Here it is – the last day of our trip. It’s crazy to think that these are our last views of the beauty of Guatemala. Today, Matt and I woke up early and took a walk down to Lake Atitlan. The view of the volcanoes was the clearest it had ever been, a perfect way to start our send off. After getting some ~sweet~ pics that will most likely end up on Instagram we headed back to the hotel to eat the most important meal of the day.
Soon, we were on our way to Peña Blanca to do the second iteration of the Energy STEM project. Who would have guessed that children trying to blow up balloons would be so cute? The lesson went great for both the older and younger classes and was an overall success. We waved goodbye to the preschool and headed over to Mayan Families to pick up Wendy for our trip to San Antonio.
The car ride over to San Antonio was the most fun one yet; we played Green Glass Door, Around the World, and Black Magic. It took almost the whole trip for some of us to get the rules to the games, and Rachel took all day to figure out Black Magic (to be fair, it was kind of hard). At first glance, San Antonio is a closely packed, colorful town. According to Natalia, two Dutch men got the whole community to paint their homes and businesses in bright colors and fun patterns.
While in San Antonio we installed two Ecofilters in separate homes. The first home was the smallest we had encountered on the entire trip and it was shocking to think about a family living in it. Down by the water we took a couple of OHIO pics and then headed over to a local pottery shop to pick out some pieces to bring home.
We ended the day by heading over to the Mayan Families Office to present our findings from our interviews & data collection as well as to give our recommendations for the future. They treated us to a delicious meal of tostados and pepián before sending us off with lots of hugs and heartfelt goodbyes.
This week has flown by at an incredible speed and I am going to miss this group of people and this country so much. I’ve been blessed to have had an experience change my perspective on myself and my actions as profoundly as this, and I sincerely plan on coming back to Guatemala – my journey here hasn’t ended yet.