A Whirlwind...

The past few weeks have seemed like a whirlwind, with planning to visit the States and finding out on our way out of the Valley that Kris's grandmother had just passed away and therefore scheduling our flight for two days earlier, then traveling from Wilmington to Asheville and on to Nashville (note: rental cars one-way are NOT cheap!), arriving back into the Valley this past Tuesday only to find out that we were going to return back to Guatemala City the coming weekend for a conference on mapping social networks within communities, and finally heading to Antigua after the conference to enjoy a day of Halloween festivities with the Colvetts (thanks to them for our minnie mouse ears and skeleton glasses, for a Mario pinata, for Hitchcock movies, for roasted marshmallows, and for a game of firepants, i.e. hide-and-seek in the dark).

All of these things don't include our hiking/running around to all of the villages in the valley for meetings about starting secondary schools, as our deadline is quickly approaching. One thing that we are learning is that it is very hard to get a list of 25-30 students who want to continue their education beyond the sixth graded. We have some assumptions of why this might be such a difficult objective to meet, but we still have hope that some of the communities towards the east and south of the valley will come through with their list. We are trying to not let this discourage us, but are taking it in as a lesson in culture. We're not exactly sure how to promote this opportunity to further their education, but we will continue to try new things in hopes that some will choose to continue their studies. We have lots to learn...

On another note, the buildings at BaseCamp are coming along very well, and it looks like we may be able to move into our new "houses" as early as January (not that Kris and I don't enjoy listening to everyone turn over on their air mattresses during the night or periodically seeing Kevin Colvett mosey around sleepily in his boxers in the morning ;), but it will be nice to have a little more privacy and personal space). Thankfully, it seems as though the rainy season is beginning to let up some (knock on wood), as we had several clear-skyed, gorgeous days this past week. We have also had some clear nights, with the sky full of stars, including Jupiter shining brightly and the milky way also shining through. We never cease to be amazed at the beauty of the creation with which God surrounds us.