woke up at 7am.  breakfast was oatmeal, pan, and banana.  we met theresa at the corner near our house and walked to the minerva terminal to meat cathy and leah.  we boarded a chicken bus that dropped us off just bast salcaja and walked the 4km uphil to san andreas xecul.  we passed cow herds, farmers, and a little church with a frighteningly dirty outhouse.  as we walked, we met people who didn´t speak spanish, only the native Ki´che language.

at the top of the hill, the procession was just ending at the bright, canary yellow church.  all eyes turned to us– the ridiculous looking foreigners.  after the procession and a brief rest in the church, we set out to find cold water and bathrooms.  by the time we finished, the sun was beating down on us, so we opted to pay Q2 each to ride in the back of a pickup truck back down the mountain to the bus stop.  back in xela, tram and i stopped to try pollo campero, a famous fried chicken spot in central america.  the place was packed, but we found a table and proceeded to chow down on the salty goodness.  i got a kids meal and ended up with a flan and a funny bubble toy with the pollo campero logo emblazoned on it.  cheap souvenier! hahaha.  tram got a chocolate dipped ice cream covered in nuts.  muy rico!

we wandered parque centrale for souveniers and scarves, but came out empty handed and lusting after the chocolate covered mangos on a stick that were so prevalent in the food booths.

back at home, we studied in the kitchen, tram perfected her pronunciation with eduardo and i tried in vain to learn more verbs.  around 7, we went to try a taco shop that advertised 3 tacos for Q10 (1.30).   so good! tram and i each had 6 tacos and a watered down horchata. on the way back home we got so many whistles and honks that we ended up powerwalking/sprinting down the street and were home in record time.

woke up at 615am to shower, left the house armed only with a luna bar, a few quetzales, my camera, and my phone.  tram and i arrived at adrenalina tours in parque centrale a bit early, so we ran to mcdonalds for juice.  tram ended up getting an egg mcmuffin breakfast which she describe as ¨comparable¨to those in the states.  our little shuttle bus took us 45 minutes up a mountain past checkered plots of farmland and sulfurous patches of smoke coming from the mountainside.  the hot springs are nestled in the side of a mountain surrounded by lush greenery and filled with steam from the baths.  i had no interest in swimming with the masses or rubbing hot sulfurous clay on my face, so tram and i wandered the property taking pictures and soaking in the fog.  after a while, the other girls came out of the pool, so we sat at the restaurant and spent the rest of our time chatting.  ¨La bomba¨ came on over the loud speaker and we danced in our chairs.  ¨Girls just wanna have fun¨ was next — it was a surreal experience.

back in xela, we grabbed mcpatatas from mcdonals to settle our stomachs (the ride down was nauseating) and then went home for lunch.  our abuela made us a traditional egg wrapped fish, tortillas, and frijoles which we quickly inhaled and ran back to parque centrale for another outing that never happened.  we got as far as taking a minibus from ave 14 to the minerva terminal but then turned back in fear that we wouldn´t have a bus home in the dark.

at 530am, i finally stopped hitting the snooze bar on my phone, got up, showered, and headed to parque centrale to see the many alfombra (multi colored carpets made from sawdust) and the processions. after photographing the church and alfombres, we met up with a few classmates and stepped into McDonalds to escape from the early morning chill with some hot chocolates.

after the first procession, we stopped by a chocolate shop/cafe and then to a flower shop on the way home. we bought bouquets for our abuela, who immediately arranged them in vases and stuck them on the top of the fridge.

connie, another DO student, joined us for a late breakfast at the globosinas choco-latte cafe. we chatted about a million things and forgot about studying.

lunch back at the house was cilantro and bean soup, egg-fried green beansand more tortillas.

after lunch, we played english/spanish word games with the kids for bubble yum and chocolate covered altoids.

we went back to parque central in the evening to attend a procession that was to include the kids from our host family. we parked ourselves back in the same choco-latte cafe and ordered drinks. tram spent her time journalling, and i tried to write an entry all in spanish… but i had not yet learned the past-tense, so it sounded ridiculous. afterwards, i broke out my verb flash cards for some much needed practice.

