This years new Strider (first installment anyway!)

(Mirjam, Jeanine, Alison, Hannah, Amy and Anna)

I've had a house full of new Striders over the last week - which is always fun -- this time with a mix of languages - English, Swiss German and Spanish! It's been great to have a bit of time to get to know them and answer all their questions about Guatemala (and Honduras) and their placements. We also had some fun -- we walked up to a park near my house and played! And Amy managed to turn herself green from the dye from her new purchase!!

Most of them are now starting their spanish classes - and I'm taking Jeanine up to Lake Atitlan this afternoon for her project.

Independence Day

Today is independence day for Guatemala (and Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica!). Here the celebrations last most of September. There's lots of processions of marching bands (actually most of the 'bands' are just drums and xylophones). Each school has a band (in fact as far as I can tell most of the school is involved in it) and it's an issue of school pride when they compete with other schools in long processions around their area. Yesterday when I saw a real procession, I realised that some of the bands are actually quite good -- which hadn't occurred to me, having listened to the 2 schools near my house practice every night (and more recently early mornings too) for the last 4 months. (I'd like to suggest that they keep practicing -- but please not near my house!!)

The other way that people celebrate Independence is with an 'Antorcha' - a kind of fun run - but with people taking it in turns to carry the 'antorcha' (think Olympic flame!). It seems like every school or business or club organises their own antorcha - so over the last couple of weeks, the roads are often held up as the traffic follows the antorcha. Often there's a bunch of people running behind the antorcha, and then a bus behind them allowing 'runners' to jump on and off the bus whenever they get tired.

And of course there's always firecrackers at dawn and bangers and fireworks in the evening!

Stride Placement Training Day

I've just come back from the training day that I ran for everyone involved in a Stride placement. Each Strider (volunteer for 6months -2 years) has a mentor, a host family and someone at their work placement who supervises their work. Today was a chance to get all those people together for the 9 Striders who will be arriving over the next month, to think about the culture shock that they might encounter and what we can do to help, and to pray for each other in our roles as well as for the Striders.

It was a really positive day - with lots of fun activities as well as discussion and prayer. And hope that it was useful for everyone that came.