Well, I have some beautiful pictures to share with you all, and hopefully a few more interesting stories. Today I went to Yepocapa, a town in Chimaltenango, the department northwest of Antigua. My host father/director of Probigua invited me to go with him to a program presented by children at Colegio San Pedro, a school in Yepocapa. This school receives a lot of support from Probigua; in fact, because of their support, children are able to attend for free. It's quite an opportunity for children in Yepocapa. They even have a room full of computers with Internet, which is hard to come by in that area.
But anyway, Yepocapa, although not very far from Antigua, is a bit of a trek to get there in back, mostly becausethe road is not paved the whole way and there are many mountains to go there. However, it offers quite the beautiful scenery. At one point, we pulled over so I could shoot some pictures of the mountains in the distance. Here's some shots:
In the distance, though it is difficult to see because of the clouds, you can kind of see the Pacific Ocean. It would be a two hour drive from there, but we were so high up you could see it in the distance. Apparently, this picture was taken at 2800 meters above sea level, about 9,000 feet high. It sure was cold and windy, but the fresh air was a welcome change from the bus-exhaust filled streets of Antigua.
When we arrived at Yepocapa, we went straight into the school and the program started pretty much immediately. For the first part, the students who were voted as the best pupils in the school were recognized in front of everyone. For the second part, each grade level performed a dance/skit for the school to celebrate the cultural heritage of Guatemala. Many schools right now are doing similar things because next week, September 15th, is their independence day. So many schools are doing cultural "recitals" of sorts and are doing much practicing with their marching band. Well, needless to say, the program was fantastic. All the kids were so cute and they all did a great job. It was also wonderful seeing so many parents there to watch their kids celebrate their cultural heritage. I have more pictures here. But I also took some videos, which are following:
No comments:
Post a Comment