Hello dear friends of the Juan Sisay Spanish School! This is the fifth Newsletter we send to you and the very first thing we want to do in this Newsletter is to say thank you for your interest in the School, in Xela and in Guatemala! You receive this Newsletter because you subscribed on one of the schools homepages (either http://www.juansisay.com or http://www.juansisay.de) or are a known friend of the school. If you want to unsubscribe from this Newsletter just reply to it (using the same email-address, you used for subscribing) and change the subject to "unsubscribe". Content About Juan Sisay About Guatemala Help for the children in Quetzaltenango Contact Older Newsletters About nightlife in Xela Here at the Juan Sisay Spanish School we recently started to take new students with us to the disco “La Fratta” where they have to dance with us. We do this to help the new students to meet other people (students and Guatemalans as well) and to introduce them to “xelan nightlife”. This helps them also to practice their Spanish outside the school and the host family. “La Fratta” also organises different dancing competitions for Salsa and Merengue. These competitions are also open for students from different schools where they can participate and have fun. But they also just can have a look at nearly professional dancers who are doing very well. On the 2nd of August a new bar opened. Its name is “Unicornio”. During the opening ceremony they had music, several shows and drinks. On the 3rd of September they will celebrate a special party called “noche de las estrellas” (“night of the starts”). On the 8th of August the folkloric ballet de Guatemala performed in Xela. This ballet is known as one of the best traditional ballets at international level. They gave shows worldwide before. For all spectators it has been a really impressive evening. On the 10th of July the Spanish School Juan Sisay celebrated the “dia de las familias” (“day of the families”) together with the children of the educational project, which is sponsored by the school itself and Tob’anik e.V. This celebration takes place every four to six weeks and is organised by the teachers and the students of the Juan Sisay School. Especially the students did a great job while performing little plays of theatre and offering games for the children. They also helped to cook a meal for the children and their families. We could give the children vitamins, clothing and shoes. We all enjoyed a very beautiful evening together. A gay party was celebrated on the 28th of July in the bar CEFEMEQ close to the future airport of Xela. People from all parts of Guatemala came to this party where they had different activities like dances and shows and the election of “Mister Gay de Guatemala”. About Juan Sisay Teachers from every Spanish Schools had to participate in a special training to improve their skills to teach Spanish. This was ordered by INGUAT, the tourism authority of Guatemala. The graduation for the teachers who participated in Xela was on the 4th of July. Juan Sisay was the school with the highest number of graduating teachers, so we really can say that we can offer Spanish classes at a very high level! Juan Galicia, one of our teachers has been in Denmark for holidays where he spent approximately three month. He came back end of July to start to work again. Some conversions were done in the school, especially in the ground floor. Now the school is more beautiful and the ground floor is warmer in the mornings. But the school still has its special, friendly atmosphere. About Guatemala The next election for the congress and president will be held in autumn 2003. So at the moment a climate of tension and injustice is growing in Guatemala which affects all the people because of increasing corruption of the government and its institutions. A good example for this is Rios Montt. Montt is a former militarian and staged a coup in 1982. The Guatemalan constitution prohibits his candidature to be voted for president. Many times he tried to be candidate for the elections and last month finally the supreme court of Guatemala allowed him to candidate, because four of seven judges decided for Montt. What is really strange about this is that one of the judges is member of the board of the University San Carlos of Guatemala and this university is known to be against all the politics of Guatemala and its leaders. Great amounts of money are said to be paid to change the minds of the unwilling. Actually a lot of members of political parties try to find new ways to avoid his inscription to the list of candidates. Even Cass Ballenger, republican member of the US congress, has after evaluation concluded that Montt would provoke the expulsion of Guatemala from the Tratado de Libre Commercio (FTAA – Free Trade Area of the Americas) which would lead to an increasing isolation of Guatemala. Especially the rural population is under high pressure from the FRG (Montt’s political party) to vote for them. Threats like stopping the supplying with water and electricity if Montt isn’t voted in that village have become public. So we do not know about the upcoming future but we like to be sure that you about the uncertainties in this beautiful country and help us to make Guatemala a better place to live for its people. Help for the children in Quetzaltenango Some of you may have been in Quetzaltenango before and may know the project the school runs to support children from poor families enabling to visit school. School isn’t really for free in Guatemala, the parents have to an inscription fee every year, have to pay uniforms and the school materials which is about 100 $-US a year. Due to their poverty and the number of children per family this is nearly impossible for a lot of families – the average yearly income of a single household is not more than 1.500 to 2.000 $-US. To help these children we have founded an organisation in Germany named Tob’anik e.V. (tob’anik is a quiche word meaning “to help”). The organisation was founded in the spring of this year after some month of preparation (legal and financial topics had to be cleared) and is now accepted as charitable in Germany which means that donations to the organisation are tax deductable. Please visit us on our homepage http://www.tobanik.de, even it is in German, you can download an English or French flyer as well which contains the most important information. This may the school became member of the organisation. Donated money will be completely transferred to the school. The school is responsible for the use of the money and will spend it for the above mentioned things. We hope to be able to support more children in the future than the school could in the past. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us using info@tobanik.de. We welcome any comment and will try to answer any questions. Contact http://www.juansisay.com (en) http://www.juansisay.de (ger) info@juansisay.com Older Newsletters You can find the older Newsletters and even this one here: http://www.juansisay.com/archiv/index.htm in pdf-format and also as a flat text file. Ok, that’s it for the moment; I hope to be able to send you the next Newsletter soon. Hasta luego, Andreas Webmaster & Coordinador Internacional