April 24, 2015

Today was a completely perfect day!!!! It was 25 students and 4 adults on a wonderful, education adventure.

We started the day by collecting the grade 9 ( third year Basico) students in Chuk Muk and trucking them to the boat launch in Santiago Atitlan.

We all piled into a boat for the 20 minute ride to the village of San Juan.

San Juan is an amazing village. It is spotlessly clean with the buildings covered with murals. It is a village that is economically prosperous not due to outside intervention but rather due to it’s own villagers and it’s mayor developing sustainable idea. These ideas do require tourists to purchase items like oil paintings, natural shampoos or organic cotton, natural dyed purses. However the village is so picturesque, the products are high quality and they have advertised on the internet and thus are a real success story. This village is everything that Chuk Muk is not and should possibly strive to emulate.

Our first stops in this adventure were at several of the cooperative galleries. The students were able to view many paintings in various styles: cubism, realism, impressionist, abstract and their local styles of birds eye andant’s eye view.

Not only did the students get to inspect numerous painting but several of the artists gave informative talks to the group.

Our next stop was at an organic herb garden. This cooperative used organic herbs to produce an abundance of products for sale. There were shampoos, teas and products to treat what ever ailed you. We were once again fortunate to have a wonderful garden tour.

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We then headed to an organic cotton, natural dye women’s cooperative.

The students learned all about working with raw cotton, many tried spinning the cotton, including myself, and it was far from easy.

We then were shown how to dye the cotton and learned about plants etc that are used to turn the raw cotton into vibrant colours.

The group then headed on a couple mile trek from San Juan to San Pedro along the lake. These 2 village could not be more different: San Juan -calm and serene, San Pedro- bustling and full of hippy tourists. In San Pedro is the University of Mayan Languages which specializes in Tz’utujil.

The students had an informative talk on the process of taking a spoken language and converting it into a written language. The students listened attentively to all the really interesting information. They particularly enjoyed when the director asked them their last names. Each student has 2 last names, one from their mom and one from their dad. The director then gave them a history of their last name whether it came from an area in Spain or was a Mayan last name.

The last part of this totally enjoyable day was the boat ride back to Santiago Atitlan and a 3 taco lunch for everyone. The day was perfect and the whole class wanted me to thank Mary Ellen Campbell for making this day possible.