Guatemala

Since the leaving drinks were over so early Chelsea and I slept in. I wanted to but her tuc tuc (like a 3 wheeled bicycle but with a motor and roof) driver showed up at 7.30am and made a racket under my window. I turned around again and emerged from my room somewhere around 9am. Chelsea was already up and watching TV. Ema and the rest of family were out and about. I had breakfast and than we both just chilled and watched TV. Later on we decided to take the bus to Antigua because we wanted to change money, book up a seat for the shuttle to the beach for the next day and a trip for the next weekend. We walked over the market and than in the street bumped again into her tuc tuc driver. He kept on babbling forever so we missed going to the bank since it was closed. Chelsea has been sick for a while and decided to get some medicine here. The pharmacy we were in was well stocked and she got what she needed. Isaak stayed with us and I wanted to go on on line so I did that and afterwards we sat in a patio and had a drink. So far the best smoothie ever and definitely worth the 20Q! I´ll be going back there. WE walked back to the bus stop and once back at home. Ema and Mario showed up from a visit with relatives. Mario and Milton went to church since it is the yearly Mormon meeting partly also in Jucotenango. Ema fixed us dinner and we had a little chat. Chelsea tried to call a friend no luck so since she had never gone out before on a Saturday and we only knew that it would be crowded we were debating if we should go yes or no. In the end it took us forever to find an empty tuc-tuc to get into town. We met a real fun crowd of 10 people and ended up sticking with them for various bars. The best part was that they couldn´t´t remember anymore where they had parked their car and the running joke is now ¨Dude where is my car?¨ They had come from the City just for the night. In the end it was Alex, Alex, Paulo and us two who headed for the City together. I would class where we are staying around middle class (mid section). The fact that this group was paying with credit cards, had been abroad frequently gave me an indication that they were well to do same goes for the car. Cars are a status symbol here! Chelsea and me only looked at each other once we saw the place from Alex - it was awesome! Chelsea didn´t sleep at all, while we all crashed for an hour of sleep more or less. Got to meet Alex´s brother as well Nikolas and his friend. Basically we had the music so loud that it woke them and we all had good laughs until 6am. Once we all were awake more or less and were dressed they took us to a restaurant to get some food since we had ransacked the fridge in the morning hours. They drove us back to Jocetenango. We all had forgotten that due to Eastern all the processions are going on and to get into Antigua was something that took forever. They dropped us off at our door step and we got the cell phone numbers to call. It might be interesting therefore to meet up again. Alex is a darling he gave us an old mobile of his and I will buy a SIM card tomorrow and than we are finally mobile since we didn´t have our home phone number with us to call Ema to tell her that we would be staying out over night. Alex speaks pretty good German as does Paulo and we had some good laughs!
Now I am freshly showered and had a change of clothes. When I get back to the house wonder if Chelsea managed to reach Enzo who owns her a dinner at his restaurant for being his good luck charm at poker o,) Would suit us perfectly since we are short cash in local currency!

Guatemala in general here in this area doesn´t even come close to what is described in on the web pages of the Foreign Ministry. People are very friendly and so far on one had a story to tell where anything had happened to them. I am glad that I am not blond since that means they get the whistles, cat calls and the 3 top questions here are what is your name, how old are you, got a boy-friend or such if yes than comes in that case we could be ¨amigos speciales¨ wand otherwise they just bug you. The climate is easy to adjust to and I have gotten already a bit of color. My stomach isn´t acting up and I am not sticking to everything 100% like brushing my teeth with bottled water e.g. For them the weather here is a really odd because it is really hot here during mid day and than at night it cools down (they get their heavy sweaters out, jackets; we tourists are mostly fine with a light blouse) and we already had our first rainy afternoon. That is for them very unusual since it isn´t winter yet! Here in Jocotenango I am finally getting my bearings since in the beginning the four colors made it kind of difficult to make sure were you are going since none of us look at street names. We get around by picking up landmarks o

