We have arrived in Guatemala!

Friday, January 22, 2010

I can't imagine a better welcome to Guatemala than the beautiful sunshine that we had today. We arrived safely and processed through customs with ease in the Capital of Guatemala, Guatemala City. It was about 80 degrees when we arrived and the sun was shining! What a nice change from our Minnesota weather.

We easily linked up with the rest of our group and quickly found a connection to each other...we were all HUNGRY. So off to a Taco house we went. Not your ordinary Taco House. The Taco's are simple meat and cheese on small corn tortillas accompianied by all the fixings on the side. Yum! We washed them down with the traditional Guatemalan Drink called Horchata. Its a kind of cold sweet drink made from rice flour and lots of sugar spiced with cinnamon. Very refreshing and addictive.

After our light lunch we returned to our hotel to get settled and rest as most of us started our travel here very early this morning. Some took a dip in the beautiful pool in the hotel next to ours and others napped. We met again tonight for our formal first dinner together and our instructions for tomorrow as the real part of the trip begins at 7am.

Tomorrow we will be heading to the Slums of Guatemala City. They are 17 slums connected together and are among the worst of Guatemala. We are told we will have armed escorts and that we should take nothing but a copy of our passports with us. It saddens me to realize the depth of poverty that so many live in. I know from visiting the Slums in Honduras that it is a very difficult thing to digest and as it should will weigh heavily on all of us. We often forget how priveledged we are as Americans. The answers and the solution don't come easy and that is why we are here. We will be learning throughout the next 10 days about the condition of housing in Guatemala, the difficulty in Land Tenure and Land Security Issues and how difficult it is to prove who owns the land and who has rights to the land.

We will keep you posted on our learning and share the stories of our travels. Check back again tomorrow to read what we learned when visiting the families living in the slums and the issues they face everyday.