Thrusday night

My computer is not too happy right now that it won't let me upload photos. Well, I will keep trying.

Today is Friday, which means we have a soccer practice again. However, what I want to write about is what I saw last night. On the way back from a church with my close family, I saw a bunch of police cars and people on the street. According to what they explained to me was that gang members took money from a taxi driver and killed him. Crime rate in Guatemala is very high as you can imagine, and it is getting worse as Mexico is fighting a drug war over there. A lot of drug business is coming down to Guatemala and Salvador. Also they explained to me that about 90% of the times, criminals will not be caught, which leads to more crimes due to that fact that there are no jobs and people are suffering. The interesting fact here I observed is that women can find jobs easier than men because women tend to be the one who are taking care of children, which means having a job is very important to them. Alcoholism among men is a big issue here. I see a lot of men sleeping on the street drunk even it is raining.  I think lack of jobs among men leads to more serious alcoholism. 

Well, I have to go and see the kids!

English class!

It took me a while to find out how to add a new post, in fact 2 days to find out...

Anyway I did the English class for the first time on Tuesday this week with 4 kids.  As an elementary school teacher, it was a bit surprising that some of the children, who are 11-12 years old, still have difficulty writing.  Knowing most of children experience interruption of education in Guatemala, I guess it is understandable. There is a girl who is 12 years old in 3^rd grade 11 years old boy in 1^st grade.  Many children drop out of school to help their family financially of course.  It was really fund thought.  We ate lunch together, did the lesson for 45 min, and went to a park nearby.  It will be an every Tuesday event.  I am excited!

In next posting, I will try to put the photos of the kids!

My first posting!!

Hi all!

So this is what blogging is about.  This is my first blog post, and I have no idea if I am doing this right.

 In a way, this class is giving me a wonderful opportunity for writing about summer in Guatemala.  This entire summer, I will be in Antigua, Guatemala because I have a tiny project called "Kick Start" that I started with a local person a year ago.  There are so many children who don't go to school and work all day on a street selling whatever they can sell.  These children have a lot of problems at home with abuse, and alcoholism, and so on.  So we started a group for those children to come and play soccer for 3 hours once a week. The person who I work with used to be a professional soccer player.  I will start teaching English to them today. Boys usually just want to play, but I hope sister or cousins of these boys will come to learn a bit of English!