first days

The smell of Guatemala gets me every time I cross the airport gates, it's a scent of gasoline, burnt and grass kind of. Meeting up with the group was very fun, it's the first time I travel with a small group and it feels like I'm just taking a journey with three close girlfriends. We spent the first night, wednesday night, in Antigua, the very beautiful old capital that hosts a plethora of tourists year round, and got our itineraries for the next couple of days. On thursday we took a shuttle, where I met a french couple and a bunch of israeli girls, and traveled to San Marcos La Laguna, a village right on the Lago Atitlan that is known for its spiritual atmosphere. Alot of funky travelers come here looking for a peaceful place to meditate, do yoga, get massages, or do silence retreats. We came across an old hippie man selling hundreds of different crystals he finds and buys from mountains all over the world, and an argentine artisan who's been biking from Ushuaia selling his jewelry along the way and is hoping to make it to Alaska. We are staying in the Hostal del Lago which is right on the lake and has an extremely beautiful view on the three volcanoes on the lake. The people here are from all over and are really friendly and relaxed. Our orientation talk yesterday was about safety, cultural do's and don'ts, rules, etc. Nothing very new, but life will be different being in an urban place and being stationery.
Today we went to volunteer for the day at an amazing organization called La Cambalacha. We playedand helped organize games with the older kids in the morning, did art and game activities with the younger children in the afternoon, and spoke with the founder, Gaby. She is from Guatemala City and would go to the lake on the weekends, as all young people from the city do she said, and loved it. She is a dancer/choreographer and wanted to raise her child outside the city, so she bought land and moved to San Marcos and built a dance studio with the idea to host artists in passing. But as she volunteered at local schools she saw that kids had never danced, never did art, and were extremely shy and not confident. So she decided to start this program with a couple of kids, at first it was only dance and she saw girls didn't know how to move and couldn't because of the traditional clothing they wear-their sleeves don't allow them to raise their arms up high, their skirts are tied really tight since a very young age, and they carry babies on their backs also at a very young age so many had scoliosis. The program developed from an idea to teach art, both creative and performing (dance, music and circus), to a project where art is used as a vehicle to build self confidence, creativity, team building, and leadership. They have a youth leadership program in which they give a scholarship of about 100$ a month to kids that are chosen because they are really interested in the program and help organize activities for the younger kids.  The scholarship program is also a way to keep the kids in the program because when they generally start working in the mornings at age 12 and go to school in the afternoons-many families can't afford for their child not to be working but the 100$ a month equals the amount they would be making. She was very humbled by creating this project. She thought everyone would love her, as she was coming in to help, but she found there was a huge cultural barrier: because of the conservative nature of some people and the influence of the evangelicals, many thought teaching dance and movement and drawing to kids was the devil's work- it actually takes courage for the kids to come to La Cambalacha because they face mockery and disdain from some people in school and in the community. Her project has been running for 7 or 8 years and is really beautiful and inspiring. She gave us words of wisdom to remember while doing our internships, which is to have patience, listen, and be ready to not do things the way we think is right or the way we've always done them because the cultural difference is so huge.
Here is the website of the project: http://www.lacambalacha.org/