Todo bien, para nosotros. All is well, for us.

Dear friends and family,

I'm guessing from the recent emails and facebook posts I've received that many of you have heard about tropical storm Agatha that hit Guatemala this past weekend, in addition to the Pacaya Volcano eruption this past Thursday night.

All is well here in Antigua. We are on slightly higher ground, so instead of Antigua flooding, the Antigua streets just turned into rivers. Some of our friends from work had to evacuate their houses on Saturday. We had solid rain for about 48 hours. Early Sunday morning the rain stopped. The storm headed north of Antigua and quickly died out from there. But damage has continued to occur in Guatemala: mud slides have taken over towns and streets, bridges are no longer, and a 200 ft. deep sinkhole has appeared in the middle Guatemala city! Here's a link to one article, of many.


As for the volcano eruption on Thursday night, apparently the volcano shot up 250 meters in the air. Note that this volcano is a frequently visited tourist attraction! I visited last fall with Mickey's brother Jake, and my friend Adam just hiked it a couple weeks ago.

It started raining on Thursday, so the volcanic ash combined with rain. A friend of ours said it was literally raining mud in Guatemala city on Thursday night. Clean up has been ongoing...but I'm sure the recent mudslides have not helped.

The airport has been closed, which wasn't too convenient for Mickey's flight out of Guatemala this morning, but he got on a flight on Thursday. School has been canceled for the week, but Transitions scholarship recipient, Nacho, has enjoyed his extra time helping Mickey on the computer.

Well, this is a lot to marinate on, no? Although Mickey and I, and all our friends at Transitions are safe and sound, this isn't true of everyone in Guatemala and Central America (the death toll is over 170). And like we saw with Hurricane Katrina, among other natural disasters, those hardest hit are often those with the littlest capital.

One thing I've been thinking is if this same destruction would have happened if the Agatha storm hit the States. Although some deaths would have been inevitable, we are lucky to be from a country where the infrastructure is extraordinarily sound...although we do need to work on our oil pipelines, don't we?

Thinking of you in Guatemala,
Brittany