Estoy en Guatemala!!!!(candice)

Hola! This is Candice and I am writing to you from Xela!!! First off i would like to say that i am not dead. I arrived in Guatemala city safe. Also next on my list i would like to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my grandmother! & hola!! to al my family in the states.
So far this trip has been great. However, the slow bus ride to antigua lasted longer than the flight and we had´nt had a real nights rest till we got to the hotel in another city, which I can´t remember the name of at the moment. When traveling here I had known that there was a lot of poverty, but I hadnt thought that it would slap me in the face as hard as it did. In the past travels, there had been poverty and problems in the society. However, in the place I was isolated in it was different. After talking about the recent conflict I had´nt realized the depth of the problem and how devistating it is. It´s one of thoes things that one would´nt realize or notice if they just read a paper, well you can, but the probelm does´nt stick in your mind. Driving around town you can see the affect the conflict has had on the community.
There are orginizations that are helping to rebuild the people and preserve the culture. Like today, we visited a school that had a philosophy similar to LHS´s, becoming aware of the community and appreciating the culture of the community, but because of the way the government it makes it hard for the students to even be able to survive and go to school, because they have to work to support themselves and or their family.How can the government expect the people to grow and prosper if they can´t get an education, because they have to worry if they are going to live another day? 80 percent of the country is in poverty, 20 percent is not in poverty and 40 percent out of the 80 percent is below the poverty level ( meaning somethink like a family barely can afford one meal a day- even after working 8 or more hours a day)
PEACE
Candice