I had a first day unlike any other first day of school…it was absolutely amazing. My teacher said he had to go finish a project and if I wanted to come along, so we took a chicken bus (old school buses from the U.S. that seat 3 people to a seat even though they are made for 2 child butts) for an hour, hiked up a mountain and ended up in an incredibly rural Mayan village.
He has been organizing a project to build stoves in this community, because many of the families do not have stoves and instead they cook over open fire inside their shacks, the result being that many of the children have a lot of respiratory infections, its dangerous (I saw a little boy with both feet so badly burned, it was heartbreaking) and its bad for the environment. We met up with a couple of medical students and I spent the morning mixing cement and building a base for this oven. The children were so absolutely sweet and the mom was so incredibly thankful that she insisted on making us fresh tortillas, stewed tomatoes and an egg omelet. It was an incredible experience and I was so thankful to be apart of it as it ws a good reminder for me of why I am going back to school and how lucky I have things.
I didn't have my camera on me, but some others took pictures, so I will post soon.
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