We girls had a drink and than it was time again to start walking back to the bus stop. The buses here are such fun. If you would have a car you can travel the distance in 10 minutes but by bus since you just flag it when you want to hop on takes forever and you just hope that your calculation is right. I got home and Chelsea was already waiting for me and we had lunch together. Time to pack the books again and go off to school. Bianca came by to pick us up. She is still trying to find the right crowd to hang with. I don't really understand why she isn't hanging with the guys she lives with since there are also more students. Oh well, she is nice but we just don't click. Before the lessons we asked Vilma if we could change our classes to morning giving us more time to do fun stuff in the afternoon. I won't have Zeneida as teacher anymore but someone else but we are able to change. Perfect! During break time it is time to plan the evening or the weekend in this case. Camilla wanted to go out with her Norwegian crowd and Bianca went with her for all I know. Chelsea and me went past Heidi's place to check on the time we were supposed to meet for the bye-bye drinks from Wilda. We had 10 minutes to change and off we were to Antigua (left a note for our Mum so that she wouldn't prepare dinner for us). We met the other girls in the square and than went of to the restaurant. Camillo showed up briefly just pull the disappearing act on us later on. We had dinner and wanted to continue on to a bar with a table to fit a crowd of 7-8 people. We ended up in a former bar now lounge thing which wasn't ideal since we were all about to fall asleep. In the end we decided to just have one drink and move on. The crowd started splitting up since some had trips booked which had pick-up times like 3.30am so they went home. Chelsea and me decided to chill on Saturday and said we will continue on. Wilda, Heidi and the two of us went to "Monoloco" and bumped into some more guys there. One of them was the crazy American - we have still no idea what his name is but just sing " follow the leader, leader .." s an inside joke. Wilda was starting to get mad at her "brother" Chino for not showing. Camillo turned up again and said that Jaime had to got to the City to pick him up because his car had broken down. In the end the place closed don and we continued on to the after party place. That was a different experience. Open place and a make shift bar but lots of people and fires and grills ... was funny we got to chat with people and than Wilda got the call from Chino that they were outside ready to pick us up. We piled into the car - 2 passenger seat, 4 backseat! It was lots of bye-bye saying and by 1.30am I was to bed.
Time to run ...

Yesterday I was awake very early and enjoyed sleeping in and being lazy. Ema was really funny because I once I ha taken my shower she was already telling me that my breakfast was waiting for me O I had hardly time to get dressed. I just can´t believe how much food they feed you here. I am not eating so much since I don´t sport here and all we do is walk a lot. I am for standards here very tall but nobody believes me when I say that my age is 29 they all put me at age 20-23 maximum. In the morning her daughter with 4 kids showed up and we all chatted for a while. I was reading a book for a while but than couldn't´t be asked anymore and waited for Chelsea to come back from her project for lunch, It was our first talk and it was a relief to chat in English for a change. At 2pm we went to school and we have total 4 hours with 30 minutes break. The organization went a bit wrong so my teacher showed up out of breath and had to improvise my lesson but it was fun and my head was swimming with all the effort. Right now the first language that comes to my mind is always Dutch - such a pain - than English and than Spanish. After school we went for a quick drink and than everyone went home. Chelsea was waiting for a phone call from her boy-friend and was hopping around like a little nutcase! After dinner wen went out and collected everyone for going into Antigua. It was a chance to see the accommodations from other students and we have middle range compared to others and we have got our own room - no sharing! Yesterday it was ladies night if you had an invite and wore a orange T-Shirt. We were meeting with other students there and by the end everyone was pretty drunk. We had real good fun. From the Europeans there are lots of Scandinavian people around, heard some Belgian ... Got home by 1.10am and woke up around 6am again. Chelsea is sick so I had breakfast on my own. I am now in Antigua with Bianca and Camilla and we are about to die of thirst so ti8me to do something about that!

