A Change of Pace

Whew! What a busy few days. The last 5 days have been spent with a group of 6 people from Abbotsford B.C. and one City of Calgary Firefighter. They came down here to help Poco a Poco do some re-building of houses and to do sort of a fact finding mission so they can go home and raise some more money. It has been a busy few days of going from location to location looking at the different needs that exist here currently, and having lots of discussions about the economy, government, and the provision of aid. They have been a great group of people to connect with. They all left this afternoon, along with Jill, to Antigua. Jill is heading back to Canada on Thursday (Tony will be going as well), so it will be a little different around here now that it is just Sharon and I left. There are still mountains of bags of clothes that need to be sorted through though, and the next container from Canada will be arriving in the country (hopefully) tomorrow, so I´m quite sure we will be keeping busy.

This is my first-aid class week at the multicultural english school here in Panajachel. Today I did my first class with the jr. high aged kids (and have a whole new respect for jr. high teachers) and managed not to strangle anyone during the 1.5 hour lesson. Tomorrow I´m with the grade 4-6 class and Wednesday with the high school kids. Then Thursday is (American) Thanksgiving which I will be enjoying here with Sharon´s family at the house of a friend of hers. I think we are going to try to have a restful weekend and I may duck off to the Pacific Coast for a couple of days at the beginning of next week. I am going to try to get back for the arrival of the container here in Pana, hopefully by Wed or Thurs next week. Then, amazingly enough, it is my last weekend to help out before heading home. Hard to believe that I have already been away for 7 weeks . . .

Hope you are all doing well. I will try to get my hands on some more photos in the next couple of days . . .

Love to you all,
Catherine