Playas y Volcanes

This week has had no shortages of new experiences. On Tuesday, I started my practicum with Nuestros Ahijados. It's an organization that has a variety of services related to education, social work, rehabilitation for malnourished children, and much more. I'm working with their social workers for the next 6 weeks in San Felipe, a small town just outside of Antigua. The workers there are some incredible humans and it's been encouraging how welcoming they've been to me as I tag along with them. I'm really looking forward to next Tuesday, because I'll be going with one of the social workers as he does home visits. It'll be interesting. Also great about this opportunity is that it's another good opportunity to continue improving my Spanish.

We spent last weekend at a small, rustic "resort" on the Pacific ocean. I don't even really know how to describe it. It took twenty minutes on a sketchy boat to get to the place, and upon arriving we were informed that the little bungalows were, in fact, for us to stay in. It looked like a scene out of a movie. It was amazing. Not to mention that this all-inclusive stay was only $30 a night. Wonderful time.

Yesterday, I went with my roommate, Austin, and one of our housemates, Ashley, to climb one of the volcanoes here, Volcan de Pacaya. It's one of the ones that you can almost always see while walking around Antigua, so it was pretty cool to actually go up. After about an hour drive to the volcano, we went up with a group and guide for a good two hours.



We weren't able to go all the way to the crater (it's still an active volcano), but we were able to go a decent way up. Unfortunately, we picked a cloudy day to go, so we didn't really get to see any breathtaking views of Guatemala, but it was still incredible and it started to let up towards the end of our little journey. One of the coolest things about the excursion, however, was going where the volcano had erupted earlier this year, and roasting some marshmallows. So. Cool.

It's crazy that there's only about 6 more weeks before we head home. Time flies when you're having fun. There have been some rare occasions where I miss my Americans, but most of time I find myself absolutely loving life here. I've probably mentioned this before, but it's awesome how small Antigua is. You are hard-pressed to go out of the house and not run into someone you know. It gives the city an a small-town flavor, despite the thousands of tourists that stroll through.