pescados malos

yesterday we took a smooth boat ride down the rio dulce and stayed at a neat hostel called finca tatin, it was run by an argentinian family who also live in nebraska during the school year. pretty awesome place to spend your summer vacations. we went kayaking and found a little creek into the jungle. i felt like and explorer. then we went to a hot spring and as i stepped in, a small fish, about 1.5 inches, nipped at this sore on my heal and i screamed bloody murder cause it kind of hurt, but mostly scared me. then i tried to step in again and anothe rbit me in the same exact spot! so i then refused to get into the hot spring.

today we went to a waterfall where the water below is cold but the waterfall is hot. kind of like a nice hot spa treatment. however it took me 15 minutes of contimplation to get in because i stuck my foot in, and all these feet came rushing over. i realize that they love the dry dead skin to eat. so gross. just two more days and i'll be home in lake washington, with no biting fish...

cacao tree, waterfalls.

jungle tour!

its great being back in guatemala. for one, its twice as cheap, and i was missing my eggs and frijoles.i had forgot about the guatemalan sounds of 6am roosters, wild dogs barking, and the catholic celebratory firecrackers... yesterday we took a jungle tour outside of livingston. livingston is an interesting city, probably the most diverse in guatemala because it is a port city with a mix of cultures. there are garifuna people, who are decended from slaves brought over by the english i believe. their language is a mixture of an african language, spanish, french, mayan, and english. there is a lot of reggae parafinalia and carribean culture in this area.

our tour took us on a little hike through the outskirts of the city, not really real jungle but in the forest area, and i guess that´s junglish. enough that i was sweating from every surface of my body, and bitten by enough bugs. we saw a hummingbird in its nest, a couple impressive ant hills, and strangely, some crabs in the forest. then we took a little canoe trip to a nice ocean beach and road some waves. after this we walked into the forest again and swam in los siete altares 'the 7 alters´. i jumped from a small waterfall, it was a lot of fun. tomorrow we venture out on yet another boat ride, this time i´m wearing my bathing suit...

tabacco caye

we didn´t make it on the sail boat trip,but we took a bus and a small boat out to an island that is about 4.5 acres big. it was tiny and cute with only a small snack shop and 3 restaurants. we stayed at a cute little place owned by an older couple and roomed near a family from the US i htink who now live in guatemala. tabacco caye was very laid back, all we did was read, swim, snorkel and sit on this dock in the sunshine. we did start a daily routine of icy fruity drinks at happy hour and watching the sunset.

traveling...in belize all the buses are chicken buses, or the old school buses. we did find one that was all supped up though and had air conditioning and a movie even. unfortunately with just 20 minutes left on a bus ride to a beach town called placencia, a small child, less that 2 years old decided to pee on the bus, and the pee decided to fall all over my foot. we changed seats and i washed my foot in the ocean the second i got off.

placencia...placencia is a beach town with about 12 miles of white sandy beach in belize. hey are constructing a lot of resorts and condos for rich foreigners but it isn´t quite built up yet. the beaches, unfortunately here and in guatemala are covered in garbage. plastic bottles, caps, soles of shoes and styrofoam. its quite sad and quite disgusting. we opted for sneaking into a pretty resort and using the swimming pool...

traveling...from belize we decided to take the carribean to return to guatemala. this made for interesting travels. as i sat on this small boat which was erroneosly labeled a ferry...the guy next to me smiles and says in english, ...ï guarantee, you aren´t going to like this...he was too right, although it was more humorous than miserable. once the boat starts, out come these large black tarps, and i realize that we hold the tarps up over our heads for an hour as this small boat rips through the ocean and salt water sprays at us with ever huge rocking wave. at least i didn´t get sea sick beacuse it would have been way to difficult to throw up. later we had to take our 3rd boat of the day to get to our destination, livingston. we opted for the larger boat. however this experience was no more fun and i ended up closing my eyes, clutching my bag and saying the lords prayer over and over in my head..followed by some dixie chicks. i did this to ward off a panic attack and puking from the crazy rolling waves which i was sure was going to capsize us.

we were relieved to arrive in livingston in one piece and on land, to say the least.

