Happy Holidays to all!  Like the tittle indicates, in the last week I have been through the Guatemala Embassy and Immigration system yet again, through the border and somehow they let me back into the country.  Highlights were seeing my family, snorkeling-sailboat trip to the reefs off of Caye Caulker and hanging out on our balcony-suite with family friends.  I would like to say that seeing Tikal at the end of our trip was another highlight, but I must have been done with the touristing thing by then because one of the greatest constructs of the Mayan civilization failed to awe.  The view from Temple IV just after dawn and over the tree tops to the other temples was amazing, but I kept wising for monkeys, jaguars and tropical birds.  From Temple II Greg and I saw parrots flying across the main plaza, which was exciting and almost as diverting as watching our fellow tourists take a couple dozen photographs of a seemingly normal crow relative bird that was perched on the railing of the temple s platform.  They would creep up very slowly, lower their head and crouch their body into the perfect angle to capture the creature, then take about six pictures in a row, retreat and compare digital pictures with their comrades.  After a couple times of this process, the bird had had enough of the photo session and turned to each one of us and squawked its disapproval of them for their pictures and Greg and I for our lack of interest in capturing its tropical beauty.

Back to the highlights.  Caye Caulker was the perfect Albright family get-away.  We stayed at the hotel of a half American, half Belizian couple that brilliantly encompassed small town America with their gossip and running commentary about all the islands inhabitants.  Our hostess knew the family histories of all the islands population and liked to tell stories about her uncle, mother, grandmother and any other family member that a particular event called to mind.  I was impressed that her mothers home has survived all hurricanes the island has seen.  And I was sad to learn about the alligators at the town dump on the last day or I might have organized an expedition to see them.  Beyond sitting around, drinking coffee or beer, reading and taking occasional strolls down the mile or less town, we had little else to do.  There were a variety of seating options, though, so we rotated from the chairs to the hammock to the porch swing depending on weather and personal mood.  But do not think we were all laziness, we roused ourselves from the hammocks at least three times a day for meals and once Greg and I even went snorkeling.  The whole family also went on a tour with Juni in his sailboat (which was built by our hostess uncle or brother, it got a bit vague at this point).

Despite promises to  keep the secret of the trip a secret, I can see by other gringo posts that they have already let  out the cat, or nurse sharks , should I say.  Yes, we swam with nurse sharks, petted nurse sharks and even held them in our arms.  We also hugged a sting ray and tried not to remimber how  the crocodile hunter died.

Moving back through Belize, Greg and I took the local bus from Belize City to San Ignacio, which was relatively uneventful.  I did discover from my seat mate that Belizeians have a much easier time getting into the US and getting work permits than their Guatemalan counterparts.  After the ride, we met up with Mom, Dad and BJ and Karen in the most beautiful hotel suite I have even seen and quite possibly the most beautiful I will ever stay in.  The room was just nice with a  cool ceiling of wood running in different angles, but the balcony, of equal size to the room made the suite awesome.  We had a hammock, benches, a table and chairs and an perfect view of the city.  Suffice to say most of our stay in San Ignacio was spent on the balcony of Martha s Guesthouse.  We arrived on Christmas  Day and  the next day was boxing day, so we were forced by restaurant closures to stay in and no one objected.  (Insert plug for  the South Indian Restaurant on West St.  as the best restaurant in the area).

Okay, running out of steam, but hopefully I can get back on the computer before our tours start up again, because we are expecting to have a very busy January at Quetzeltrekkers.

Actually I never leave Casa Argentina, where Quetzaltrekkers is based, unless I am going on a hike or shopping for hiking items.  To back up, I have not been writing because three weeks ago I decided to volunteer with Quetaltrekkers, a trekking organization that donates all of its profits to a school for street kids, a dormitory for street kids and a medical clinic.   The last three weekends I have been learning Volcan Tajamulco, the highest point in Central America.  I will be leading this hike again this weekend and soon will be leading a hike to the base of Santaigito, an active volcano near Xela.  Yesterday I went on the Santaigito hike with other guides to learn the way and the views were amazing.  We started by hiking through grasslands that could have been in Africa with the dry grass and acacia trees in the distance.  The whole time we had amazing views of the volcano and it was erupting with clouds of ash every twenty minutes or so.  After an hour or so we entered the jungle part, which was equally amazing with huge plants and coffee and pacaya plantations.   I was most amused to see so many plants I recognized from garden centers back home growing in the wild here.  Obviously they are native to somewhere, but it looked funny to see ground cover we intentionally plant just doing its natural ground cover thing here.  After another hour and a hike up a waterfall, we got to start using our machetes to cut through a reed and bamboo forest to find the campsite left from last year.  No one had been back here in half a year for fear of flooding caused by the volcano.   From the campsite we had an amazing view of the volcano and could hear it erupting all night.  It was not until around two  am that we could start to see the lava flows with the eruption, but when we did they were amazing.  One started as a tiny red dot at the top of the crater and then burst into all these red pieces that went racing down the side in less than thirty seconds.  There were a couple more, but the clouds kept coming in and out, obstructing our view.

