Some Photos...

I thought you all might like to see one or two photos of Guatemala. I haven't taken too many as it's a bit of a risk to take the camera anywhere (the basic rule here is never leave the house with anything you can't afford to lose), so these are all from within the confines of our little gated community...


This is part of the inside of the house - putting phtographs up of the whole thing would take a while because it's absolutely huge. The effect is heightened by the fact we're somewhat lacking in furniture, but I'm assured that this is being worked on.



This is the back garden, and very nice it is too. Note the walls which mercifully provide a bit of shade for pasty folk such as I. Also note the built in barbeque, tasty.



Our residencia backs on to the 'barranco' (ravine), one of several which run through the city. This goes all the way to the airport, which you'd think would might provide a handy shortcut for travelling folk, but apparently to go down into it 'would be suicide'.


Looming over the barranco is the volcano, Fuego, which sits just outside the city. It's still active, but not really in the erupting sense (I hope). It is pretty impressive though, we plan to climb a different volcano (Pacaya) in the forthcoming weeks.

This is 21-80 (our house number) crew (well, three of us at least). From left to right are Andrea, me and Alice who all live together, plus Mike, who teaches in our sister school up in Coban. Here, we are pretending to be gangsters, a useful skill in a city like this. Come on, really, would you mess with us?

In terms of what I'm doing with myself, I'm actually working pretty hard. I teach 13.5 hours a week at the school but there's a lot of planning involved with that and I also have 6 hours of Spanish classes a week. I had my first experience of bad reaction to food or water on Saturday and was violently ill, but seem to be fully recovered as I write this on Monday morning. Very strange. That's about it for now, I'll write more soon.