Hi My Name is Ellis

Hi my name is Ellis. I am 4. My mom is going to help me write this. We are at Guatemala. My favourite thing so far is going up the volcano on the horse.

I go to school here. I color, learn Spanish and eat snack. Elias is in my class and there are other kids too that I don’t know their name. They all wear the same outfit. They wear black shorts, shoes and a white shirt. They speak Spanish. My teacher’s name is Miss Sessy. The kids in my class are nice and the teacher is nice. I go school for a long time but I come home for lunch and stay home the rest of the day.

On the weekend we went to visit some new people that we met at the beach. They have been helping the poor in Magdalena and Buenos Vista, Guatemala for a year and a half. It was a short way away from here. We looked at houses like ones we might build in El Salvador and met some families waiting for a house. (note from Mom. Check out http://www.deepstreamglobal.com/ and http://www.streamthoughts.blogspot.com/ and
 www.deepstreamguatemala.com to read more on the family's work in Guatemala)
We really liked them and they had 5 kids for us to play with. When we were walking through the neighbourhoods we rode crushed plastic pop bottles down the hill.
It was fun until a kid bumped into me.

We also had Winnie’s birthday. We gave her presents. We went to McDonalds to have supper. It is pretty much the same as it is at home.

We went to get Winnie an outfit. (A traditional Mayan outfit that all the Mayan women and girls wear here)

Today we went to a cooking class at my Mom’s school. We made Torrejas, they are kind of like cream filled donuts. I had fun cooking and even more fun eating!

I like it here. I miss my friends though. I like sleeping with Elias.
Ellis

I am Winnie

This is Winnie writing. My birthday is coming really soon and I turning 6! I am the second oldest. I want to tell you a little bit about what is around Guatemala. I got to climb a volcano.
 The name of the Volcano is Pacaya. We got to take a van there, it took about an hour and a half. When we first got there we climbed and climbed and climbed.x
I felt really tired, so we took a (caballo) horse for some of the time and all the kids took turns riding it.

I went on it with my friend Isaiah and then Anna. It took a long time to get to the top, it was really hard to take some steps. We were shown a leaf that you can use for toilet paper or a cloth because it soaks up water and is soft.  There was an eruption there in May so there were lots of black rocks to walk on. I got to take one piece of lava home. When we got to the highest we could go, we found a big pit of lava. We could not go in it, otherwise we would get burned.

So instead we roasted marshmallows and cheese over the hole. Then I asked my mommy why we couldn’t have roasted cheese at home!! She said, because we don’t have a volcano in our living room. It tasted awesome.
We got to go in a cave that was so hot, it was really cool! We saw some people right near the very top. On the way down we got lots of rocks in our shoes. It took the whole day and it was night when we got home.


Another fun thing we did last week was we had a movie night and watched Nanny McPhee 2.


After school one day, we went to a Mayan village called San Antonio Del Agua Caliente and saw lots of very colourful fabric.
The people there showed us a wedding, and showed us how to make the fancy fabric, we helped spin the yarn. Then after we made tortillas from flour.
 I got to make my very own and cook it on the stove.
Then we got to taste tortillas and special soup called Pepian. A soup made only in Guatemala. It was spicy and good.
I really like it here, one day we took a horse and carriage for a ride. We got some drinks, and I had lots of fun. Usually here we walk everywhere!! I am learning lots of Spanish with help from my teacher, Jessica.

Write me an e-mail at csmcalli@gmail.com

Love winnie (with help from my mom.)

Hi My Name is Kade

I am from Okotoks, Canada. In Canada I live on a farm with sheep, a goat, dogs, and cats. I am eight years old. We are moving to El Salvador for a year. We are living in Guatemala right now.

Last week I went to a macadamia nut farm. Macadamia nuts grow on big trees with flowers on them.

I learned that a macadamia nut has two shells, and it needs a lot of different machines to sort the nuts and break open the shells. Sometimes they put the macadamia nuts inside white or dark chocolate. I really liked the way that they tasted.

 Last weekend we went to the beach for my birthday. There were huge waves there. The beach was right in front of our hotel. The sand was black and the weather was steaming hot. We made a sea turtle from the sand on the beach. One night we released baby turtles into the ocean. The baby turtles were black.

We had a turtle race to see which one would get to the ocean first. The baby turtles were black The night we stayed at the hotel we found two scorpions in our hotel room. I was a bit frightened because I didn’t know that they weren’t poisonous to people

Each day I am going to school. Right now I’m learning verbs in Spanish. I have a private teacher, and her name is Soledad. Sometimes I go places with my teacher like the photocopy store, the snack store, and the park. School starts at 8 in the morning and ends at 12 o’clock. I really like my school.

We are living at a house in Guatemala. The house belongs to a lady named Senora Lorena. She lives here with her mom, her daughter Anna, and her grandson Nicolas. We also came down here with my friends named Ben, Isaiah, Annah, Elias, Trent, and Kerrie-Lynn. The house is very big and fabulous.
Thank you to everyone that sent a special birthday card or email.