usually more than one) single cup of coffee. More than anywhere else in the world!

I've always been an advocate for fair-trade coffee...

trips like this remind me even more why it's so important that the workers get fair pay, because they work really really hard just to produce one, single-pound bag of coffee.

Then SATURDAY, Marta and I set off for Jocotenango to locate the building that I would be starting in on Monday for my internship.

And after quite an adventure in buses and with lots of asking direction, we finally found it lying at the bottom of a hillside (the yellow building).

Jocotenango is far different from Antigua, and for this reason, I really like it. Antigua is great, and there's plenty to experience here, it's quite a place to merge cultures and people from the nations. However, it is probably the least Guatemalan city there is in Guatemala these days... Though there is all sorts of historical preservation, the way of living is considerably different in Antigua then any where else in Guatemala.

Jocotenango is a pueblo (town) a couple chicken bus rides outside of Antigua. Here you will find more poverty, gangs, & violence, along with other social-economic problems. I am so glad to have the opportunity though, to work here and to experience a different dynamic of Guatemala. This past week was super busy getting acquainted, but I really like the psychologist that I'll be working with, and it's really cool to interact with the children and families involved with this home.

This week I start individual therapies and, well... I'm nervous!

BUT, on the other hand, excited to see where the Lord will take this.

These kids mostly need to be loved on, the situations here stem from neglect and violence in the homes and it doesn't take some master equation to determine that the greatest thing they need is to experience, even if just for a moment, God's love moving through me and caressing their little heart. SO, needless to say, I'm ready & can't wait to get started!

After our journey outside the city, Marta and I returned back to Antigua to meet up with some friends in the park and, I just had to capture a typical saturday in parque central...