Today I arrived in Guatemala City (oh, sweet, sweet city) to begin my week long educational solidarity delegation visiting some rural communities here in Guatemala affected by mining and the foreign companies that operation them. I am traveling with a group from the Canadian NGO "Rights Action," which is heavily involved in land and mining issues in Central America. The title of this trip is "Mining VS. Community Development, Rights & Environmental Justice." Over the next week or so I will be posting the things I learn, stuff I see, etc etc.

This past week I have been trying to get all (or at least most) of my school work out of the way to participate in this delegation without feeling like I have other things to do. I wasn't entirely successful, but I'll get by.

This afternoon I grabbed a bus out of Xela down to Guate, got off at Tikal Futura then hopped the Peace Corps-illegal bus, the infamous "40R," to another part of the city and caught the 101 into Zone 1 where I met my group. So... city buses in Guatemala are not the epitome of safety but they cost 1Q aka 12 cents and they are FUN. Of course they are fun. You never know who's gonna get on (well, I guess part of the scary part) and it's like a tour of the city, through places you'd probably never actually walk. Not to sound overly confident and reckless, but I've been doing this for years and, although anything can happen at anytime, I'm pretty good about staying safe. Okay, not to scare all you loved ones out there. Well when I got off the 101 I followed a group of women to keep walking toward the central park, but there was a crime scene in the way. Seriously. So I broke off (they stopped to check it ALL out) and walked the 6-7 blocks to the hotel. During my walk I was reminded by smell, sight, sound all the awesome things about this crazy place.

I found the hotel where my group is gathering. The delegation is, like, 6 people and the leader-guy who is a lawyer and activist. Everyone is Canadian. Luckily, I'm from Seattle and have been to Vancouver like 5 times. Hahaaa. Anyway, the leader has the awesomest Canadian accent. Tomorrow we are receiving an orientation of sorts here in the capital all day. I'm a little impatient sometimes and would love to breeze over the "welcome to Guatemala" bit because, you know, I've been welcomed. But I know there will be lots of really important things to learn and stuff I've never really taken the time to think about. Concepcion Huista has been affected by foreign mining companies within the last few years including this picture of everyone in one of the villages voting NO to the mining. Their opinion means nothing to the government, as documented in the doc Sipakapa No! and recent news articles, but their voice is hugely important.

Lately I've seen a few very funny and/or beautiful things. I saw a 3 year old kid dance to music who thought no one was watching doing the up down motions the song was signing (arriba! abajo! repeatedly...), an old couple hold hands and cross the street (may sound cliche but this kind of love ya never see around here), and 2 kids slept on my shoulder the whole way from Xela to Guate this afternoon. Plus other things... that make me laugh... which is good because sometimes it can be tough here. I look forward to starting my summer with Dragons, having a 'gang' to roam around Guatemala with and some English speaking comp@s. But in the meantime, it's just me, myself and I...oh and a van full of Canadians.