Hello everyone. Had a busy few weeks and havent seemed to manage to find the time to write on here... sorry Uncle Keith. Ive been working at the school alot and now that I have my own class I have to do everything for them. Im really enjoying working with the kids but then again they are little shits. Thankfully so far I have managed to keep my temper with them, and hopefully wont lose it in the near future! But for 99% of the time its really good. On the weekend I went up to the largest market in Central America, its called Chichichastenango or something like that. It was an amazing market and it was huge. I had to haggle but I was really bad at it, and cant help but think that I could have gotten things for alot cheaper. I bought a bag but accidently said the number wrong in spanish so I think that I made that womans day. I had to pay 30 more quetzals than she originally asked for!

This weekend I am going to climb Acatenango volcano which is the third highest volcano in Guatemala.. cant really figure out if i am looking forward to it yet or not! But I suppose that it will be good training for my bike challenge in a few weeks time. Speaking of a bike challenge if anyone would like to sponser me, I would be eternally grateful. Im cycling 205km in 5 days from Antigua Guatemala to Copan Honduras. All of the information is here:

www.justgiving.com/Sophie-Standen

I will update after the weekend and let you know if I am still alive after acatenango.

P.s Dad I sent you an email on skype, but I dont know if you got it... Let me know what you are doing for your birthday so that hopefully I can speak to you xx

Hello all. Had a really busy few weeks. Been teaching and lesson planning constantly and havent had much time to get on the computer. Last weekend I went to lake Atitlan for an adventure trip with other gvi volunteers. I had an absolutely amazing time. We left Antigua early on saturday morning and the drove to roughly 35km away from lake atitlan. We then mountain biked all the way down to lake atitlan with views of stunning mountain and lake scenery. The roads were incredibly bad, my bike was incredibly awful, the roads were very steep and I was going way too fast. Therefore, I almost had a few near death experiences with some very large holes. Got down to Lake Atitlan after cycling through a few villages and a market place and the we caught a boat across the lake to our hotel. The lake is incredibly huge and incredibly beautiful as it is surrounded by volcanoes and mountains and the water is incredibly blue. We swam in the water for a while, and then went back to the hotel to have some food. The next morning we kayaked for 3 hours across the lake, jumped off a few cliffs and then hiked back to the hotel. It was an amazing trip however i did get incredibly sunburnt. All this week I have been teaching and it has been good fun but it has been a long week. Feeling a bit messed around by gvi again as now i am teaching a different class on monday. This is really annoying as over the past 3 weeks I have spent alot of effort trying to get to know each child´s individual strengths and weakneses and now on monday i feel like i have to start over again. Gvi as a whole is an amazing programme i just feel that some individuals let it down slightly, but that is only to be expected.


Last week I went to my first Salsa class which was fun and comical. I am going to try and go again this week and maybe improve! haha. Last night I went to the gvi bbq which was cool, as 11 volunteers left yesterday so it was a bit emotional at school. One intern had been here for 2 years and another volunteer has been here for 6 months so it was quite tough for them. But anyway, I am off the Cerra de la cruz to go and chill out for a bit. Its boiling hot here at the moment, so might do a bit of sunbathing or something. Hehe. Sorry I purely said that to make all of you guys at home jealous. heheheh.

P.s Happy Birthday Auntie Diane for Wednesday I hope that you had a brilliant day. xxxx