the crowd outside in parque centrale slowly grew until the parque and all the streets leading into it was filled with people standing shoulder to shoulder.  street vendors waded through the masses, seling domino´s pizza by the slice, sodas, fresh fruit, water, ice cream, light up toys, candy floss, guatemalan sweets, and all sorts of other goodies.  huge, brightly lit floats carried by hundreds of youths bounced by our cafe, creating a night spectacle that was reminicent of the rose parade, las vegas, and the disney electrical parade all rolled into one.  i kept waiting for a giant catepillar to roll by.

while we sat at the cafe, a young guatemalan girl watched us and slyly took photos of us with her camera phone.  i say ¨hola¨, she smiles and shys away. ¨como te llamas?¨nothing.  she runs off, and comes back with a paper and pen.  when we scribble in our journals, i see her watching us out of the corner of my eye.  when i look up at her, she looks down at her paper and pretends to write on her scrap of paper. we eventually get a picture with her, and when the parade ends, we run off into the night, barely avoiding the rain storm that is coming.

tram had her class switched to the morning today, so i slept in, took a leisurely shower, and sat down to a quiet traditional jueves santos breakfast of sweetened garbanzo beans, egg bread, and hot chocolate.

i walked to school to study and to use the internet fro the first time since i arrived in guatemala.  not suprisingly, my email box was overflowing (i don´t want to see what´s happening to my bloglines).  suprisingly, i had no internet withdrawal symptoms.  i´m just that busy.

at about 2, i sat down to lunch at the escuela.  the teachers had made an avocado salad, grilled meats, veggies, tortillas, and other goodies for us.   later, gaby (mi maestra), tammy, her maestra, and i walked to the parque benito juarez to watch the procession.  i love how tammy calls cotton candy ¨candy floss¨.  after the procession, we wandered the parque and tammy made friends with a couple girls from chi chi who giggled at every word she said.

afterwards, tammy and i met tram to attend a concert that our host family´s kids were performing in for holy week.  they sang, we took pictures.  it was cute. all i remember was the chorus, ¨jesus christe, yo estoy a qui!¨

at home, dinner was chow mein made from scratch by our abuela.  it was a welcome change to the frijoles.  tram and i broke out our cameras, took some pictures, and then sat down to look at their family photos.

after a morning breakfast of french toast and maple syrup, we found that our abuela had spent the morning cleaning our shoes and had left them out to dry.  saved!

we loaded up our laundry and headed out to school to drop it off at the laundry service.  then… we made the mistake of hiking across town in the blistering heat to the new mall, la pradera.  it was a very westernized mall, puma and lacoste dominated at scary western prices.  in the food court, there was a taco bell, burger king, subway, and pollo campero.

exhaused and sunburned, we made our way back to mont blanc for blankets, fruits, a shower curtain, and other supplies at paiz.

afternoon spanish classes were cut short by an hour in order for us to attend a lecture on the rights of the maya.

the walk home was thankfully uneventful, as was dinner — mashed frijoles and plantains.

this morning´s breakfast was sad, stale nesquick chocolate cereal and bananas, sin leche, as usual.  we met tammy, a nurse from new zealand, at the escuela before heading out to xela´s first mall, mont blanc.  mont blanc is a multi store mini-mall with an attached Paiz supermarket.  we wandered all the little stores looking at zapatos, hiking gear, and random other things.  i bought a cheap watch (as may be the tradition with all my travels from now on!) and tram bought gigantic sunglasses to shield her from the masses of dust clouds the trucks make as the speed down the street.  i however, have my trusty target brand jack bauer sunglasses to keep me safe.  thank god for giganto shades!

we fell in love with paiz, our connection to the civilized world.  dove soap, hanes socks, and all the convieniences we could ask for.  maybelline, anyone? a new blanket?  fuji apples? me gusta!

i stopped at helados pops to try their famed ice cream.  Q10 (1.30) bought be an obcenely chocolatey brownie sundae covered in hot fudge and whipped cream.  next time, i´ll try the mora ice cream.  looks tasty in all it´s purple goodness.  we were on our way to the next shopping center, but we thought we were going the wrong way (not so!), so we headed back home to study and eat instead.

while we were studying in our room i heard a  =slap, slap= coming from the kitchen.  i went out to see what was going on — mi abuela was making tortillas!  she let us help, and soon i was patting out my own (retarded looking) corn tortillas.