caye caulker

we arrived in belize in short time. it is strange to hear everyone speaking english and there are a more diversity of people here. the caribbean folk look african american and that makes it feel more like america too, obviously. its a little more modern and there are more american brands and itsmore pricey here too. we made some mac and cheese in the hostel last night. today we sat at the dock and on the beach and had huge yummy fruit smoothies until a huge 'hurricane' swept through for a brief storm. there is really amazing snorkeling and diving here. we almost signed up to get diving certified today, but the classes wouldnt start for anotherfew days and the prices are the same if not more than in the us. so we are going to snorkel with manitees, sting rey and the big fish and sea turtles! we may take a 3 day and 2 night sail boat trip from our island down to placencia in southern belize. if you don't hear from me...hopefully that's what i'm doing.

more from semuc champey...

i thought that all of guatemala was mountains, but luckily...as we approached tikal, we discovered some flat land. just in time cause i´ve been getting car sick on all the windy roads in all the tiny shuttle buses. plus this annoying large european man was sitting behind me with his knees in my back and then pouted that i nearly chopped his toe off because he wasn´t paying attention. guatemalan´s are pretty tiny people, and cars don´t really fit anyone bigger than me. all the travelers so far have been in their 20s. i´ve only seen 2 families. i think its because its summer break... tomorrow we´re going to belize for some beach time!

tikal

today we woke up at 430am...this early rising business has been a trend, but its ok because its way cooler in the mornings and we got a start on most of the tourists. we visited tikal, a huge mayan ruins with several temples and plaza areas. tikal means something like echoes, or sounds and between some of the pyramids you can clap and it makes this cool twang noise. one temple was estimated by our guide to take like 50 years to make. our guide showed us how during the summer and winter equinox, the sun shines right through the middle of the temples, and there are 356 steps in one of them, obviously the mayans had some major arcitectural planning skills. we climbed up most of the ruins and one was really steep almost like a ladder. i was kind of scared and went down real real slow. i could hear the locals above me comment, que lenta (how slow...) haha. oh well, i wasn´t about to fall. i can´t imagine carrying bricks up that high to build those.

we also saw. tarantula, ant eater, guatemalan jungle racoon thing, snakes, frog, parrot, toucan, quetzal (national bird), howler monkey, and spider monkies. pretty cool.

bat caves

our last day in lanquin, we took inner tubes down this river that is the color of jade. you can see the green junglish mountains along the way and a few cows grazing and some kids playing in the water. we met a couple from seattle and a guy from canada who went down the river with us. the canadian kept running into trees for some reason.

later we went on a tour of the cave in lanquin, they aren´t sure how many kilometers it goes according to the guide, who was an 18 year old jokester, so i´m not sure i trust him, they don´t know how far it goes. we saw places where the mayans do a lot of spiritual ceremonies and they had some hokie signs up where they would try to say that some rock formation looked like the virgin mary, but really to me it just looked like a rock... we had to do a bit of ¨bouldering¨ in the caves and that was fun. a little scary, but fun. then at the end, at the time when the bats leave, we stood and were swarmed by bats! it was crazy, with the shadows it seemed like twice as many, but i´m sure there were atleast one thousand. pretty cool.

i´m posting a picture of the hostels guatemalan fiest. i had vegetarian cause the sign for meat said huevos del toro, aka bull balls, but it was a joke, cause i didn´t see any. the food was yummy.

semuc from the look out point...more to come when internet is working...

el retiro, a lanquin y semuc champey

yesterday we took an 8 hour bus ride with a bunch of israeli´s and finally ended up in lanquin. i have developed a cold, which for a solid half day was convinced was gengue fever...however my hypochrondriac tendencies have fallen because i´m not spewing blood, and i have a runny nose which is not a symptom. i think its because of the rapid change from 60 degrees and raining to 80 or 90 and humid. also last night after dinner while having a beer at la tienda, you have to stay to give them back the bottle...i felt like i was going to pass out. so i sat on the floor for like 10 minutes, the cute four year old girl who´s family owns the store sat down across from me and waved and smiled the entire time. then a bug stung my right big toe.

it is much more like i imageined guatemala over in these parts. very tropical and beautifully green and mountains galour. we are staying at an awesome hostel that looks like a resort with little thatched roofed bungalow huts, tropical flowers, on the river, with a yummy and reasonably priced restaurant and bar. the owner of the bar is from baltimore, she worked in software engineering after college, then moved to belize, met a lovely carribean man and opened this bar in paradise. pretty cool. although, don´t worry, í´m not really interested in following suit. i was just laying in a hamock and a mini cow cam up and licked my leg. because i´m feeling sick, we decided to stay here an extra day. we went to semuc champey national park and pools this morning and swam and hiked. it was pretty gourgeous to say the least. tomorrow we´re going to go caving with bats!

