My first blog - almost.

I have only ever created on other blog. And it wasn't for my own personal use - it was to share with some of the coolest people I have ever met, in an unexpected place - three plane rides and a bus trip away from me.

Over spring break this year, I helped organize a group of students to go down to the Yucatan peninsula. Since October, we had been raising funds in order to send down two bookcase libraries (containing over 200 Spanish language books each, for kids of all ages), one to Chicxulub Pueblo and one to Cholul. The bookcases were sent down and set up in January. The trip in March was to go down and get to see the kids that were benefiting from the books.

It was the kind of trip that really latches onto your heart. The kids we met were so adorable. Peregrina, an eight-year-old whose mom works practically full-time at the library, the most outgoing, and just remembering her smile makes me happy. We spent the three days in the villages mostly doing arts and crafts (I made dozens of paper cranes and spinning paper tops) and reading aloud to the kids (I rediscovered a lot of my favorite childhood books, like Ms. Nelson is Missing and When You Give a Mouse a Cookie, but they were now Senorita Nelson ha desaparecido and Si le das una galletita a un raton).

The most amazing part of the trip was definitely seeing the sense of pride and ownership in the books that these kids had. It was important to us, and to the local non-profit organization that we partnered with, Bring Me a Book Foundation, that we gave them brand new books in order to give them a sense of pride and knowing that these weren't hand-me-downs that weren't good enough for someone else, these were their books to own and take care of and love.

We also visited Ixil, where the library has been established for a year. Since it first began last year, the library has grown from about 200 to well over 400 books. The kids line up early every week to pick out the next batch of books that they want to bring with home with them. Mama, I love you is the favorite book and doesn't stay in the library, the kids have a separate line just to take that one home.

We started the blog to keep in touch with the teenagers we met there. It is just getting started, but we hope to go back and forth and keep updated on each other's lives. After getting so attached to the villages after such a short period of time, we didn't want to just come back home and forget about them. The kids our age are just finishing high school there, but most of them cannot go to public universities because their families cannot cover the $1,000 that they need for bus fare to and from school for the year. We are hoping to be able to keep in touch and hopefully raise that money to send as many as possible to school. I believe so strongly in the basic right to education, and I know these kids will do amazing things, given the opportunity.

I'm sure I will post more about this later.