Last days

I've already extended my stay by a week and wish I could keep it going...but all good things must come to an end i guess. Antigua has been an amazing experience that will forever be engraved my in my memory and preciously placed right next all of my other ones in life. Leaving Antigua is a bitter sweet feeling. For one, I am excited to get home and see my family and friends, however I am sad to leave the family that I have grown to love so dearly here. As I was walking to school this morning I was thinking of all the things I am going to miss. I going to miss walking to school everyday and seeing the same people going about their daily businesses and saying a quick hello followed by a "que le vaya bien". The next time I come to Antigua I am going to miss not being able to pop into the wine store under the arch and talk to my friends who have been temporarily working there. If I ever come back to CSA to further my spanish studies I am going to miss not sitting in front of Will, behind Lance and see my teacher get frustrated at how easily I get distracted. I wont be able to hear Will laugh at the silliest little things with his teacher and Lance talk to the point where I can hear him and then see him turn around because my teacher says something. :) I'm also going to miss hearing mi mama say my name as though it were a question but to mean "you're late" lol but then smile so big that it makes my heart feel like mashed potatoes. I'm going miss rooming with Lindsay too! We had some awesome pillow talks at night. Seeing the smiles of the lovely ladies behind the front desk of the school every morning has been such a blessing! They make you feel so welcome and glad to be at school! :) Also I'm going to miss Will's random text messages telling me to hang out lol. I'm also going to miss Humberto's daily hellos (the director) every morning. Silly enough I'm going to miss my mamas frijoles (beans) they are sooo good -- I love eating them with bread! Dipping little breakfast cookies in my coffee every morning is going to be something that I am going to miss too. They are hard but then once you dip them in the coffee for .2 second they are soooo yummmy! :) Every morning our neighbors have a guy come and work in there garden and to let himself in or to let the people know that he is here he whistles the same whistle every time and it sounds a bird -- its' really cool!! My little brother (8 year old) is so cute, I'm going to miss our tickle fights and our sweet handshake. :) I'm going to miss Luna De Miel which is a little crepe place where I can go and talk to French people anytime I want and get all confused by making feel like I'm in the middle of europe and not in Antigua. To be able to look at two different volcanoes on a clear day is something that still takes my breath away even after being here for over one month. There are so many other things that I am going to miss but most of all I am going to miss the friends that I have met here and the ability to speak Spanish to anyone at anytime and practice until my brain hurts!

As I think about coming back I know it will not be the same. Even though the location may be the same the people that are here at the time make the specific experience at the time unique and special!

For the past couple of weeks I have had a new roommate. Her name is Lindsay and she's from the US. Funny enough right when we starting talking about why we were in Guatemala we found that we have both been to the DR and have both worked in Students international!! She was there in January and I was there in March. She knows Vicki and Josh just like I do! To find out that we were both at the same place at different times was out of control! I didn't believe it at first until we started talking about the different sites and she mentioned something about the meal bell that was rung every time breakfast, lunch or dinner can around. She worked at one of the medical sites everyday while she was working with S.I. She is now in Antigua learning Spanish at a different school from I, however, she is going to work with S.I Guatemala in one week just like in the DR! Q and Chief -- can you imagine if we were going to do that too! I told her about how I was maybe going to be working with SI Guatemala as well once I was done in Antigua. OUT OF CONTROL !!

Since the world cup as been up and rolling, a group of us students and our individual teachers have been watching the games instead of studying...lol. I'm so happy Switzerland beat Spain! I was wearing my Swiss t-shirt the whole day and everyone at the school was for Spain. My teacher and I left the school to go to the French crepe place to watch the game and when we came back everyone here was really sad! haha! :) All I could say was " Suiza gano!" -- which means Switzerland wone! :) :)

Climbing Acatenango was the single most hardest thing I have EVER had to do! This volcano is out of control! First we drove an hour from Antigua to get to the base of the volcano. Friday night we had a lot of rain which pretty much means landslides in Guatemala. On our way to the volcano we road of some REALLY small roads there was not even meant for cars because they were so narrow. Also, at one point we had to stop because there were people clearing the roads from a landslide. They weren't letting people go through because the roads were blocked. Our guide got out of the car and paid the guy to let us through. HA. Once we started to climb I was regretting my decision to go up. We had packs with our food and tents in them. There are about three different levels to the volcano. The first one being vegetation, the second jungle and the third one pine trees. It was awesome to hike from one level to the next as it seemed like we were in a completly different areas/country at each one. It also hard because of the amount of oxygen we didn't have! Once we got to about half way it started to rain and it was about lunch time. We ate lunch and by that time we decided to just camp there and climb the rest in the morning. Our tents had lots of little holes and places where water seeped in. We also didn't have bottom tarps to put under out tents to we pretty much had water coming in from the top and the bottom. lol. I slept in a tent with my good friend Miriam, who is from tennessee. We had some good laughs and out of control giggles as we tried to patch our holes with plastic bags. In the middle of the night we woke up because it seemed like we were having Agatha 2 coming back for another visit. Luckily we managed to patch all the holes so we didn't have any water problems in the middle of the night...but because the rain, the thunder and the lightening was so intense we didn't get any sleep. Instead we imagined escape roots off of the volcano, talked about what our friends in Antigua might be doing, and talked about why the heck we decided to climb a volcano during rainy season. lol. Our guides said that we would get up at 3:45 in the morning to keep going up the volcano. At 4:00 am we got a knock on our tent telling us to go back to bed because the rain was so bad and that it was not safe to keep climbing. Once we climbed all the way down the next morning we drove back to Antigua and went straight to a hotel that had a hot tub and a jacuzzi. It was wonderful to just sit and enjoy doing nothing. I am still so sore from climbing a VERY high at altitude.