cemetary, volcano, hot hot lava!

antigua

Yesterday Elizabeth and I arrived in Antigua, a really cute city that feels much more modern, and touristy with walk ways full of botique like stores, ice cream, international food restaurants, markets, and lots of hostels and hotels. we are staying at the ¨jungle party¨hostel.

this morning we went up volcan pacaya, there are 33 volcanoes in guatemala. 3 are active and this is definately one of the active ones. it was a tough hike up filled with pokey sharp lava boulders (one which scraped up my leg) but its not too bad. then we walked on the lava where you can see in crevices right below you, the red heat. and you can feel heat coming up from the ground, and warm gusts of strong wind. then a big wave of hot lava cam and we got to see it. some people pocked it with sticks and it catches on fire real quick. i was about 10ft close i think. not hot enough that my shoes melted, but it seemed pretty warm to me. then on the way down we basically just slid and or elegantly fell down the lava rocks, i´ve never been snow boarding but it fel kind of like it. only when the big rocks roled on you..it hurt kind of. at the bottom we emptied our shoes of lava gravel. quite an adventure. tomorrow we´re leaving for semuc champey and the natural pools which are supposedly one of the most beautiful natural sites in guatemala.

a visit to sakrahal

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we visited sakrahal this week. here is the first church to be built in central america via the spanish. also we saw the process of the textiles that are made for the traditional mayan dress. (the dye, the coloring, the drying and weaving) i thought you crafty ladies would appreciate the handy work, all by hand... and a lot of work. they also took us to this place with this specialty alcohol which was gross)
later in the day we had a lecture in spanish regarding the differences in the criminal justice systems in guatemala. in the constitution it states that the mayan people can maintain and protect their cultural traditions. so they can have a different justice system within their small pueblo towns. it is very different with communal decisions, reparations, and sometimes corporal punishment, but also the worse punishment is banishment from the town. the modern system that counters it is much like ours, but probably more corrupt and slower. my studies end today and we have a celebration dinner.tomorrow i leave on a 7am shuttle to antigua, a city named for its ancient-ness, or antiquity? it used to be the capitol, until it was wiped out by am earthquake.

lago atitlan, rio de los calles (flash flood on my street)

my street, fruits, at the hotsprings...

el lago atitlan

on friday we took the chicken bus, the cheapest route to a touristy lake town called panahachel. the trip was about 3 hours by chicken, which is really just an old yellow school bus painted bright colors and where the seating is usually three adult passengers per old rickety seat. we ate at a restaurant owned by a good old gringo from texas. strangely the sandwhich (it was probalby the mayo) made my stomache queeze a little, the first of my stay in guatemala. later we went out to a night club aka, la discoteca. which has an exciting end because they close at one am. with three flahsing police cars, and police officers armed wtih huge guns. of course us silly tourists, thinking this is a little absurbed, asked to take pictures with the cops. and i now have a photo with la policia de panahachel, and a huge semi-automatic. later they told us we could sneak back into the club, but we had to keep the lights off and there was actually a look out man, and the police came and nocked on the door. kind of stupid, and it was boring so we left (it was completely safe...).

the next day we rose at 8am to find the amazing sunshine! a first and greatly appreciated. we took a boat across the lake to a town called san marcos, where we stayed at a fancy hotel (20 dollars us) that was right on the lake. we went swimming and ate lunch and sat in the sauna. the following day we tried to catch the sunrise but kind of missed it and mostly saw dawn on the lake which is gorgeous, then we ate our ¨continental breakfast¨¨ which turned out to be just toast and coffee. lame. them for some kayaking to see the fancy mansions on the lake, mostly owned by foreigners, and fancy hotels populated by foreigners. i met an italian and an american family who now live there.some more swimming. then on the walk back some boys seemingly tried to rob my friend. she was behind us and then all of a sudden i saw her running and they were behind her...luckily (i like to take credit) i have a quick scream reflect and yelled something liek a ÄAAYYYYYYYYYYYY¨and i think i scared them, cuase the bolted in the other direction. no harm done. i only had some dirty clothes to steal and a bottle of water, so i wasn´t so concerned. later we took the boat back and caught the bus home just in time, through the windy crazy mountains...

comments before i take off to the lake for the weekend.

