Once my parents gave me the okay-go to take a gap year, I knew right away that I wanted to end up volunteering somewhere in Latin America. It was just a matter of choosing what country. My family helped me research and evaluate ideal settings and projects. We talked to different people to get different perspectives and were constantly adding to our collection of possible destinations. There was a point when our data had us looking at Guatemala, a country that didn't even make my original top five locations. However, it had come up often enough that we decided it was worth a shot to keep our minds open. It wasn't long before we realized that Antigua, Guatemala was it.
So here I am, living in an ancient city of La Corazon del Mundo Maya for the next couple of months. It's beautiful here. It's colorful here. It's lively here. It's friendly here. It's different here. For those of you who didn't know, Guatemala borders Mexico. I'm only about a 5 hour flight from home and the time difference is only -1 hour because of daylight savings time.
I'm volunteering here through an organization called Maximo Nivel, which I found through New Zealand's volunteer organization IVHQ. Kudos to both of them for putting together such seamless project placements. Here I'll be teaching English, a cooking class, and an arts & crafts class at an after-school reinforcement center called T.E.S.S.
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