Water Park

At the end of every year, NPH does a big activity for the kids and staff. They were a little worried that with all the financial problems this year, they wouldn't be able to afford to go anywhere, but at the end they decided that after all the stress and staff layoffs, a trip was exactly what everyone needed. Everyone was loaded up on buses and we all went to a water park in Esquintla, a town about an hour from Parramos. It was a really nice place, and despite the cold weather (and even colder water) we had a really great time!

The pools were really nice, they were virtually empty!

Gustavo looking slightly demonic, but happy

Linda having a good time

Edgar and his brother, two super sweet kids

The two cuties

Brayan striking a pose

We had a special snack for the kids: sugar cane! Sugar is one of the biggest crops here (after coffee and corn). The canes are ground down and the sap is refined to make granulated sugar. A popular snack here is for kids to cut pieces of cane and chew on the pulp inside. You cant eat it, you kind of just chew it and spit it out.

Here's a pile of canes

I've been wanting to try it out, so I was pretty excited to get the chance before I left.

I asked Julian to show me how to eat them since I was a little fuzzy on this. He told me I could just chew right through the bark. He has no poker face at all.

Here's me pathetically trying to peel my cane with a machete. The little kids were rocking it out with their machetes and I was just hacking into the side of mine repeatedly. I finally asked for help :/

They made short work of it

The taste test. Not too bad, kind of tasted like under-ripe watermelon. It felt like chewing on wet wood though, so that was kind of weird.

Then we had a ton of fun on the water slides. I was asked to take a hundred pictures of kids on here before I was able to create a diversion and escape. Here are some of the best

Alejandro

My buddy Julian

Gustavo, who went down backwards on his belly everytime.

Hannah was there too. Sadly this was her last day in Guatemala! After traveling around for months, she was finally ready to head back to Austria. We'll miss her a lot, but I'm glad she got to do something fun on her last day!