1. pictures to come.
2. there´s something strange about the water, or my organic travel size shampoo that makes my hair look like a greasy drowned rat.
3. i´m pretty sure i electricuted myself a little while turning off the shower the other day. there´s a light switch to make it warm. i think i did the wrong order...
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJalFcV5yjU mi abuelito sang this song for me, and i told my teacher. i can now sing all the verses....
5. michael jackson, so sad, there´s a tribute to him tonight in the parque central.

aguas calientes

yesterday the afternoon trip was to a hotsprings ouside of a small pueble se llama nudil. the hot spring itself was kind of silly, looked more like a concrete pool and these locals were obviously laughing at us a bit, however the surrounding tropical rainforest setting was beautiful. although elizabeth was clearly wrong when she thought that she saw bananas growing on the palm trees...that´s what happens when someone from arizona leaves the desert.

i started taking salsa classes at a school in town, i paid for 5 lessons so i better go. its pretty fun. i´m learning the chica and chico´s part. there are lots of discotecas to practice some salsa and spanish. last night i watched a bad hugh grant movie in spanish with spanish subtitles, played jenga with my hermanita, and ates some really greasy empañadas. today for lunch i had something very similar to jook, and this radish salad thing. it was good.

tomorrow i´m taking the chicken bus with a couple other students and we are headed to lake atitlan for the weekend! que bueno!

En español ahora

en lunes yo empeze mis clases de español, hace dos dias y yo pienso que estoy mejorando. pero a tu beneficio yo puedo escribir en ingles... for the next two weeks i will have 5 hours of spanish instruction per day. it goes by really fast actually, a lot more fun than i was expecting. mi maestra se llama gabby. she´s really nice and pretty forgiving of my mistakes. yesterday they said it was a storm coming but then it was sunny in the afternoon. guatemala has two estaciones, winter, and summer...now is winter but really its just the rainy season. hoy yo leì una libro sobre la lluvia.

i have class at 8am every morning. yesterday i had to eat a fried egg, as much grease as egg, and it reminded me of my homestay in china....but fortunately today i just had scrambled eggs and frijoles. in the afternoons we have little activities. yesterday because of the rain it was a documentary about the mining in guatemala and some community organizing, very social workesque. and today we went to a chocolateria. guatemala grows cacau trees and exports a small percent of the coco for our chocolate. we got some samples. but i might have to return to try the chile chocolate. they told us all about the history of chocolate and the mayans, etc. tonight i´m going with two classmates to a salsa class. my abuelita challenged me to a game of jenga, this was after a 5 minute lunch discussion on how i am muy seria, ´¨very serious¨´ compared to most of the students...the whole 6 of us eat lunch together and today the dad enjoyed mimicking the other americans by waving his hands and making squeeky noises..apparently i´m not like this, instead muy seria como buddha...they are slightly obsessed with discussing china now. slightly racist but its not really offensive, mostly funny. apparenlty soy una chinita mas que una gringa...

pictures from the market and hike....

numero tres

it rained alllll day. but was a good day because i moved to my new place and have an awesome view of the entire city. my new house is a little more modest, no washer dryer and clothes are hanging to dry everywhere outside my room. my new family consists of the following people...

juan carlos, la papa- he picked me up and like five minutes in asked me if i was philipina and then guessed that i was chinese, surprisingly... this sparks the conversation of the afternoon. in 1999 juan carlos took buses and a ten day trip,...a horrible trip through mexico and snuck across the border. he lived in houstan for 2 years working in construction, at a restaurant, a night club, and i think some sort of curtain company and a cuffling or button factory. the best part was when he goes on this huge tangent describing the chinos en housten who he worked with. he had some great impressions of how los chinos eat and talked, they didn´t speak enlglish or spanish...and how they were very polite. juan carlos got married at 18 and has 3 kids. he told me i could marry a guatemalteco, because he knows a priest in florida who married one.

erica, la mama- got married at age 16 and at 18 had daniel. she called herself the chef, and i asked her if i could learn to cook some meals. her parents are mayan and she can understand quiche, one of the 25 indigenous dialects of guatemala, but can´t speak it.

alma, la abuelita-she talks to me using my name as much as possible instead of ¨tu¨or ÿou¨ maybe because everyone loves the fact that the can now pronounce my name due to the infamous, and my new enemy...hannah montana...alma´s mother was from italy, but she has never traveled there. she has 6 brothers and sisters all nearby.

