Guatemala-Sunday

Woke up on Sunday and had brunch at the hotel. It was SO GOOD (yes, I have to shout). Well, okay, most of it was pretty bad but the tamales were awesome. The rest of the Immanuel group flew in from Chicago and landed around 7. They picked us up just over 45 minutes later. We started off on the trip to Gualan.
Driving through Guatemala was really, really interesting. There was evidence of incredible poverty: houses everywhere were made with scrap metal. There was also a lot of measures to keep people out. Alot of the shops had bars over them. Many of the larger houses had high walls with electrified barbed wire or glass shards embedded at the top.
Outside of the city, we passed through mountains and fields. Lots of crops including watermelons, cantelopes and soemthing that we're defining as honeydews. There were also lots of cows but I couldn't get a good picture. I really wanted to bring one back because they were so different.
For lunch, we stopped in a small town that I can't remember the name of. There were fifteen of us to feed for lunch. Then the two people stationed as missionaries joined us, then the pastor and his family. This poor restaurant was not prepared for us and lunch ended up being about three hours. Luckily, they had quite a stash of the local beer, Gallo (The rooster) and that kept our group pretty happy.
When we got to Gualan, we stopped off at the hotel, which was gorgeous, and then headed off to see our projects. The first stop were the two houses where the doctor and the dentist were going to be working. This was out in Los Limones. It was on the outskirts of town. Fairly rural, houses spread further apart. There must have been some sort of signal because within fifteen minutes of our arrival a whole slew of kids appeared. It's not like you see a lot of white people in this town, it's not exactly a tourist location, so we were like a circus show. It was pretty interesting.
Apparently the land titles in this area are not really clear. The government has sort of let people take portions of land but they haven't said that the land belongs to the people or not for sure. So, more or less, these people are squatting, buliding houses, putting in electricity, trying to cobble a life together but with the knowledge that the government could come in at any time and take their houses away.