Blame the Brother!

Okay, I've been asking Zack to write a guest entry for two weeks now but with no luck. Maybe if he gets some pressure from you readers he will do it?

Things have been really wonderful with Zack here. We went to Antigua, the beach, the lake, stayed in town to do some exploring one weekend and are about to prepare for our 4 day weekend at Semuc Champey. My students just love him and he feels the same way about them (he is even looking up ways to pursue teaching after this experience!). He also fits in perfectly with my friends as I laugh about how they will text me looking for him... where's the love?!

No but I would really love for you all to read his take on it all, especially since this is a completely new experience for my world-traveling brother.

Things in Guatemala are looking just as sad as ever. Its an election year and apparently Guatemalans have chosen the most outragous two out of the ten possible candidates to run against each other; former civil war army general vs. drug dealer. So, essentially it looks as though crime and drugs will increase. Though I read recently that those may not be the two biggest problems this country has. I realize this article is old, but it explains the findings of malnutrition worldwide and how Guatemala ranks the 6th worst country in the world for malnutrition. And though my students can all afford to eat healthy, complete meals, many of them still come to school with sugary drinks, chips and cookies... for their entire lunch. We are doing an experiment in class right now with hardboiled eggs in various types of drinks. We look at the eggs each day to see the affect the sugar and carbonation is having on the shells. Yesterday, after coming back from the weekend, Zack and I were shocked to see that the "Grapette" (basically soda grape juice) drink had changed from a dark purple color to a pale shade of blue. Had someone accidentally spilled the liquid and replaced it with gatorade? Did the dyes in the drink changed from purple to blue to entice my small children to drink it? Or was it because the Grapette was the only liquid "powerful" (in the words of my students) enough to crack the egg and release the necessary gases to change the color? Either way, I think after showing my class the swollen, broken, purplish-blue egg they might actually think twice about drinking that garbage... or maybe not. We'll see!

Alright I'm going to get going but will post some pictures later today. And send some threatening messages to my brother and maybe he'll write too :)