I spent the next few days in Guatemala City. Humid like Ontario during a smog warning, no air conditioning & too hot to sleep with blankets at night. I know no Spanish. I arrive by myself. Eighteen years old. Black Volcom backpack on my back.

All I knew as I left the airport is that I needed to get to the Barcelo Hotel. In my mind I was thinking, “How do I find the shuttle?” “Of course you don’t speak English…” “I’m the only non-Guatemalan here.” “What if the shuttle never comes?” “Man, I’m really hot in my jeans.” 20 minutes later, the shuttle arrived. My trip began into the city.

Checked in, luggage parked, TOMS slid off my feet. Priority one? Nap time. I left Spanish soap operas playing on the television set in my room as I took a nap. It brought on some pretty dramatic dreams. In and out of sleep, somewhere around dinner I decided it was time to leave the hotel and go exploring on my own.

Guatemala City is a strong contrast between rich and poor. They have a KFC, Dominos, Pizza Hut and billboards for Payless Shoe Source next to run down businesses and homes. Basically, there are no road rules. Or even garbage cans. Or a safe sidewalk. Old school buses from the states have been painted over and decorated to look like a mean racing machine. Dozens stopped along each block of the road I walked along, looking for people to pick up. The crowds of people on the broken sidewalks are men loading the buses to go back home from a busy work day.

I got lost on foot looking for a market I had been to once before. Unlike previous ideas that were brainstormed with James H. on what I should do while I’m in Guatemala City, I saw no mopeds to rent and no trouble to get myself in to. Sorry James, maybe next time.

For real, I received so many weird looks from men. They were probably wondering why like little white girl with big nerdy glasses was walking the streets of Guatemala City all by herself. I saw no other tourists. No Volcom backpacks. No big nerdy glasses. One man whistled to me, trying to call me into the back room of a building. Other men yelled what most likely were sexual comments to me in Spanish. This would never happen in Canada and it makes a person feel very uncomfortable. Things didn’t feel so welcoming on those streets. I stood out big time.

I ended up back at my hotel when I couldn’t find the market and the sun was going down. I watched the Latin American version of VH1 that likes work out videos that include men in gorilla costumes, Olivia Newton-John, and hot dog “mind game” training. Strangely, my hotel had a Japanese restaurant, a sports bar, and served me Italian for dinner. I was unsuccessful at this point to escape the food I already ate, especially since Japanese is a staple in my Vancouver diet and Italian is a staple in my Thorold diet. For breakfast, I was served papaya juice, black beans with my omelet and guacamole on top. Salsa & red sauce was complimentary. This is where I had to confront my fears of guacamole after eating too much of it the last time I was in Guatemala and now I live with a fear and disgust of the food.

A few days after leaving for Guatemala, Ted from Wells of Hope showed up to take me to camp. For those of you from my high school, you know that Ted is Mr. Vanderzalm, one of the teachers at the high school. For those of you not from Denis Morris, Ted is one of the most incredible people you could ever meet.

Back in the day, Ted quit university with only one semester left before completing his degree to do community development work in Tanzania. It’s there that he met Myriam, who was from Italy and on her way to becoming a nun. There they fell in love, married, and had their first daughter named Sara who is now in grade 12. When they returned to Canada, Ted finished his degree, became a teacher, and Myriam took care of the children. Skip a few years & three more kids later, the family was just chillin’ back in Canada when 2 medical professionals who were visiting Canada from Guatemala track Myriam and Ted down after hearing about the incredible work they did in Africa. These two men ask Myriam and Ted to do the same thing for Guatemala.

The decision they made was to take their four kids with them to Guatemala for 6 months and to travel the country. They lived out of tents for the entire 6 month period while raising a family and spent 2 weeks at a time in a different community to assess the level of need. They found Jalapa, a place 2 hours east of Guatemala City, to have the most need out of the entire country.

That’s where Wells of Hope gets it’s origins. Now they have 5 children, have a camp building on top of a mountain in Jalapa, a whole organization operating out of Niagara, and have helped so many people. They have built schools, drilled clean water wells, taught English, brought in doctors to run mobile health clinics, supplied school supplies and have done so so so much more. This is all in less than ten years.

Ted would take the second semester of high school off every year and his children would complete school through correspondence from camp. They live in Guatemala from February to May every year. This year a co-op program started in the Niagara Catholic District School Board that brought down a hand full of students to complete high school credits while living and working in Jalapa during the second semester.

Ted truly is one of the coolest guys I have ever met. He’s a dad, a teacher, a man running an organization, a hope-giver, and constantly lives positively every single day. He could most likely lift a car with one hand, he knows how to play a good game of keep away in the pool, and he knows how to uplift an entire community. Wells of Hope is the real deal.

Part Four of my trip to Guatemala will be posted over the next week.

Photos were taken by myself for the MOB. Special thanks to Katie & Meg! Check out metowemobilizers.com to find our more and see what I’m up to this summer during my internship at Me to We!

