Yesterday was packed!

We started the day finishing up our construction projects! After showers that involved lots of soap and scrubbing to remove cement we all split into three groups to attend artisan workshops.

I attended the textile workshop and met Eliva who told us of how De La Gente was able to help her get a loan so she could quit her factory job and start making purses. We got to pick out traditional Guatemalan fabrics for our bags. She let us practice with her sewing machine..which I broke right away. Typical me. It was an easy fix, Eliva just needed to replace the needle.  It was pretty clear that sewing is not in my skill set! We all got to help sew our bags and we ended up buying a lot of extra products from her!

Eric and Crystal in our group went to the iron working workshop! They each got to outline, cut out, hammer, and paint iron lizards. They by far had the most labor intensive workshop, and were sweating afterwards! The hike to the top of the workshop wasn’t even the hardest part! Cutting out iron with scissors turned out to be pretty rough. “Tough?! Near impossible!!”-Eric. Carlos their teacher has made an entire house out of iron! They also found out that chickens aren’t pets here….check out our next post for more about that….

Shelby, Danielle, and Molly went to the wood working workshop! Where they met Jorge a wood worker. They learned how to use different tools a got to make wood serving trays! They got to pick out traditional fabrics to enclose in their trays. Next up was sanding and staining the trays. After the trays were finished, they got to go look at his shop and see a bunch of wood furniture with looks of detail that he had made by hand!

It was great to come back to De La Gente at the end of the night and show off all of our new products!

See ya,

ASB