Hey Nourish!

With week one down in Panajachel, Guatemala the Virginia Tech and Vanderbilt crew have had a total blast. We arrived last Monday at the Guatemala City airport and took a shuttle to Panjachel stopping for some excellent food on the way down. After the three hour drive full of beautiful sites of the mountains and lake Aitilan, we arrived at Mayan Families. Upon our arrival we were greeted with the many happy faces of the Mayan Families staff. They took us on a tour of the premise and we completed an orientation. Throughout our first week we worked closely with the preschool education and health departments. The next two days on the job we completed height and weight measurements of the preschoolers while also providing them with vitamin packets. We did this at the Panajachel and San Andres preschool locations. We then worked on entering the height snd weight measurement data into the Mayan Families database. The purpose of this is to keep track of the students that are in need or malnourished and asses their overall health. We also have been completing research projects including a Prezi for incoming interns on the history of Guatemala and also looking into women’s health of Central America. Another task that we have been working on is translating the letters of students that they are writing to their sponsors which have been very fun to read! My favorite part of the whole first week was the performance put on by the students and their mothers celebrating mothers day. This included each age group of kids in the pre school to do a their own special dance for the mothers and Mayan Families workers. There were also lots of games and raffles included in the fun as well. All in all it has been a great first week here in Guatemala and have all bonded with each other very well!