rest of wednesday

Well, the rodent problem is hopefully sorted out with the girls being moved to another room. Much more salubrious accommodations which led us to think of planting one of the half-eaten rats in our room to get the same deal.

After last night's exertions the campers slept in this morning and we were only there for a short time before we headed off for Chacaya to a new school headed up by Pasquale, who had invited us over there. Lots of great views on a VERY bumpy ride as shown below on a pure luck photo given the uneven ride.

When we got there we had a tour of the school and met the village committee and below is the classroom with all the kids in it along with a few faces you might recognize.

We walked about half a mile to the field for the session and were like pied pipers followed by about 80 kids from the village. We split them into two groups of younger and older kids and did a lot of soccer games with them. Below is a video of the kids playing a game where they have to run the gauntlet of soccer balls while dodging them all. This has been a big winner with the Guatemalan kids. Some of them took it a bit too far and used rocks instead of soccer balls with Erin getting hit in the neck by a particularly rambunctious youth. Not a particularly amusing day for Erin with little to no sleep from the rat infestation.




Below are pictures from Chacaya. The kids were really attentive and had so much enthusiasm surrounding the game we played. Simply beautiful...


During the days we spent at the shelter and surrounding schools, you would have though we brought along the hairiest individuals from the US. The kids couldn't get enough of the guy's hair (in particular Bobby's leg and arm hair who happens to have a ton of it). Above is a picture of Bobby trying to deter the kids from pulling every last hair from is arms. Rather looks like he's enjoying it.

Above is a picture of the walk back to Santiago from Chacaya (before we broke down and hailed a cab). As you can see, TP is a bit tired as the bag of soccer balls, filled with AIR, is slipping from his grip once again. We are now off for our first visit to the school of Juan Castro, who has been brilliant as our local translator - good soccer player as well.
This is in the center of town and was bigger than the others and even had an assembly hall, shown below. As you can see the volcanoes and lake dominate the local culture.This picture of Santiago was taken from the wall above the cement field we played on today. Rich caught the attention of at least half the kids during the accent and decent from Humpty Dumpty's wall. Rich was put together again.

Ricardo's feet were quite sore today so Tom ran the hour and a half session at Juan Castro's school, it was brilliant. Below is a picture during the game we played between Leche and Agua. It was riveting. Milk (Erin's team) beat water 1-0.

Here we have the "chicas bonitas"

It's pretty dusty out here and you can see the dirt line from TP's chubby ankles below. (definitely not a tan line!)