Thursday's Barrage of Blogging Begins

Alright friends... if you are still reading and following this blog, I applaud you and thank you fully and sincerely. Its been a fast and busy first month. I've got some writing to do with the blog, I need to shave, and a pile of laundry to do. But the goal today is to catch up on all of this.

So something I thought I'd do was take some time to explain what exactly I've been doing down here in Guatemala. I guess I could start by linking to a post I wrote for Semilla Nueva and just posted literally within the last hour. This was a trip we took two weeks ago out to San Martin (a little town northwest of Guatemala City) to visit Cruz Cún Cún, a veteran of the Campesino a Campesino movement.

What is this Campesino a Campesino movement that I speak of, you might ask? Its essentially the whole basis for Semilla Nueva. The idea (in a very small nutshell) is that we take new technologies for sustainable agriculture, teach them to leaders of farming communities that desire our help and knowledge, and then assist these leaders in promoting the new technologies to their peers, friends, neighbors, and families.

This is the idea of Semilla Nueva. Personally, right now, my current duties are:

• Learning Spanish - with the goal of me eventually working in the communities that I talked about above.
• Taking pictures of our trips - for promotional media, fundraising purposes.
• Write for the Semilla Nueva blog.
• Assisting with daily functions of Semilla Nueva - gathering materials for the workshops we put on, which can be a challenge in Xela.
• Researching and reading through scientific articles for data that we can use for grants.

That's my general 'internship/volunteering' overview. Things are nice cause it differs day to day and by time June comes, the look of my job will be completely different than it is right now.

Ok... blog #1 for today - done. More to come!