Guatemala’s public educational system is divided as follows: Pre-Primaria (Pre-primary also known as párvulos and kindergarten), Primaria (Primary school 1st to 6th grade), Secundaria (Secundary school, 3 years known as 1st basic through 3rd basic or Básicos) and Diversificado (3 years corresponding to the last years of High School; also known as Preparataria in other … Read more
Just two weeks ago I introduced you to my good friend Nelo, who in turn was introducing iPhone 3G in La Antigua Guatemala; remember? Anyway, back then I said that starting on “… Friday 22nd of August, La Antigua Guatemala will be joining the cities of the world with third generation (3G) cellular networks …” … Read more
It doesn’t matter what kind of meeting it is, the ice cream men and their carts are always ready to sell you gratification. Sure, ice creams are healthy as a diet and should not be around for a celebration of physical activity, right? Wrong. This is Guatemala and as such there is no better place … Read more
What better way to promote physical activity than to put kids to jump to their hearts’ content.
Once again, La Antigua Guatemala’s Parque Central and the streets around it served as scenario for a celebration. This time the Central Park was taken by the physical education teachers for La Antigua Guatemala and Guatemala City to celebrate physical activity as a way to live a healthy life with the family. Since I took … Read more
Chamusca is the Guatemalan-Spanish word for an informal football match. All you need is a few friends, a dirt field and a fútbol ball to build life-long relationships. Less is more is one of my rules in graphic design and it looks like it holds true for life too. There’s so much to learn from … Read more
Through our mothers’ safety zone we learn to crawl, walk, run, swim and fly! It is only fair that we assign one day out of the year to celebrate their unconditional support and the safety zone they provide for us. In Guatemala, it is on May 10th that Mother’s Day is celebrated as “Día de … Read more
“… Nothing became Something. For many in the community this Something is the realization that their kids, who barely had touched a book, can read something because they like it. The biggest change we see it in the problematic children, those who can hardly stay put. We let them read laying down on a carpet, aloud or in silence, right-reading or backwards, or we give them audio books, and little by little they end up reading all of them…” —Kyle Passarelli (fragment freely translated from the article Biblioteca Caldo de Piedra as it appeared in Spanish in the latest issue of Revista Recrearte)
Kids reading to kids; now we are onto something! While reviewing the wishlist for the Caldo de Piedra Library Project, I occurred to me who little things can make a difference. Some items in the list include wooden signs, cd player, dvds, pigeon hole cupboard… an so on. Check it for yourself. I know I … Read more
Boy, do I have a soft spot for libraries! Often I highlight library projects like the Bibliobús of Probigua, which I nicknamed the Mobile Library Chicken Bus. Back in the first week of December 2007, we did a little tour through Compañía de Jesús Library as well. I am sure it does not come as … Read more
I caught a shot of marching students and the municipal band in a campaign of awareness and against tuberculosis. I even got a flyer describing the 4 steps to prevent the propagation of tuberculosis in Guatemala. If you click in the thumbnail below you will be able to see the flyer.
Grandma and granddaughter caught while doing mandados (errands). Above we can see the close relationship between the grandparents and their grandchildren which in Guatemala is one of the strongest links between humans.
Public schools are free in Guatemala, minus some administrative fees. But, everything you need for school is not free; you need to buy a every single pencil and sheet of paper as well as any book or notebook, cuaderno in Spanish.
In the picture above, we can see parents with their children making the queues to purchase all the necessary school supplies at Librería Castillo in La Antigua Guatemala; librería is the Spanish term for bookstore or stationary store.
In La Antigua Guatemala, religious celebrations draw together all kinds of heterogeneous people and the feast day of Virgin of Guadalupe is no exception. In the day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, you can find gringa mamas, indigenous mamas, ladino mamas and white mamas all taking their children dressed with indigenous clothes to visit the altar of La Virgen Morena. In many cases you have grandmas and the whole family taking part of the visit to Virgin of Guadalupe inside Iglesia de la Merced.
This picture is like a summary of the Guatemalan Idiosyncrasy. First we have the giant kite with all the Mayan motifs, which for a long time represented the pagan rituals as the dominant catholic church used to call them. Anything that represented non-christian religious rituals was denigrated and prosecuted under the pagan label