Back in Antigua

I have a couple hours before I begin traveling again, so this seemed like the perfect time to blog. First, a brief description of my plans for the next couple of days, which are not really related to my project, but are exciting nonetheless. Tonight, around 6:30, I will depart Antigua for Flores, Peten, a bus ride that will take about nine hours meaning I will arrive in the morning (hopefully getting some sleep on the ride. Didn’t get much last night). I will then have a full day in the national park of Tikal, which houses the most famous Mayan ruins in the world and a fascinating array of wildlife such as howler monkeys, quetzals, and maybe even a jaguar. I will stay in the night IN the park and then have the next morning to explore as well. Thursday afternoon, I will have a few hours in Flores and then get back on a night bus bound for Antigua to arrive Friday morning. I’m not entirely sure what I will do with Friday and Saturday (which is the Shakira concert!), but I’m sure they would not be wasted even if I just wandered Antigua some more. Now, on to some more project related stuff.

In the past couple of days, I have attended the monthly meeting for Soluciones Comunitarias. The main subjects of the meeting: preparing for the Micro-Consignment conference at the end of this month, the coming of Social Entrepreneur Corps students in the summer (a bunch of college students), and the creation of a 2011 directory of Entrepreneurs and communities that have had campaigns. Most of this was just house-keeping business and relatively uninteresting, but I did gain some good information from two side discussions. The first was a Skype call with Greg Van Kirk (one of my “bosses”). Items included in his agenda:

1) Making more offices in Guatemala (such as in Nebaj and Xela) to make it less necessary to travel to Antigua all the time

2) Something to do with Vision Springs (the providers of the glasses we sell) changing their system. The entire meeting was conducted in Spanish, so unfortunately I didn’t catch everything and have yet to have an opportunity to ask someone to fill in the holes. It’s on my list of things to do…

3) A potential new product- vitamins for babies to promote growth. Considering malnutrition is not rare in Guatemala, this idea was well received

The second side discussion regarded carrying 10 Watt home light kits by Quetsol (a play on words since the Quetzal, a colorful bird, is the national symbol of Guatemala and the name of the currency). Currently, Soluciones Comunitarias offers small solar lamps, but this new product would allow people to further illuminate their homes and charge a cellular phone. In many regions of Guatemala, such as Xexac where I participated in a campaign last week, electricity is exceedingly difficult to get to homes, and many people simply go without light at night and must go to stores to pay to charge their cell phones. In fact, I was able to speak up during the meeting to provide my “opinion from the field” about the idea of a home solar kit because of my experience in Xexac. Again, I want to mention that the entire meeting was in SPANISH.

Last week, my gave me a folder of the electronic form filled with articles about how Micro-consignment distinguishes itself from micro-finance and all that good stuff. Beginning to wade through them, I feel confident that the “Bibliography” section of my research paper just tripled.

The last of my college acceptances came in: no dice on Stanford and Yale but Penn came in on the affirmative. I found out IN THE MIDDLE OF NO-WHERE. I wasn’t in Nebaj at the time, but actually doing a three day trek through rural Guatemala as part of my job of updating our tourist office in Nebaj. It’s a rough life… J