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...