lunch was the misshapen tortillas, asparagus soup, and a traditional guatemalan chicken and pork dish in a red sauce served with white rice.  yum.

we went back to school at 2, but around 4 it began to rain.  by 530, the rain had still not let up, so we donned trash bags with a hole cut in the top for our heads and ran out into the night.  we dodged cars and waded though ankle-deep rivers in the street all the way home.  our shoes were soaked through, so we left them for dead with mi abuela and basked in the glow of a hot shower.

dinner was mashed frijoles, tortillas, and an egg patty filled with rice.

we woke up to a breakfast of heart shaped pancakes, syrup, and coffee. tram asked if she could have some orange juice, so our little abuela broke out some oranges and squeezed them on the spot! so cute! we took pictures, of course.

we sprinted to school, thinking we´d be late, but then proceeded to wait and chat with the other students for about 30 minutes before orientation began. the entire orientation was in spanish, with some people helping to translate for the newbies. the medical student lecture had no translators, though and at one point one of the lecturers began talking about jung/piaget and the universe…. and i got lost. lunch back at home was noodle soup and beef stew. at 2pm, we came back to school for our first 4 hour lesson. my teacher is young, only 20 years old, and a student at the nearby university. i wrote down verbs, nouns, and stumbled though a conversation in spanish about my life and my teacher´s life. she´s a 20 year old university student studying restaurant/hotel administration. we share a passion for photography and wine and cheese outings. so fun!

dinner was mashed frijoles and steamed plantains. the rain had caused the power to go out, so we studied in the kitchen by candlelight. the kids (julio, eduardo, and andrea) came to study with us, so we learned spanish while they learned english and ate jolly ranchers fresh from the US.

thursday night ryan took me to LAX and waited for me until the kings express guy came to give me my ticket. after having my boarding pass checked at the gate, the stewardess told me that i held a first class ticket, and directed me to the ¨red carpet lounge¨ to spend my remaining hour before the flight. there, i sipped free cappucinos and teas while watching other travelers gorge themselves on chips and pretzels. fun fun.

i arrived in guatemala city at 430am, and was picked up by tram and her cousin. we chatted for a while, napped, and around 10am set off for Antigua. The entrance to Antigua was lined with heavily armed guards– we would later see the parade of cars that brought in the king and queen of spain to visit. henry and yi ma brought us to a typical guatemalan restaurant, where we tried all sorts of meats, rice, frijoles, and two drinks- an eggy flan-like crema and a sweet red jamaica flower drink. afterwards, i exchanged some dollars for quetzales and scored some cheap polaroid film for my camera. as it is holy week, there were huge processions in the street. little boys dressed in all purple carried gigantic (and heavy!) floats down the street while being followed by a band playing somber music. other boys carried balls full of incense and filled the air with smoke. little girls followed, wearing white dresses and carrying their own heavy float. inside the church at the parque centrale, gigantic sawdust designs were made on the floor and surrounded by fruit. outside in the park, vendors sold fresh mangos cut to look like flowers and fried up all sorts of goodies– churros, potatoes, plantains….

on the way home from antigua, we stopped by paiz, a giant supermarket that is famous in guatemala and was recently bought out by walmart. we grabbed some fresh fruits and went home to relax.

the next day henry took us to the mall. i bought a cell phone and a card with extra minutes for Q300. tram got a SIM card and some minutes for the phone that she´s borrowing. the mall is very modern, lacoste, puma, and other high end stores abound, while the bakery san martin is everywhere. that night, yi ma threw a party for us, and we spent the evening talking to regan´s family.

we had hoped to catch the 830am bus to xela sunday morning, but it was full by the time we got there. instead, we had a leisurly breakfast at the san martin cafe and caught the 11am bus. 4 very bumpy, crowded, painful hours up a windy mountain road later, we were in xela. luckily, the school was right around the corner from the galgos bus station, so we found it quickly and were escorted off to our new host families. tram and i were initially separated into two families, but when i saw my gigantic room with two beds, i asked my host mom if tram could come stay with me. i´m in love with my host mom, a 75 year old tiny guatemalan lady who is always smiling.