So it´s been about two weeks since i departed Toronto. I have showered 3 times. I´m in a town\city called coatepeque... i think. I love driving out of La Florida, my heart was full to burst today. It´s just so beautiful. Mountainous jungles as far as the eye can see, mist, little clusters of communities and farms, patches of coffee plantations. And always a bright bright sun. Today there was an old man sitting on the side of the road with a double barrel shot gun and an orange push pop icecream. Guatemala has the most perfect weather.

So I don´t have much time but i´d like to take a moment to let you all know more about the project i´m on. It´s really cool.

La Florida is a farm community 1 hour outside of ´civilization´that is run collectively. That is, the land was donated to this group of people by the government, and they will never have to pay for it so long as they produce a certain amount of output per year. There is no single figurehead that makes the decisions, every decision is made and voted on by everyone in the community (except for the youth but we are working on that). All the money that is made from the farming (they have macademia, coffee and cacao plants) is distributed evenly amongst the workers, as everyone works from 6am-1pm on the collective farm, and then they can increase their economic income by working on their own individual plots of land. The farm is also completely organic. Right now we are working on making 2000 bug traps that are made out of plastic bottles that the community bought off of homeless people. They use a little bit of alcohol and red paint to attract the bugs to the traps and then the bugs get caught in a pool of water. They are a group that respects all living things. Including mice, so we have welcomed three little cats into our Casa Grande to take care of the mice and cockraoches.

We have a little bit of electricity now. Sometimes we have light and sometimes we don´t I still stink at cooking but everyone pretends to enjoy it. I´ve never eaten so many legumes in all my life. It is very peaceful in La Florida, except for when the icecream truck comes... he has a loudspeaker.

Spanish is improving little by little. I can understand almost everything anyone says, so long as they speak slowly. And i can muster up just enough spanish to respond.

On thursday we started our social projects. I had four women show up to my stretch and relaxation class. It was hard to do anything with them because they all wore skirts, one women was pregnant, and the other was 49 years old (but we all though she was at least 70). I am excited to continue working with these women, as they´ve expressed that they have no hobbies or anything to do. It was nice to see them giggling at the positions i had them in.

I am humbled daily my the members of La Florida. I have never seen poverty like this before but they are all so passionate about their collective way of life. I wake up every morning to a rooster and fall asleep every night to the crickets. They call the crickets ´hope´here.

to learn more about the finca go to fincalaflorida.org