Information about Guatemala- We all know that on average more than half of Americans flunk geography and world knowledge quiz. I'm a geography buff and I have to admit that I know much more about Europe and Asia than I do central America. So I thought I'd add some information about our daugther's birth country and culture. Below you'll find a map and some basic facts. If you look at the southwestern part of the country you'll see Retalhuleu which is where Isabella was born. More fact at the bottom of this post...

Updates- Today we are very excited because we found out that we will probably be able to go and meet our daughter the first week of February! Yep...that's right just over two weeks from now. We are so excited and nervous! I can't imagine the sensation of holding my daughter for the first time after all we have been through this past year. What a magical moment that will be!
We're just waiting on the okay from both of our jobs to have the time off. We will take TONS of photos and will try to update the blog when we are there. We're hoping to stay for about ten days. I know it is going to be so EXTREMELY hard to leave her but I'm not going to let that stop us from seeing her when she is this young. I am sure it will be worth every minute of heartache we feel when we leave. We'll update more on this as we start planning.

Special Thanks- So many of you deserve special thank for all your support so far. This week I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to our military family Adam and Sandy S. They really went out on a limb this week to help us with an obstacle we were facing with our adoption. We asked a huge favor of them and they didn't even think twice before helping us. Thank you for your constant support and for being so excited with us! I could never survive being away from my family without you guys.

Leave Your Comments: I love to know when you guys are checking in so please leave comments when you stop in. Someday this will be a sort of journal for our daughter so she can read our journey and I know she would enjoy reading your comments. You don't have to register- just click on the comments button at the bottom of the post and select anonymous as your ID. That way I won't email some of you with news you've already read :-)


Geography
The northernmost of the Central American nations, Guatemala is the size of Tennessee. Its neighbors are Mexico on the north and west, and Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador on the east. The country consists of three main regions—the cool highlands with the heaviest population, the tropical area along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, and the tropical jungle in the northern lowlands (known as the Petén).

Government
Constitutional democratic republic.

National name: República de Guatemala
President: Oscar Berger (2004)
Area: 42,042 sq mi (108,890 sq km)
Population (2005 est.): 14,655,189 (growth rate: 2.6%); birth rate: 34.1/1000; infant mortality rate: 35.9/1000; life expectancy: 65.1; density per sq mi: 349

Capital and largest city (2003 est.): Guatemala City, 2,655,900 (metro. area), 1,128,800 (city proper)
Other large cities: Mixco, 287,600; Villa Nueva, 138,900
Monetary unit: Quetzal
Languages: Spanish 60%, Amerindian languages 40% (23 officially recognized Amerindian languages, including Quiche, Cakchiquel, Kekchi, Mam, Garifuna, and Xinca)
Ethnicity/race: Mestizo (Ladino)—mixed Amerindian-Spanish ancestry—55%, Amerindian (Mayan) or predominantly Amerindian 43%, whites and others 2%
Religions: Roman Catholic, Protestant, indigenous Mayan beliefs


History

Once the site of the impressive ancient Mayan civilization, Guatemala was conquered by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado in 1524 and became a republic in 1839 after the United Provinces of Central America collapsed. From 1898 to 1920, dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera ran the country, and from 1931 to 1944, Gen. Jorge Ubico Castaneda served as strongman.After Ubico's overthrow in 1944 by the “October Revolutionaries,” a group of left-leaning students and professionals, liberal-democratic coalitions led by Juan José Arévalo (1945–1951) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951–1954) instituted social and political reforms that strengthened the peasantry and urban workers at the expense of the military and big landowners, like the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company. With covert U.S. backing, Col. Carlos Castillo Armas led a coup in 1954, and Arbenz took refuge in Mexico. A series of repressive regimes followed, and by 1960 the country was plunged into a civil war between military governments, right-wing vigilante groups, and leftist rebels that would last 36 years, the longest civil war in Latin American history. Death squads murdered an estimated 50,000 leftists and political opponents during the 1970s. In 1977, the U.S. cut off military aid to the country because of its egregious human rights abuses. The indigenous Mayan Indians were singled out for special brutality by the right-wing death squads. By the end of the war, 200,000 citizens were dead.A succession of military juntas dominated during the civil war, until a new constitution was passed and civilian Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo was elected and took office in 1986. He was followed by Jorge Serrano Elías in 1991. In 1993, Serrano moved to dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court and suspend constitutional rights, but the military deposed Serrano and allowed the inauguration of Ramiro de Leon Carpio, the former attorney general for human rights. A peace agreement was finally signed in Dec. 1996 by President Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen. In 1999, a Guatemalan truth commission blamed the army for 93% of the atrocities and the rebels (the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit) for 3%. The former guerrillas apologized for their crimes, and President Clinton apologized for U.S. support of the right-wing military governments. The army has not acknowledged its guilt. Alfonso Portillo Cabrera, closely associated with the former dictatorship of Efrain Rios Montt (1982–1983), became president in Jan. 2000. In Aug. 2000, Portillo apologized for the former government's human rights abuses and pledged to prosecute those responsible and compensate victims. To stimulate the economy, Guatemala, along with El Salvador and Honduras, signed a free trade agreement with Mexico in June 2000. In Aug. 2001, plans for tax increases prompted widespread, and often violent, protests.In July 2003, the country's highest court ruled that former coup leader and military dictator Rios Montt, responsible for the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians during the civil war, was eligible to run for president in November. The ruling conflicted with the constitution, which bans anyone who seized power in a coup from running for the presidency. But in November, Rios Montt was soundly defeated by two candidates, conservative Oscar Berger and center-leftist Alvaro Colom. In the runoff election in December, Berger was elected president. In 2004, Guatemala experienced an alarmingly violent crime wave. More than 2,000 murders took place, which were blamed on crime gangs and bands of teenagers.