Casa Guatemala - Part 3

Well its been a good and bad few weeks. Good in that every Wed and Sat night has been a riot and good fun with lots of bum twisting to Reggaton music. The bad is that the fun volunteers have come to the end of their 3 or 6 month period and have left leaving serious control freaks behind. The classes of Manual Art and Sewing are going OK with the children wanting to do bracelets the whole time or drawing (most of the kids even in the upper years are still tracing pictures then colouring them in), and the younger kids are fascinated by playing with balloons rather than trying out anything else different.

The kids are lovely outside of class, but inside a lot of them are little rotters. The Guatemalan teachers use a different punishment cane for each crime so the rascals know that they can get away with murder with the volunteers as we dont punish in the same way.

On the animal side I think I have a pet rat above my bed as in the morning there are lots of droppings and plant pods he has discarded. We came back the other morning from dancing (1am) to find 4 cows on the terrace outside our house complete with 4 gigantic deposits - lovely! The generator has broken down again so until US$1000 is found for the part it is likely we will be without water for 2 weeks, so for the last 2 nights Ive donned my swimming costume and had my shower in the pouring rain.

I am now off for a weeks rest (working from 7am until 6.30 and sometimes from 4am until 8pm 7 days a week, deserves a rest I think)!