This is the school very near my hostel that I passed every day.  I learned that ¨senor¨also means lord.  Hence the translation of Lord of the Rings is El Senor del Anillo, which took a while for me to understand which movie my teacher was trying to talk about.  The Man of the What?

Ahhh the chicken buses.  Actually converted US school buses from the seventies or earlier that spew out black smoke all over town and are the favorite haunts of pickpockets.  It was on one much like this that my passport was stolen. They are all decorated by the drivers with various religious images.  The one I took from San Pedro to Xela had the most fantastic Head of Christ decals in the back window.  Fully detailed with bleeding head and eyes rolling heavenward.  I tried not to think about how much the picture was like what would happen to all of us if our bus when over a cliff.  So far I have survived and Dios es con mi.  You would think all the psalms painted into the front of the bus, where in elementry school were the rules of the bus, would provide some protection.

And here is the central square of Xela.  Much prettier than I had actually imagined for the second largest city in Guate.  It is cool to be in such a cosmopolitan city after being in the Mayan hills for three weeks.  The women here actually wear pants and heels instead of the traditional dress and everyone has the required cell phone, much like Africa.

Picture someone else took of San Pedro Spanish School.  Everyday my teacher and I would set up in one of the little huts and chat for 2.5 hours, get a half hour break and return for one more hour.

By the end of my three weeks in San Pedro, the afternoons started to look like this just before the rain came in.  Quite dramatic and moody, but really inconvenient when the streets turned to rivers and the little dirt paths between the hostels into mud pits.  I did enjoy being inside during the rain, though, because most of the buildings had tin roofs, so when it was only sprinking it sounded like rain was pouring down.

Jarachik, my home sweet home of two weeks.  My room was the window just next to the smiling moon.

Catherine (Canada), me and Lock (Aussie) on top of La Nariz (the nose) proudly representing the former British colonies.

Picture of me hiking up La Nariz taken by Catherine and stolen from her blog at ballofdirt.com

On our way back down the mountain, yes, my picturesque back again.  Catherine and I made the time speed by, by singing songs from the Sound of Music and any other musical we could think of.  For some reason Lock did not join us.

So ten days later, actually fourteen days after getting everything stolen I am thinking of never leaving San Pedro.  I could run a tab at the hostel all winter, take spanish lessons and live the dream ex-pat life.  I am actually a little worried at visiting many peoples favorite place in Central America so early into my trip.  Will I be ruined for the rest of Guate?  Actually it is great to know there is such a nice place to come back to if things get too hectic on the rest of my trip. 

San Pedro is on Lago Atitlan, surrounded by beautiful volcanoes and extremely steep mountain sides.  The town is a mix between sleepy Mayan farmers and lazy hippie *artisans*, as we have taken to calling them.  Despite the places druggie reputation, I have found it nothing if not calm, relaxing and very safe.  My favorite locals are the bread women, or mujers de pan as we call them.  At all times of the day they are selling homemade banana, chocolate, pineapple and cinnamon breads for 5Q, or 70 cents.  They come into restaurants and bars, heft their heavy laundry baskets filled with bread from their heads and start making the rounds.  I have to admit to being a return customer of these hardworking women.  There seems to be a whole family of them.  A little girl sells the same bread during our morning break at school and two old women make the rounds all day and allnight.  When my spanish improves I am determined to get the story of this family.  Are they all related?  How long have they been selling bread?  How much market research did it take to learn to sell chocolate cake in the bars?  Unlike many of the venders, their constant, mild harassments never bothers me.  Even when I say *no gracias* they respond with a silver toothed smile, knowing that tomorrow I will give into their baking prowess. 

I think my lengthy description of the bread women should make it apparent that there really is not much going on here.  Mis amigas and I have decided that it is like being in college again.  We have classes in the morning, meet up for lunch at our favorite sandwich place, or go up to the market for homemade tamales.  Later in the afternoon, after a nap, email or a reading break, we meet up for homework that disolves more into making fun of our horrible spanish.  The homework session quickly turns into dinner and maybe later a movie at one of the many cafes offering free movies, or go for dessert at one of the many beautiful lounge-bars and enjoy the local band.Then we go back to our rooms and start another day… Sometimes we break up the monotony with a hike or kayak ride, but on too many day it gets dark before we even leave town.

I might be ready to leave by the time my credit card shows up…maybe.

Now don t all get upset, but on Sunday my passport, credit card and debit card were stolen from my backpack.  I left my bag alone for a minute in my hostel and when I got of the bus three hours away my little travel wallet was gone.  After a couple of days on the phone I did cancel my cards and the embassy should soon have cancelled my passport.  Getting a new debit card will take a coupld of weeks at least and Im working on the whole passport thing.  Overall, it has been quite a learning experience and Im doing okay with all of it.  I ll let you know more when I m not so carefully counting my queztales and can use more internet time.

