Two Armed Guards Outside A Foreign Burger King: Welcome to Guatemala City

I’m sitting in the lush green courtyard at the mission in Santo Tomas.  We still haven’t really recovered from traveling, because we left Helena yesterday at 5 pm, traveling nonstop through the night until we reached Santo Tomas today around lunch time.

It was really shocking to fly out of Los Angeles (a very American city with a lot of American poverty) and land in Guatemala City (a very developing world city with a lot of developing world poverty).  From the air, they seemed very similar, but as we got closer and closer, Guatemala showed me the real difference.  We got no closer to the city than our bus window, and it was very interesting to see how many tin roofs and piles of garbage off the side of the road there could be in one area.

The drive to the mission was bumpy and interesting.  Our bus driver, Hector, was full of fun tidbits and very excited to share with us.  Santo Tomas is a lot bigger than I expected, with a population of about thirteen thousand.  Our large glob of gringos explored the town, and we drew a lot of stares and gawks.

I’ll let other people give their two cents, more from me later, Buenos Tardes!

-Ned Scheidecker