Today I went to a bull "fight". We took a bus to San Antonio and waited in the pouring rain for a bull fight. To try and describe it, imagine a 10 foot high, not very stable wooden fence covered in people! Around this fence were lots and lots of people too. After one hour the bulls finally came out and there were people standing on the inside of the fence waiting to get hit or knocked over by the bull. The majority of the people had way too much to drink and were falling all over the place. It was entertaining to watch piles of people rush to the side of the fence every time the bull came near them! I'm was really surprised that the fence didn't fall over because there were so many people of it and people jumping on it once the bull came near them. Going to the bull fight it was also my first time riding a chicken bus. HA. There were so many people in the bus! It was out of control! At least 4 people to each bench and then stakes of people standing in the aisle.

Instead of starting class on time, some of us went to watch the opening football game. :) Fun Fun :) Also tomorrow I'm going to climb Acatenango volcano. It will take two days, which means that we leave on Saturday early in the morning and then get back Sunday afternoon. The group thats going is all from CSA and we are also taking two guides with us. :)

Day 9-10 and 11

Hey all sorry I haven't written in a few days, things have been complicated here. As you may know Guatemala had some pretty bad natural disasters over the past two weeks. For one, volcano Pacaya erupted and poured ash on all of Guatemala City. Right after that Tropical Storm Agatha came through and made all the ash super muddy. There was so much rain that everything overflowed and caused major damage. Because of the amount of rain the Agua Volcano had a MASIVE landslide. Tones and tones of rocks and volcano mud and anything that comes from the side of a volcano rushed down the side of the volcano and crashed into the towns below. My teacher's town got badly hit! It all happened Saturday night after the bad rain. My teacher, Teresa described it as bombs going off around her house as she could hear boulders go through the streets and rushing water from the overflowing rivers storm through every open crack in the town. She said that her and her husband were holding their little baby so tight and they were really scared that night! Many people died and others lost everything that they own.

CSA (my school) gathered bags of every day goods to bring to San Miguel (the town we have been working in) and hand out to families who lost everything! Many

of the CSA students, including myself, went out to help St. Miguel over the period of three days after classes were done. First of all we were told to go buy hefty rubber boots and face masks. We were also asked if we had all of out shots as who knows what we were going to find in the mounds of mud. On wednesday we loaded everything we were going to hand out in the bed of a truck and sat of the sides of the bed. It was hard to hold on as we're driving over crooked cobble stones through Antigua and over big speed bumps. HA! When we got to San Miguel we walked to this one street. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Imagine an old street with houses all along them. The houses are all built together in one line. The houses have balconies and garages. Now picture this road COMPLETELY covered in heavy, gooey, pooppy volcano mud that went all the way to half way up the doors. This means that the landslide was so big that the street got 4-5 feet of mud EVERYWHERE and more! To get to where we were actually going to work we had to walk through this street. We tried to walk on the big rocks and boulders that were stuck in the mud but we still managed to get mud all the way up to out knees. Also the mud was so heavy that it was kind of like quick sand that once stuck it was really hard to get out because the mud was so heavy! The street that our team was working on was just like the one we walked through and had a big yellow school bus smashed and stuck up against a line of houses. Our job first was to clear the way in front of the people houses so that when the big bobcat came it wouldn't take out the foundation of the houses. So with out pick acs and shovels we made way in front of the houses and moved the mud and rocks to the middle of the road. Many of the house got lots of mud and water all the way through to their back rooms. One house I was working in was covered in thick muddy water and we were just trying to get all of it out. Everything in that house was ruined and the muddy water level was a good foot high. There were SO many people helping! It was unbelievable how much English and French I was hearing around me! I met two girls from Neuchatel (a town in Switzerland close ish to mine) who are tourists and were out lending a hand. A couple of people who I thought I would never seen again and that I had met during the previous week were also out helping. On the way back to Antigua we had 19 people sitting in and on the edge of the bed. We also got stuck in traffic for quite a while so all of us were quite close by the end of the ride. The roads were being controlled by men with huge machine guns. There was a lot of traffic because there was a road closed due to another landslide

On Thursday we help a man out who was making water filters. This wasn't as messy of a job as the previous day! We simply checked to see if they didn't have any cracks in them by filling them up with water and then painting them. Many of the filters we were working on were going to go out to some of the people around Antigua who had been devastated by the landslides.

