Since I have been in Xela for a few days now, I have realized a few things:

1) I miss mountains:

2) My Spanish is no where near as good as I thought (making for some very interesting mealtime conversations with my host family)...

3) The people of Guatemala are so NICE!

I can't wait to start working in the clinic. Today we went out to a local village, Llana del Pinal, and we built a "safe stove" in a poor family's home. The extent of the poverty we saw outside of the city was staggering... Pop Wuj has a program that provides safe stoves to families that are currently cooking over open flames.  Not only is this bad for their health, and the health of their children, but it is inefficient and they often us plastic for fuel which is toxic...

Long story short, we learned how to build a stove! The best part? I got to use a machete to cut concrete cinder blocks in half. :-)

Here are some pics:

Hopefully my next post will be pics of a sunrise from the top of a volcano!  Woohoo!