Day 1: Antigua, Guatemala

After a loooong journey yesterday, I finally arrived in Antigua late lastnight. My home for the next month and something tells me I am going to like it here! The city reminds me a lot of Trinidad in Cuba. Small cobbled streets, lined with colourful houses on each side and a few cute squares scattered around the city. Navigating the city should be easy due to the massive volcano to the south of Antigua. And I mean massive!

My host family seem very friendly. And very patient with my broken Spanish! Janet (my host mum) works at the Spanish school where I will start my lessons tomorrow! What a small world! We also have a pet. A baby turtle. He/she has no name, as well, they don't know whether it is a he or a she. I think I'm going to call it Shelly!

I'm writing this from Cafe Condesa, in their courtyard out back with a cortado and my Spanish for Dummies book. This is going to be my place in Guatemala. Where I can study with a good cup of coffee. It's situated on the central square, a great place to people watch under the shade of the many trees and cool breeze.

As I said, I have the feeling I am going to like it here!

p.s. Photos have been added to the photo page!

When ideas become reality...

So after some weeks/months of thinking, it has become reality! Flights are booked! I am heading to Central America to build a house! ARGH!!!

At the end of April I wil fly to Guatemala to commence the first part of my sabbatical! For the first month of my trip, I will be taking part in a volunteer project in Guatemala. Before I can start building I will be following an intensive Spanish course to get my Spanish skills up to scratch! I will be paying special attention to all of the construction terminology (the builders I will be working with do not speak a word of English!), but also generally polishing my Spanish so I can reap the benefits later in the trip when I head down to South America.

The idea of volunteering has been floating about in my head for a couple of years already. Maybe even longer, truth be told. I have always had this idea in my head that I wanted to work for a few years, make my millions (how was never quite clear), quit my job and travel around the World rebuilding homes/communities after natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc.. While I haven't (yet) made millions, neither have I quit my job to do this and Guatemala is not quite travelling the world... I have the opportunity to take an extended period of leave from work so I am grabbing this with both hands!

I have to raise a minimum of €400 for the project. I have created a JustGiving page in order to raise this money. The page can be found using this link:https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/clairestoddart. If you would like to make a donation, any amount would be much appreciated! The money raised will be used for the construction of the house, to buy the materials used and to pay for the construction experts. Believe it or not they don't just let a bunch of volunteers with no building experience loose on someones house!

Over the next month I will be using this blog to talk about preparations for the trip (if there is anything intresting worth mentioning!) and to give an update on how much money has been donated. After the 30th April the blog will get more interesting when I actually start using it to blog about my trip and of course to share photos of the trip with you all!

Thanks for reading and feel free to check out the map with my proposed route (http://stoddart.reismee.nl/kaart/)!

Claire