About Us

We are a Family of Three:

Lu -
Trilingual 12 yr. old guitar-playing, gourmet-cooking Son.

Cha -
British Green Builder Dad, and

Me (Gabi) -
Guatemalan Choreographer Mom

+ eight dogs and four cats.

We live in rural Guatemala, in a beautiful tree-full place, where we run an arts school for Mayan children and youth.

We love art, especially dance and music.

We love food and don't spend much money on anything else.

We do not subscribe to any form of organized religion.

We believe in enjoying life,
being aware,
and following dreams.

Although we do not "need" our son to go to a university
to fulfill our expectations of him,
we do want to keep his options open.

We believe that Education should be Liberating.

We homeschool because life is short, and we want to spend it with our favorite people (our family), in our favorite place (our home), learning together and participating in our son's discovery of the world.

We don't have many rules in our house, but we all participate in cleaning and cooking. We love watching movies and comedy shows, but we don't have cable. We use computers a lot, for work and for research, but our son doesn't spend more than an hour a day in front of the screen. We do some video games, but only weekends.

We don't have any decent hospitals nearby, which is a little scary sometimes, and we live in a hurricane-prone area. When our son was almost 3yo, a very big hurricane hit us, and we had to run for our lives - an event that greatly affected the way we choose to live.

We put much more effort into doing the things we like doing than doing things that make money. The downside is that we can't travel much, but we don't mind because we love where we live so much.

Our main goals for homeschooling are:

First - Love learning, feed curiosity and develop creativity.

Second - The Basics: growing and cooking food, running a house, punctuality, responsibility, dedication, focus, discipline, and being healthy.

Third - To understand the world physically and culturally.

Fourth - Develop money-making skills (back-up trades) based on the things you enjoy doing (in our son's case these are cooking, jewelry-making, running a small business, dance, and possibly therapeutic massage so far). These are things that come naturally/easily to him and don't need a university degree to practice.

Fifth - To pursue greatest passion(s) based on truest desires, without considering whether or not it will make lots of money. Know how to live frugally with back-up trades while becoming a specialist in area(s) of interest.

We believe (based on personal experience) that no matter how peculiar your passion may be, if you're good enough at it, and creative with it, your work will be valued. We also see the world coming into a new appreciation of creativity and innovation, and we're placing our bets on the increasing obsolescence of standardized education.