Around Antigua

Well, I hadn´t planned on waiting for three weeks to start this, but life has been busy and rather challenging.

I´ve done quite a bit of travelling outside of Antigua, I´ve decided to start with a snapshot of my life in Antigua in the last 3 weeks. This is the door to the house where I live. As you can see, they sell cheese as well, so the door bell rings quite a bit.

And behind the door is not the house, but a driveway with entrances for few other smaller houses and the house I´m in at the end.

My room is actually outside the main house, above it on a second floor patio.

And is the view from outside my room, many mornings we can see Volcan Fuego smoking in the distance. Apparently a few times a year it explodes and that lava can be seem from Antigua a night as a bright red glowing snake down the mountain.

This is the school where I´ve been studying spanish. As you can see it is open air with lots of plants.

The school has biblio-buses that are one of its big projects. The school is a nonprofit organization and they have 2 buses right now that go to 2 different small towns each day as mobil libraries as the schools and towns do not have libraries. Each time they arrive, the kids are extremely excited.

Antigua is a strange mix of arcitecture - one presentation described it as colonial, spanish, moorish, earthquake baroque. The town has had lots of destruction, from people, multiple earthquakes, climate, and neglect. The street are cobblestone, as are many sidewalks. There are many ruined churchs and monasteries. There are fountains all around the town and numerous stone tanques around town for people to wash clothes. And always prominent is one of the 3 volcanos that surround the town.

Above the town is a cross with a good view of the town and Volcan Agua in the background.