You have to click this link to find out all the cool things you can do with your TOMS when they are ready to be retired from your wardrobe for a new pair. Zoom in on the image to learn more. I’ll need to remember this instead of just ditching them when I burn holes into the back from my horrible abuse.

This summer I’m interning at the Me to We/Free The Children offices in Toronto. Super stellar job. You might know a little project I’m working on called the MOB, which actually in all honesty is a part of the coolest movement of youth that you can find happening right now. Being at the front lines of an epic project and working towards positive change locally and globally, I couldn’t ask for more.

I’ve also made it a part of my job description to doodle on baby photos of my boss and give him his current beard and glasses. You’re the best, Jobin.

So I’ve got my own desk, a kickin’ email address, and I work with the most amazing people. Yesterday I went to FTC’s GO Local Conference that concluded a year long program that works with 20 schools in Toronto that are located in priority neighbourhoods. It is a completely different world I’ve never been exposed to before. When I think of issues, I think of homelessness or job lay-offs. When FTC facilitators ask these students to give them some issues to come to mind, they say police brutality and gang violence in schools. When they hold events in their schools, they do things like wear black in solidarity against gang violence. When I hold events, it’s to bring attention to issues in a whole different country. It’s often forgotten what happens in our own backyard. It’s amazing the action that these kids are taking to make change locally and I now understand how important that is. Kudos to them, big time.

I want to give you some context on just how amazing it is to work for Free The Children and Me To We. It doesn’t matter if you know of the organizations or if you don’t know who Craig Kielburger is at all. You’ve got to watch these YouTube videos from start to finish. It always makes my heart race a little faster knowing that I’m a part of this.

Jason Mraz shows up for a surprise concert at last year’s Take Action Academy. You’ll see a lot of Dave in this video who is one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet. For sure worth the watch.

FTC just celebrated their 15th anniversary a few weeks ago. This is an AMAZING video that shows just how epic this organization is. It makes my heart race every time I watch it and I especially love the video clips of Craig when he was just starting FTC.

Me to We’s Take Action Academy. Sort of became the beginning of my story of how I got to here. If you look hard enough in the beginning, you can find me in this video.

This is what I work on, The MOB. Here is an overview of what we’ve accomplished this spring. Jobin, someone who I work with very closely on the MOB with, acts as the news anchor which is absolutely hilarious.

I ended up at Ruby’s diner, an old-fashioned themed diner put smack dab in the middle of a busy airport. It opened up just as I got there. I sat at the bar for some early 6am breakfast. There was a Sephora vending machine that I could see clearly across from Ruby’s diner just to the right. I’d never seen something like this before. A vending machine that takes your credit card just incase you were strolling through the airport and needed a new bottle of Chanel No. 5? To me this sounded crazy, but then I began to think how Mandy might see this as something that she might call, “wicked-awesome.” (of course she has the same vocabulary as me, why not?)

Across from me sat an older gentleman who drank two glasses of white wine during my short-lived breakfast of uncooked scrambled eggs and over cooked bacon. Obviously he had to be an international man of mystery if he was having wine for breakfast. To my right sat a young man in a military uniform. Between both of us sat a business man type who ignored the time of day and drank a vanilla milkshake with his legs up on the bar stool closest to me.

I watched the local Houston news while I ate. 6 states. 54 tornado reports. 11 dead in one state, one more found dead in another. The headlines ran along the bottom of the screen. A man stole thousands from students who were fundraising at their local high school. Many people were robbed and killed in addition to that headline. A few more were on trial.

My informative session on current Southern US news continued at my gate. I’d never watched so much CNN or local ABC channel news in my life. I was getting ready to board my flight to Guatemala City and absorbing ads for every CNN political show that they had. Nancy Grace commercials were being played over and over again. Apparently, this angry blonde woman is fun to watch because she uses the words “demand” and “justice” very frequently.

I get on the plane. Seat 19A, window again (score), Houston to Guatemala City, no one sat in the middle seat, a gentleman on the end, and two pastors behind me who spoke loud enough for me to hear their conversation. I tired to piece together why there were several pastors on my flight. All of them were in khakis and simple polos that were neatly tucked in. They looked like happy 12 year olds who were way too excited about being on a plane.

The man who sat behind me and to the right said that he grew up in East Texas. He had been working on a series of sermons focused on following your dreams. The pastor he is talking to, which I should mention they had never met each other before that flight, shares that he too is working on a series of sermons focused on a certain section of the bible. The pastor from East Texas eventually talked about how he ended up with the church. He said he could of gotten a big degree and had a high paying job, “you know?” he says. But against what others told him, he describes how he knew that wasn’t right for him.

I listened some more. Dreams of teaching at the academy, a family member is currently on bed rest, and other tidbits of casual conversation. These guys must of been on some big group trip to Guatemala from a bunch of different churches in the south. I fell asleep soon after take off. I think of how much that breakfast sucked (sorry for using that word, mom). I woke up when we landed with a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich next to me and the gentleman on my right standing up to exit the plane. Laughing, the pastor from East Texas said to the other pastor, “Wow, I never let him talk the entire flight!”

Part Three of my trip to Guatemala will be posted over the next week.