So it begins! We're on our way to Q.

This morning we woke up at 7am and packed everything and waited outside for Fernando, who we had planned weeks ago to meet at 8am. We waited until about 12pm, when he finally came. In the meantime, we made ourselves useful by cleaning our equipment and talking to Antonia, an employee at Junax who cleans the rooms. She is from Tenjapa, a Tzeltal village outside of San Cristobal. Antonia was born in Tenjapa and was raised by her grandparents. She came to San Cristobal at the age of 11 by herself to find work, and started cleaning houses. She was only able to finish fourth grade. She is a single mother of three children.

Antonia is part of a group of 15 women who work cleaning houses. They are organizing themselves to lobby for better treatment (they are sometimes treated poorly by employers) and fair wages. She attributes some of this maltreatment to the fact that she is a migrant worker. Not only is it difficult to work in San Cristobal as a migrant, but it's also hard to travel back to Tenjapa because it is costly ($3.50USD each way).

It was really interesting to meet Antonia. She has worked for EAPSEC for 13 years, which was exciting because they are a health promoter organization we are hoping to meet with while we're here. Since we're all thinking about social justice right now, it was also interesting that Antonia said she sometimes thinks of going back to Tenjapa, but because she is a woman, she cannot own land. So she has nowhere to go.

We're waiting for Fernando to come back with the taxis that will take us to Quexalhukum. We have no idea what to expect but we're just anxious to finally get there!