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Community Service Trip to Parramos, Guatemala
Parramos, Guatemala
July 6-July 15
Day Seven: Thursday, July 12
Parramos, Guatemala
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1. Kristin, Pam, Margaret and Elaine get ready to walk to the school. |
2. Some of the folks . . . |
3. . . . we met on our walk . . . |
4. . . . within a quarter mile. |
5. Part of the Parramos Park beautification program. |
6. It was a clear morning and the volcano was in full view. |
7. First stop in the morning, was the Internet Cafe in Parramos, but it was a bad day, it opened late and the connection was to unstable. I ultimately ended up going to an tourist internet cafe in Antigua were the line was much faster and more reliable. |
8. Jeff and an aspiring young musican. |
9. Spreading water helps keep the dust in the schoolyard down. |
10. Our first class in the morning was the fifth grade. |
11. Margaret and Kathyrn split the class into high and low parts. |
12. This is the village library in Parramos, in one room in the Municipal Building. The librarian, shown here with Hana, says they get approximately 50 kids a day. |
13. The interior courtyard of the Municipal Building. |
14. The Mayor of Parramos meets with Hana and a delegation from Princeton, including Jonathan, Glenn and Brita. Hana explains the the people of Princeton have offered funds to purchase a library table and chairs for the library. |
15. Brita presents a collection of spanish language childrens books to the librarian. |
16. Glen presents a spanish language bible for the library collection. |
17. Between classes, Margaret makes friends in the school yard. |
18. Our second class of the day, the sixth graders. |
19. The sixth grade enjoins Margaret's warm up exercises. |
20. Kathryn and friend. |
21. The fourth grade was our third class of the morning, and there were 39 in the class. |
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22. Some horsing around knows no borders. |
23. Most of the morning was spent decorating for the party that the school and the parents were planning this afternoon in our honor. |
24. Four fourth graders model their American Boy Choir shirts. |
25. Margaret charms a very young lady, or is it the other way aound. |
26. The back drop for the impromtu stage that was set up for the fiesta. |
27. After our third class I took the chicken bus into Antigua. My destination was the internet cafe at the Mono Loco (The Crazy Monkey) a restaurant/bar popular with tourists. This is Jonathan, manager of the internet cafe, who was very helpful in getting the last several days posted. |
28. The ruins of a seventeenth century Spanish colonial church in Antigua. |
29. The pet store in Antigua was for the birds. |
30. The market in Antigua. |
31. The bus terminal in Antigua. |
32. The Volcano de Agua looms over Antigua. It was another clear and moderate day, dry and in the high seventies and low eighties. |
33. I got back to Parramos in time for the beginning of the fiesta in our honor. |
 On Thursday morning the medical field team left for the village of Paraxaj. Here are some photos they brought back. |
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34. Kristin and Laura provided activities for the children while they were waiting to see the doctors. |
35. The field clinic was set up in the village church, and Elaine does her examination right on the pews. |
36. Our student nurses provided basic nutritional information to the waiting mothers. |
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| 37-39. We had collected nearly a hundred used Beanie Babies® and brought them to Guatemala to give to the children as a reward for seeing the doctors. We could have easily used three as many. | ||
40. Some of the older children read through the Spanish language childrens books we brought, and ultimately left behind for the village. |
41. Allison and her friend Gaby. |
42. Kristin plays with the patients. |
43. Gaby never ran out of energy and her favorite thing to do was be swung around and around again. |
44. "Tastes like chicken." |
45. Mother and child wait to see the doctors. |
| Back in Parramos, at the Valley of the Pines School, the celebrations begin. | ||
46. Louise, Heather and Pam watch the proceedings. |
47. Don Jorge, the school principal, was the Master of Ceremonies. |
48. We began with a parade of the Guatemalan, U.S. and the school flags. |
49. The children sang the Guatemalan national anthem and then several members of the music team got on stage and sang the Star Spangled Banner. |
50. Here the seventh graders do a traditional folkloric dance commemorating the arrival of blacks in Guatemala in the seventeenth century. They performed in blackface. |
51. The youngest participants, from Kinder, do a Guatemalan folk dance in costume. |
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| 52-54. There were representative acts from all ages in the school. All the classes at the school participated, some with songs, some with dances, there was even a comic parody of a popular Guatemalan TV game show. | ||
55. Traditional Guatemalan folk dance. |
56. The mothers prepared a traditional Guatemalan lunch for us, corn soup, and roast corn, served with salt and limes, chucuchite (chicken wraped in corn meal) and platanans. It was all excellent! |
57. The music teacher leads the class recorder chorus in an Andean folk tune. |
58. A traditional folk dance that involved incense burners. |
59. After the songs and dances Dona Brenda, the President of the School Board of Directors, takes the mic to thank the Princeton (and Boston, Maine & California) team, and to make some presentations. |
60. Emily is commended for her work with scholarships for students, which doesn't end in Parramos, but continues as she goes through the photos and paperwork and finds host familes to support the program. |
61. David is presented with a banner with photos of various classes, with an inscription in Kaqchiquel and in Spanish: May God bless you abundantly." |
62. Allison tries to sneak a souvenir home. |
63. Our translators enjoy the celebration. |
63. Our neighbors across the road at the Hotel had a prominent frijol plantation. |
64. Before dinner we take a ride on the hotel horses, Kathryn picks out a palamino. |
65. The horses followed a well worn trail through the coffe plantation. |
66. After helping catch and saddle two of the horses, I decided I deserved a ride as well, my horse was Princess, the largest at 16.5 hands. |
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