After many questions I think it’s time to describe spanish school.  There are somewhere around 70 language schools in Antigua, and as previously described, I chose Latinamerica based on Princesa, the most spoiled dog in town.  Class is from 8am to 12pm every morning, it is one on one and I´m being taught by the director of the school.  This is most fortunate because he probably knows the most english of anyone i´ve met.  So far we have covered 2-4 verbs a day, tons of vocabulary and some phrases.  After three days I have probably covered as much as I learned in my first year of French. Actually those french classes were good for something, there are many words that are the same, just said entirely differently and learning to listen to french has helped me listen closely to spanish.  My host family was very surprised that after one day of class I could understand most of what they were saying, saying slowly that is.  What really helped was the father, Sergio, speaking with lots of hand and face expressions.  At first I thought it was just for me, but after hearing him and his son talk, apparently he does it all the time.  The mom I don´t understand as well, but she also doesn´t slow down very much.   supposedly they are both spanish teachers, but I think the dad teaches more frequently and the mom usually works at the hair salon.

Their home is in a compound of apartments in the middle of Antigua that is accessed by an unnumbered black, metal door on calle 3, across from number 35, which is how I remember how to get home.  This could be the main reason I haven´t gone out late at night yet, I´m not so certain I would find my way home.  once behind the black metal door, there is a narrow open air hallway of red cement walls.  There are a few pieces of wood connecting apartments and then are covered in broken glass to deter any robbers.  The apartments are covered in corrugated tin roofs and my apartment isn´t entirely covered, so the middle room that is a kitchen, dining room and wash room feels like a courtyard.  My room has it´s own padlock and I feel silly using it.  But much like south africa, the locals are always more concerned about security that i am, so I lock my door when I leave just to make sure I have my keys with me and don´t get locked outside the main black door. 

The bathrooms are the most interesting part of everywhere I´ve stayed so far.  Just like Kerry warned me, they have electric showers with water going through the showerhead that has a slight current.  Well, I don´t have current testers, so I have no idea what the current is, but I am more grateful for warm showers than worried about getting electrocuted.  On that note, my family´s shower does have a slight current that travels down to the knob, so I use my bandana to adjust the water flow, otherwise the slight current hurts a bit.  Also the shower is in the same small cement room as the toilet and they are separated by a tiny shower curtain.  It is just one cement floor, so if someone has showered recently, the floor is always wet to get to the toilet.  I have to admit that it really only took a day to get used to this system and now it seems mostly normal. 

Oh and food!  this will probably amuse everyone the most, especially with all the food I refuse to eat in the states, but Guatemala is a whole different game, so you should all be proud of me!  At my first breakfast in Guate, the only word I recognized was pancakes, so that´s what I had.  For my second breakfast I was already acclimated to eggyness and had french toast!  Then I started living with my host family and my first lunch had some unidentifiable beef, dinner was beans – yeah- and breakfast was fruit, so i thought I was in the clear.  HOwever, When I woke up this morning I tried to convince myself that I didn´t hear eggs cooking.  But after years of avoiding the kitchen when Dad was cooking eggs, i knew the sound all too well.  Eggs for breakfast!  Eggs covered in tomato and onions with bread.  So I steeled myself and started eating the eggs, rest assured they are just as horrible as they smell.  After gagging down a few bites (the gagging was all in my head), I devised a strategy of using my bread to take a small bite of egg and put it on the bread.  Then cover this with tomatoes.  This bite was then put into my mouth bread side down, so most of the taste was bread, I chewed fast to get rid of the eggyness and then washed it down with tea.  I doubt to most of the world that this breakfast would have caused panic, but under the circumstances I think I handled it quite well.  when I put half my plate of eggs in the trash, I was shocked to find out that it was only one egg that had made my breakfast – those things are huge!  And as consolation lunch was great.  I have no idea what it was, but it was great.

First day of spanish lessons survived. That is about the best prognosis. They wisely serve coffee and tea through out the four hour lesson, but even with that my brain felt like it was wilting after two hours. So I went downstairs and petted the dog, Princessa. See, there was very good reasoning behind this whole dog-deciding-language school thing. Princessa also became part of nosotros in many of my made up ´sentences. Beyond all of that fun, I´ve gone for many walk-runs outside of town to see the local villages. I don´t even want to imagine what my lungs look after sharing the road with so many black fume spewing buses, but it´s worth it to get some execise. Last night I avoided the racuious party at the hostel and climbed up on the roof. There is a little patch of cement to sit on and from there I could see over the rooftops to the ruins of one of the many cathedrals and the mountains beyond. Right when I got up there I saw a shooting star and I felt like everything was a little more right with my trip. This morning, right before my spanish lesson, my teacher and I were standing on the top level of the school and could see a clear view of Volcan Fuego and it was erupting! The volcano tops are usually covered in clouds, so it was exciting to even see the top of the peak (mom and dad, think mt. rainer) let alone to see it erupt.