Our school in Xela was called ICA. Stands for, uh.....I honestly forget. Something about a spanish school, I'm pretty sure. It was the tallest building around, with some nice views from the roof, and an open central courtyard where we'd take breaks, hang out, warm up from the sun- the weather was usually cloudy or even rainy, often around 60 degrees, and actually kinda chilly in the shade inside the "classrooms" of the school, which were basically just larger rooms with partitions into very small rooms adjoining the courtyard. No insulation, no nothing, just wood walls and metal roofs, like its Jamaica or...Guatemala, I guess. There were like 25 students there the first week we were there, and we made friends with a handful of them on our weekend excursion, but more on that later. They had coffee and purified water for us to drink, and thats about it. We met here to go on our adventures too. It wasn't really a school in any traditional sense. I think they were doing quite well, despite the fact that school and room and board for a week is $150. Wow.
Sitting around the courtyard:
The computer cluster room, where this dude was almost constantly taking the covers off the PCs for no apparent reason, cause he never seemed to be doing anything hardware related- so maybe they just needed some fresh air. I dunno. He was usually just poking around on the screen and rebooting them. Whatever. The machines were Pentium IIIs and either they or the internet or both, SUCKED. But hey, internet in Guatemala is sweet period.
The courtyard, some stairs leading...well, upstairs.
Good old dad, the subject of many photos. Often people would come and set up their woven things to sell to us.
The school (yellow building, ICA written on top) and volcano.
The courtyard more. And stairs. And people.
Courtyard.
Hallway to classrooms.
Peeps.
More peeps. Dude in the front with the beard is a French Rastafarian named Fabian who smokes weed daily, but doesn't drink. Nice guy. Listens to lots of reggae, as one would expect. Has some dreds that he keeps in his hat most of the time.
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