School Days

There were few days in Guatemala that I didn't spend working on the building projects. One day, however, I was lucky enough to spend a morning out at one of the elementary schools in Sepumac.

The kids LOVED having us there. Even the teachers were excited, which was kind of interesting since we were interrupting their classes. Sepumac was one of the larger villages but the road was "too rough" for the cattle truck to take us in, so we had to hike several miles in to get to the school carrying the supplies we were donating to the school. A nice Q'eqchi' man saw us poor white people carrying the things and took the big bag from Spencer and continued with us all the way to the school.

We had limited time with the kids in the school so we did a few things with each class.

We would ask the kids questions and have them raise their hands if they could fit into a certain category - like having 2 siblings or been outside of the Polochic (no one raised their hand on that one... surprise, surprise)We had singing time with each class. In this class, we asked if the class would sing us a song and this little boy (who was sitting right in front of me) was jamming his hand in the air and then offered to sing us a song all by himself! It was adorable!

One of our favorite songs to sing with the kids was Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes... or in their case, Head, Shoulders, Hips and Toes... and in Espanol...

Another classroom of adorable kids singing us a song. They loved to sing to us.
The man in the back on the right is the one that carried the heavy bag all the way down to the school for us. He stayed at the school all morning watching us through the window as we went from room to room. I don't think he ever had an education so it may have been very interesting for him. When we were finished, he walked all the way back up the hill with us to his house.

Our final classroom of kids. By the time we made it here, we had a huge following of kids. It grew as we went from room to room. They were lined up outside the windows on both sides of the room as well as nearly 25 or 30 kids inside the door in the front of the room. The teachers didn't care, they just smiled and let us do whatever we wanted!