The Youth Workshop

Tuesday afternoon eight of us and twenty-five Guatemalan jovenes (young people age 13 to 30) gathered at the Arca De Noe church to have a workshop to get to know one another. We split up into four groups consisting of the American and Guatemalan boys and the American and Guatemalan girls. Each group was asked to draw a picture of what they thought their gender of the other nationality is like.
In a nutshell they think all american girls look like Andrea--tall, slender, blonde, beautiful, nice, blue eyes, and smiling. We drew a picture a girl in full traditional dress carrying food on her head and a baby in her arms. We described her as dark skin, long black hair, many children, shy, hardworking, short, and not much education. The Guatemalan boys got really into it and ( literally) drew a picture of David Wiseman (the Missionary) depicting a stereotypical american man. They thought that American men are all tall, light haired, bearded, and blue eyed with glasses. Our boys drew a short black haired dark skined man with short hair, long sleeved shirt and pants, and sandals.The guys thought that Guatemalans were quiet, didn't have alot of technology, and did alot of manual labor. After the activity, we learned that some of our stereotypes were correct while some were not.
After we showed our drawings to each other we were able to ask eachother questions about life in our different countries. The Guatemalans asked questions like "What sports do you play?" "What are your schools like?" and "What do you do while not in school?" We also went around the circle and said the country that we would most like to visit. Most of the Guatemalans said "Estados Unidos" or "Nuevo York" while many of us said New Zealand. Go figure!
This activity made many of us realize that our stereotypes of each other were wrong, and that we have so much more in common than we thought.

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