Mi muñequita
How cute is she? When we first got to our Spanish school, they had hidden a little doll for each person with our names on them and we had to look for them. I love mine! She is dressed in an outfit to resemble the traditional outfits of indigenous women here.
So far Spanish class is great! At the school here, we learn one on one with a teacher. For me it´s been very helpful because we can focus just on the areas where I need the most help.
The view from Cerro de la Cruz
Oh! Here´s a picture from my first full day here. We walked up to the Cerro de la Cruz, a hill that overlooks the city. What a great view! I love looking up to see the volcano. The weather here changes very quickly, so in the same day you can see the volcano clearly or completely enshrouded in clouds. I like it in the clouds because it looks mysterious.
camino de cafe
Uh oh, my time is almost up in the internet cafe. They close early! But first a little about the Centro Cultural La Azotea, where we went today. It´s a coffee plantation that also has a coffee museum and a museum of Mayan music.
The coffee tour was really interesting! I don´t have time to share all of it here, but mostly I learned that growing coffee is really hard work, and several steps are still done by hand, like harvesting the coffee beans. So remember the next time you drink a cup of coffee that someone somewhere picked all the beans to make that happen. We also learned about fair trade coffee, which really does make a huge difference in how much the local workers are paid. So once again, if you can afford the few extra dollars for fair trade, do it. I´m going to commit to buying fair trade coffee when I get home.
One more interesting thing is that the coffee here is shade grown, meaning that the coffee plants grow underneath larger shade trees. You can see in the photo the shorter coffee plants and larger trees, some of which are avocado trees.
mayan whistles
And finally, before I go, some whistles from the music museum!
