Service week.

These past 3 weeks have gone by incredibly fast, and I have no idea where they went. Last week me and 3 other students, Viktor, Jordan, and Carissa, went to "hell". Not literally...  we had a service project in a town called Esquintla, which is incredibly ugly, and incredibly hot- hence the name "hell". There we worked in a school called Mana De Vida. This school was started by a couple who live in Esquintla, who wanted to help out the kids who aren't able to go to school. The school runs from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., and includes breakfast and lunch, which is what we helped out with most of the week. The days there were incredibly long and tiring, but it was a blessing to work with those kids, and to see them be so happy, especially when they have so little. I could really tell that they loved school, and it was probably the best part of their day. So everyday we would wake up at 7:20, to be at the school by 8:00. We ate breakfast at the school with the kids, and then would start helping out in the kitchen or in the classrooms. If we had a bit of time where we werent working, we would stand and watch the kids scream songs they learned at school. At that time, we would always have kids wanting to sit on our laps, or hold our hands. They absolutely loved having us at the school - they would call me "miss courtney" or i guess it was more like "miss cony", because they have such a difficult time with my name. It was an incredible week of service for me, and putting the kids before myself, and trying to keep a good attitude when it could have been so easy to be angry all day. To actually think about how we made a little bit of a difference in those kids lives just by being there to hold their hand, or smile at - since I could hardly understand a word of spanish they spoke to me, if you can even call that spanish... it was all mumbles and spanish slang.

Our last week of spanish was really good, played a lot of games, and laughed a lot. It went by incredibly fast, and I honestly dont even know what I all did last week. But now its Semana Santa, we woke up at 2:30 this morning to walk into Antigua from San Juan, to look at all the alfombras and processions going on. I am exhausted and ready for a nap.

So we have a little over one week left here in Guatemala, and its a really bittersweet feeling. I'm really excited to come home to regular life, but i'm also sad to leave this beautiful country. Its been an amazing 3 months.