Have some catching up to do.
Wednesday mornign at 2.30am NYC time the alarm went off and Robil got up with me (guess you´ll be getting to used to that soon o,). Thank you so much for letting me stay with and for the short but fun time with you and for getting to know you both a bit better. The shuttle was on time and all except for one person was ready to go so in the end I arrived at JFK 4.15am. The check-in desks were closed but also the electronic one´s ... opening around 4.45am I was one of the first one´s to check in and than I was walking through a really empty airport - strange feeling! Other than that had a seat wrote a bit, read a bit and no still didn´t have the nerve to figure out how the ipod works. Had a very annoying guy sittign next to me who was constantly moving around and no chance to catch up on some sleep. In Atlanta I went hunting for an adapter with USB cabel otherwise the whole ipod issue is a joke but no luck, Also no Dunkin´ Donuts to be had so settled for a huge smoothie. Walked over to he gate since I had arrived with 45 minutes delay due to fog in Atlanta. You electronically ¨check-out¨ by left/right index finger scan and picture, get a receipt and than give your partly green card to teh airline agent. That was new to me! The plane to Guatemala city was pretty full. BUiness class in that plane was a bit of a joke since people have to be rather small to appreciate the space ... o OH well, the food was okay but the movie and headset a joke. I was hoping that ¨Harry Potter and the goblets of fire¨ woudl put me to sleep but no chance. OH well, so here I am tired but sleep not forthcoming. Flying in to Guatemala City the pilot did a nice turn and we saw everything from the city center to the poor parts. The customs was great fun. I should have expected that one look in the passport would trigger an avalanche of sPanish. THe baggage claim was the strangest I have seen so far. Three planes had arrived and all teh luggage was being dumped on the same conveyer belt. The good thing was though that I had a priority sticker on mine and it was there and in one piece (I got told later that it was a miracle since normally bags disappear and reappear 2-7 days later). Getting out of teh airport was a marathon because you are being justled from all sides. I was tryign tow read all those signs but not the one that I was looking for about 45 minutes later I had Lionel standing behind me. He already had to Norwegian girls in the car. I got to sit in front and had an excellent view on the sceneray. The first thing that I noticed was that people drive like mad here and that some of teh buses would be banned in Europe with that pollution they cause. People are very friendly here. Lionel let us make phone call home to say that we are okay. Mami, das war echt uebel DEine Stimme zu hoeren, denn dann bricht das Heimeh aus und davor hatte ich es unter Kontrolle! IN Antigua after about 45 minutes we got dropped of at our host families. I got to meet Ema and her son MIlton (who speaks a few words of English). I got a glass of water, dumped my bag in my room and Ema took me to teh school. I got introduced to Vilma. We had a chat and she told me that she had expected me the day before - guess communication broke down somewhere! So anyay Vilma walked me back to my house and I could finally change clothes. During the day right now it gets as hot as 30 degrees but at night it cools down to 15 degrees. She showed me where the bus station is, where to walk at certain times and what to avoid. We went into Antigua and I exchnaged money for teh local currency. Lots of new impressions and my mind was in a whirl. I tried to get my bearings but it was all one mix. We sat in a restaurnat for a drink and nachos with real guacemole - yummy!!! By the time we got back to my family it was around 9pm here (they are 1 hour behind NYC time). Ema warmed up the soup for me and I had a little sandwich. The other thing is here they are worried of not feeding you enough so the portions are huge for me. I got to meet Mario. By the tme my head hit the pillow it was after 10pm and I was dead beat.

Vilma had told me that I was allowed to sleep in today. So I did just that and forced myself to sleep longer. I woke up around 7am because of teh noise outside sounded like a car had misfired but later I was told had to do with birthdays and something being fired. Took a shower in the smallest bathroom I have ever seen in my life. The water was kind of cold but once you get used to it it is okay. My room is facing the street but is the coolest in the whole house which is great. Chelsea is stayign there as well. The car is parked out front my door. REally funny!

I´ll continue later now have to run since it is dinner time here. The writing is full with spellign erros but this is teh stickiest keyboard that I have ever come across ... but at least the internet is kind of quick!