rel? i can´t remember, la abuelo de juan carlos- is 80 years old. but looks pretty good. likes to ask me questions, but talks too fast for me.

pela, mi hermana menor-age 12, one a two weeks break from school. she doesn´t think that abercrombie and fitch is cool despite what her father tries to tell her...

daniel, mi hermano menor-age 14, wears a backwards baseball cap and doesn´t think that northface is cool despite what his father tells him, so i had to confirm that it was an acceptable brandname. somehow he´s no longer in school but works, not sure what typep of job yet.

fernando, mi hermanito menor-age 4, i haven´t seen him yet because he was napping.

i´m pretty excited to be living with this family, they like to chat and i can understand them more or less.

dia numero dos.

Last night we decided to go on a hike to Santa Maria Volcon, a volcano outside of Xela that overlooks another volcano which errupts regularly. So after, going to the discoteca last night, where the dancing was ok but could have been better, we got up at 400am. our host mom was nice enough to get up and make us breakfast and then drive us to the school to meet the divinity kids and the finland lady who is a 25 year old dentist...you learn a lot about people during a 6 hour hike...and we picked up some other kids from other schools and drove to the mt. base. it was a tough hike in the clouds and with misty rain a lot of the time. one of the guys from the other school is a UW medical student, he was pretty cool. we had some interesting conversations wtih everyone along the way. and got some good travel tips and places to go.

At the top of the volcanoe we got to see the other vocanoe errupt! it was pretty cool, the clouds kept rolling in and out. much to my horror, my host mom had packed us a sandwhich made of some sort of chopped up bologna substance, chopped peppers, celery and worst of all....mayonaise. but i was starving so i ate it anyways...so far the food hasn´t been anything to write home about. for some reason the tortillas my host mom makes are greenish grey colored. not sure why, but the food is pretty good.

after the hike it really began to rain. the rain hasn´t been too hard but is steady, and there is a lack of street drains. so we wear sandals and wade through the brown streams and get splashed by the buses... i´m going to be really sore tomorrow from the hike, but the views were definitely worth it. there´s a place called queztal trekkers that does tons of excursions like this that we are going to check out for next weekend.

Dia numero uno.

Finalmente, with only 5 quetzales in my pocket, I´m sitting at the school computer lab while it pours rain outside, its the rainy season here... I have no money because my atm card is locked in a safe that will not be accessable until monday. oops. anyways. day one, after a 6 hour flight, 9 hours wandering the houstan airport, 3 hours flight, and 5 hour busride...we made it to quetzaltanengo, guatemala. or ¨xela¨ as some call it. For this weekend, becasue the other houses are full, Elizabeth, my travel buddy and I are in the same host family, with one other american student, 3 guatemalan students, 3 children ages 2 to 6, David, Daniel, y NIcolita. but you have to say that with the accents casue its way cuter that way. they are very sweet and its great. muchto the children´s detriment, we have taken over their bedroom and snoopy comforters for the weekend. Tomorrow I´ll get a new host home.

Yesterday morning we went to San Fransisco Mercado, a Friday market in a city outside of Xela. The market was surprisingly similar to those in rural china. Meaning, crazy with toiletries, street food, beautful veggies, fruits, cow heads, stomach, brains, fish, clothes, pretty colorful textiles that the indigenous women wear, electornics, baby chicks, puppies, cows, pigs, etc. it was fun but I was a little too overwelmed to buy anything just yet.

Despues del mercado, we took the ¨chicken¨bus back to Xela and Elizabeth and I explored the city a bit, mostly meaning we got lost and wandered around. We did see the central parque, and I found a chinese restaurant but have yet to try it. Today this guy told us about this Taiwanese Empenanda place taht is apparently delicious. You dip the empanada in a soy sauce mix, i´m excited to try it.

Xela is a smallish city but there are many other language schools and not a lack of foreigners. Later that night there was a dinner at the school to celebrate those graduating and those new arrivals. we had a stew, and tamales. after dinner there were some people doing salsa and i purchased a litre of beer at the corner store to share. the other students are all about in their twenties from all over. the best are 4 silly southerners from duke divinity school. who i have all sorts of stereotypes about but are actualloy really cool and kind of funny. A girl from Iceland and I had a little talk about socialism as we hiked today. Its neat to meet all the interesting travelors, even though we talk way too much in English, Elizabeth and I are trying really hard to keep it to the Espanol though. pictures may follow later, i can´t figure out the usb...