Day Nine, Antigua

Compania de Jesus

Today was our second Sunday in Antigua. After breakfast in the morning, Gloria and I went on a sketch-hunt around Antigua. We ended up right in front of the Compania de Jesus where there is a ruined church. We both want to practice sketching the buildings in Antigua for our painting class at the gallery. We sat for about an hour sketching then decided to try to find some lunch.

My pen drawing of the church ruins

I ended up going to lunch with two other students from the Casa (Gloria went to spend time at the gallery). The three of us went to a wonderful restaurant that serves traditional Guatemalan food buffet style.
After I returned to our home stay I met our new home stay student, Steve. He came to Antigua back in May for the month to study Spanish at PLFM, and returned this month to continue his studies. He will be taking Spanish for six hours every week day for four weeks. He will be joining us at meal times here at the home stay and together we will all practice our Spanish.
In the evening, all the Casa students met at our TA's new home in Antigua to watch a documentary called "Recycled Life." It is about the lives of the people in Guatemala City who work in the dump picking out recyclables to sell. It is a powerful film which shows the dignity of the workers and how their life style gives them security and also shows the dangers of their life styles and how through lack of education, illiteracy and lack of jobs has created a cycle of necessity to work there.