This week I've had the pleasure of working with a group of students from Michigan State University, who are here on an Alternative Spring Break trip. They all go to the same church, which organizes various mission trips every year. The first trip to Guatemala was organized by a volunteer in a site near me three years ago, and as volunteers have come and gone, organizing the trip got passed to me this year.The finished product!
At first I wasn't sure what to do with them, but quickly settled on the idea of doing a world map project in one of the elementary schools that I work in. Rural schools in Guatemala are severely lacking in resources: there are no maps to be seen in the classrooms. And most Guatemalans can't even find Guatemala on a world map! So I thought this would be a great way to leave something lasting at the school that will help with the education of students for many years to come. It's in a prime location, right near a main road, so everybody in the community as well as passersby can easily see it. Also, the two teachers at the school (Julio and Hilda) have been very supportive of my work in the school, and I thought they would be easy to work with. And sure enough! Julio gave me the keys last week when I came to work with the kids, and assured me that he would have the school hooked up to electricity when I needed it.
Saturday Desiree (a volunteer who works nearby) came to help me paint the background. We scrubbed the wall with soapy water to get rid of the muddy soccer ball prints, then marked out a rectangle with masking tape. Unfortunately, the directions I was following were WAY off on the amount of paint we needed. We used up all of the white and half of the blue to paint that I had bought just to paint the ocean...and still left some parts a little bare.Sunday evening the Michigan State crew arrived, about six hours late and with no luggage! (Luckily
they were able to get their luggage the next day
with no trouble). After dinner in Parque Pino Dulce, I took them to the school, just a five minute walk away, to trace the map. With my laptop and a projector that I borrowed from another teacher, I thought we were all set to go. (Getting the projector the day before had been a small ordeal, requiring me to chase after not one but two buses!) But the electricity wasn't on when we got to the school. I ran over to the house of the neighbor who was supposed to hook us up for the night, to find the house dark. I hated to wake anybody up, but it was only 8pm, so I yelled "Buenas noches" a couple of times and soon had don Abel up and connecting the school to his 
electricity. Phew! In about an hour we had the whole map traced!Monday morning it was up early to start painting. After getting the students started with yellow and red paint, I headed to town to buy more paint. By the end of the day all of the countries were painted in, plus a white border! Amazing!
Tuesday was more of the same, but even more fun because it was Carnival, or Fat Tuesday. Guatemalan children like to celebrate by cracking eggshells filled with confetti over each others' heads, and the kids at the school were eager to
share this custom with us:) We got the kids involved by tracing and painting in their hands in a border across the top of the map. It required a bit of maneuvering to get the kids up that high, but it turned out great! We also numbered the countries 1-186, added the name of the school, the year, a Michigan State symbol, and the Peace Corps symbol...and voila! Mission accomplished! As for the accuracy of the map...there may have been a few Pacific islands omitted, but hey, we did the best we could with out limited resources:) The maps that we were using to label the countries weren't all that great (too small and a bit blurry), which made it a bit hard to label 
everything. I think that in the end it turned out pretty awesome! What do you think? A big shout out to the MSU students who made this world map a reality! Mil gracias!
Ariel and I trying to label the countries...
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