Guatemala, a country with beauty and poverty

Guatemala is a country located in Central America with extraordinary landscapes but a great number of inhabitants with a bad quality of life. 
Throughout the year thousands of tourists go to this country to visit the Atitland Lake, Antigua (the first capital of Guatemala), the flea market of Chichicastenalgo, the Mayan´s ruins of Tikal, Rio Dulce… The lists of places you can visit and enjoy in this country are never ending. 

However, what I want, is to talk about the poverty of the inhabitants of this place.
Most tourists that visit Guatemala don´t want to see, or know how the Gatemalns live. What they eat or how their houses are. The reason is very simple, we don´t want to open our eyes and realize that there are people living worse than us, and even dying because they don´t have anything to eat.
When my parents went to Guatemala, they realized about the poverty of the country, and they decided to see it through the eyes of the inhabitants. They slept in houses without floors, they took “guaguas”, the buses that Gatelmans use to travel from one place to another. Although they enjoyed themselves a lot, they were very scared when some members of the army, carrying big submachine guns stop them at night when they were traveling from Flores to Rio Dulce in a “guagua”.
This experience helped them realize the fear that poor people suffer. Fear is a very subjective word, most people have fears. In my point of view we can´t compared the fear of these inhabitants with our fears. They are afraid of being killed, they are afraid to die of hunger…, these fears are caused by poverty, and that’s the worst point. We are all humans; however, some poor people believe that they are worse than us only because they had be born in poor areas.

Although they are afraid every day for their lives, they try to search for a reason to be happy, to smile. Poverty is the main cause of their fears, cold nights and hungry.  However it won´t be the cause of their sadness, because they value every single drop of water.

More than fashion

Plenty of people think that fashion is shallow, that fashion only exits for thin, wealthy and pretty people. However, it is not that, it is a way to express yourself, a way to show your personality, your feelings, your thoughts… Considering this, a few weeks ago some of the most important events in fashion took place, the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week of Madrid and the Fashion Week of Milan.

With its new name, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week of Madrid, and its 56 editions, the veterans and new designers had a big challenge to overcome; they had to convince people with their new collections for this autumn-winter. This year, 41 designers paraded and 20 exposed their collections in the Showroom of Ego. With these parades we observed the new forms, colors and styles proposed by the top designers and the new ones, although they did not change too much compared to the last collections. Nevertheless, the most important fact in this edition was that it was the first time that models had been between the 18 and 19 percent of body mass index; it was a very important step for the “Cibeles parade”. 

In the 55 previous editions, there was almost always one model with anorexia or bulimia parading. This was a huge problem because fashion had influenced many children, especially girls that wanted to be as thin as the models without knowing the consequences. Thus plenty of people blamed fashion for anorexia. Therefore, they had a great challenge to overcome, they needed to stop that, no more anorexic people on parades!

In the Fashion Week of Milan we glimpsed the best things of Italian fashion. We observed parades from Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace… but one of the most surprising ones, was a parade were models were not especially thin and they were not ashamed of their body. Those women wore swimsuits and apparels, they were proud of their size and plenty of women must follow their example. This was a significant step for fashion; why do all models have to be thin?

It does not matter about your physical appearance, your wealth, your ideas… because fashion is on a higher level where you express your feelings, ideas, your personality, at the end of the day, it is an international language spoken by everyone.

Fofuchas

Hi to everybody! In this new post I’m going to talk about curious handmade dolls. They are called “Fofuchas” and they are made in a very easy way.

We all agree that when we are bored at home and we don’t know what to do, we usually take out the phone, use social networks or play videogames. Well, this is not the only opinion. Making handicrafts is another option, a very well one; and here I give you a choice.

The “Fofuchas” are made with EVA of different colours (which is a rubber material), plastic foam balls, sticks, bars of silicone and a gun to deliver it. As you can see, all these materials are not expensive and you can find all of them in a corner shop. There are silhouettes you can find on the Internet to make the shape of the clothes, you use the plastic foam balls to make the head, the body and the feet, and the sticks are needed to make the legs. Everything is stuck together with the silicone. Later, you draw the face. Here I leave you some videos in which the process is very well explained:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb5ZEJQzfqc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A6OB0Vv5bg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDxQSuei0jg

There are plenty of blogs in which these foam dolls are shown. The people want to exhibit their creations, some of them just for fun, however, others sell them. Some are expensive because of the work involved. The best thing is to make them yourselves, don’t you think?

http://todofofuchas.blogspot.com.es/p/fofuchas.html
http://fofuchasdemama.blogspot.com.es/
http://davinia-mispequenascosas.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/moldes-para-hacer-fofuchas-encontrados.html

The most amazing part, is personalizing them, so that they seem like the person it is for. You can characterize them in jobs or with additional accessories. You can make them the size you want, the colours you like… Just let your imagination flow through your hands.

These are some personal creations:

I encourage you to make one, what are you waiting for?