This purpose of this blog is to share my experiences while working and living in Antigua, Guatemala. Please enjoy!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

T-Minus 1 Month

Despite my lack of blogging for the past week, the last 48 hours of work has been somewhat of a productive whirlwind. Marie got here this past weekend, and getting to know each other has been really easy. We're now sharing a double room at the hostel and it's been nice to have someone else there to bounce around ideas with. She'll be helping me out with a lot of the work I have to do for Nest, including more site visits; she's also doing work for fair trade coffee cooperatives and is working on getting her Masters. We both had quite a few questions for Nest in terms of our work load, especially because I'm STILL waiting to have a conference with Max, La Casa, and Nest, so we put together a list of questions/things we needed to get clarified.

This morning we had an hour long conference call with Rebecca and Kathleen. We covered aspects about the loan process, guidelines for surveying and receiving testimonials from the women, basic information about the curriculum Nest teaches, and how we should go about doing different parts of our work plan - a production guide, a look book of products, information for marketing collateral, etc. From our talk, Marie and I both have a little bit more understanding of some of the specifics of our tasks at hand and ways to go about doing them...

Tuesday marked the start of the remaining month that I have left here in Guatemala - seemingly not much time considering the amount of work I feel like we have left to do. Marie and I figured we should visit another group Nest was interested in while we were still waiting for the conference with La Casa and remaining information from Nest. We decided on visiting the artisans of a group close to Rabinal, Flor de Algodón, on Thursday and another one close to Cobán called Ixbalam Ke on Friday. We're planning on coming back to Antigua on Saturday.

It's a little nerve wracking traveling to these places because we don't have addresses or anything of the cooperatives - both of our contacts at each group said they would meet us in the city and then take us to their communities - hopefully that works out. It is reassuring though knowing Marie is here with me and that we're both proficient enough in Spanish, otherwise I wouldn't do these trips alone! I'm crossing my fingers that it's not too dangerous and that our time traveling there is worthwhile. I'm sure I'll have much to say when I come back...

Next week we'd love to go back to Elmy's group at the lake, and after this conference with La Casa happens, we can go back out to San Pedro again and work with Max. All in due time anyway...Marie is leaving the 26th, and my flight out is July 7th. Still lots left to learn, do, and know. But, that's all for now - we're leaving around 6am to start our trip - wish us luck!

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