Livingston - Xocomil - Back to work...

Rio Dulce

Kiki and I enjoying the local drink, ¨coco locos¨

Judy and I - Mexicana y Peruana

Everyone on the boat - little did we know we would be on this thing for 3 hours....

So Livingston was a success :) However, taking into account the fact that I had to sit on my butt for 26 of the 48 hour trip on a school bus and a boat I´m pretty sure I will never go back there again. My butt is still sore and my knees have bruises from trying to make myself comfortable against the metal seat in front of me. We had to pass through Rio Dulce (Sweet River) in order to get to Livingston. The river was beautiful but I had seen something even more beautiful when I was in Costa Rica. We were able to taste the local food called Tapada - a soup with many different kinds of seafood. It was very delicious! The women in town were also selling coco bread which was also very good. We tried to find local music but the town was dead at night! The next morning after getting up at 4:30 am my friends and I (9 volunteers went on this trip) made sure we had seats at the front of the boat to have the better view. That was a huge fail. The water was choppy so for the next 3 hours we were trying to find ways to block the spray of water we were all getting hit with. Ahh, just writing about this trip is making me exhausted! We get back late Friday night and the girls and I decide to make a trip to a local waterpark - and that was awesome! We had so much fun! Probably the cleanest, coolest water park I have been to yet. When I get home Sunday - guess what - my landlord made an unexpected visit! How could I tell? She has her own separate bathroom next to my bathroom downstairs. Sometimes when Tuk is playing with something he accidentally loses it under this bathroom door. There happened to be a stuffed plastic bottle filled with inorganic trash - well Tuk tore it to pieces. I walk into my house to find the lower patio covered in plastic - it looked like a war zone. Then I realized there was a ton of Tuk´'s poop on the upper patio and also a leftover firepit I hadn't cleaned up yet. This lady must think I am completely weird.



So I am now back to work, I have 2 big meetings this week with the new health promoters and I also have the graduation for the health promoters finishing a year on Friday. Here is hoping the doctor actually shows up....



Here are a few photos of how the landslides affected Guatemala (photos from Phil Wood's site and BBC)

This is only 1 of many images of how the rain affected Guatemala leaving roads completely covered in land.

Tragically due to all the rain Guatemala's mountainsides were not able to stand against all of the saturation leaving Guatemala's highway system covered in massive landslides. In this picture an entire bus was buried by a landside leaving many people dead.

Here you can see the massive amount of people gathered at the accident site. In the distance you can see all of the ambulances that were called to help save the victims.