On Friday we went back to San Miguel and shoveled some more. This time we were in one specific area and all the people that were there had the goal of moving mud down to the main road to that the bobcat could pick it up and take it away. Again the mud was VERY heavy. It kind of looked like a big heavy mass of chocolate moose that you would never want to eat because it smells so bad! lol. My arms are really tired and sore from moving mud all day with a shovel. Again we were about knee deep in muddy, heavy chocolate smelly moose. A lot of the towns people were out helping. They have nothing else to do besides clean up their town. This one girl from school and I were the only girls there helping lol. It was definitely interesting scooping and moving mud with a bunch of Guatemalan man. lol. One little Guatemalan man who was about 75 or 80 years made sure I knew I what I was doing lol he was cute :) Later in the afternoon the rain came, which didn't make anything much better. We were told we had to leave because there was too much rain. Again, we road on the back of a truck back to Antigua. We were soaked !! HA! It was actually kind of fun to ride on the edge of the bed of a truck in the rain. Again we had lost of people in the truck. Helping out in San Miguel has been really great! Even though our efforts were little, since there is so much to do it felt good to help people who needed it! My heart just went out to these people who have lost their homes or are basically unlivable once cleared out. I managed to talk to some of the people by using my Spanish in asking them who they were. One lady was really sad and didn't know what was going to happen to her once everything was clear away since her house was trashed. There was so much team work between all of the people that were the helping. It didn't matter who you were of where you were from as long as you were helping. I got to meet so many people over the past few days!

In Antigua everything is fine. The town didn't have any problems with either of the volcanoes of Agatha. School has been great and I am using my Spanish all the time. I like to sit in the little French crepe place and my homework and use their internet. One of the guys that works here is French and he went to Les Roche, which is a hotel school in Switzerland, so that was fun to talk about. Since Lyle is gone I have no one who speak English in the house. I really have to use my Spanish with my family because that is all they understand. We keep the dictionary close by because we have to use it all the time :)

DAY 8

Last night I realized that people here are the same in Switzerland and the US. We all speak louder on our cell phones when using them. My host dad last night made a phone call on her cell phone and was speaking VERY loudly! I started to giggle because I know other people who do that (mom wink wink*).

The work load is getting bigger. Today we spent the day reviewing everything so that things really stick! We also walked around Antigua for a bit because we were both tired and needed to wake up.

After class I went to a butterfly farm. Unfortunately when we got there we were told that all the butterflies flew away because of the storm. Agatha was so intense the other day that all the wind blew the butterfly roof off and they all flew away.

The only butterflies we were able to see were the ones they had in their little lab. It was really interesting. The man only spoke spanish and I was able to understand a good 65-70% of what he was saying -- After 6 Spanish classes :)

I walked through the market today *pictures* and that was great fun! It's smaller than the Bazzar in Turkey but just as packed!! You can buy anything there -- from toilet paper to shoes to flowers to clothes - food - EVERYTHING.

Day 7

Today's weather is great !! The sun is out and the sky is blue, which is completely different from yesterday! Eddy (my diver) is a Bacelona fan !!! :) The other picture is of my teacher :) She's so cute! :)

Day 5 y 6

Yesterday was a bit rough with all the rain that we got *Check out pictures*. We had tropical storm Agatha come by for a visit. Not having school on saturdays, volcano pacaya exploding and the tropical storm caused for quite a slow and uneventful day. Mr. Idaho is now Lyle. lol. He was supposed to leave on Friday morning however because of the volcano his group wasn't able to leave. They are now taking a bus to El Salvador and then flying out from there. The roads to El Salvador have been blocked because of massive landslides from all the rain but they are still going. There is a church that I was told about by some missionaries here. I went to it this morning but the pastor told me there wasn't going to be a service because of all the rain. They got a little rain damage and were in the middle of clearing it all away. The pastor is American and is really great! We talked for a bit and he invited me to come to a bible study on Wednesday nights, so I might check it out.

Yesterday I also helped a French couple out. We met in the French crepe place. They were trying to call their airline but were having problems communicating in English so we sat together and I helped them get calls out and talk to their airline about their tickets. They are still stuck here.

Right now I'm sitting at a Mcdonalds looking right at volcano Agu. Its is REALLY big! The French crepe place, where I usually go for my internet it closed on Sundays. The Mcdonalds is really nice here. Antigua has a lot of guards and there is one for Mcdonalds and he walks around about every 5-10 minutes. I'm not sure what I am going to do for the rest of the day. With the plans that I had last week, I was going to climb Pacaya today but obviously that is slighting impossible at the moment! lol. Also because of all the rain a lot of things are closed and wet, so really I might simply sit around and so homework for the rest of the day. Hope you enjoy all the pictures :)

Day 4

Yesterday during my trip to the coffee farm, I felt quite a big shake. It turns out that there is a correlation between that shake and the recent volcano eruption. Pacaya is the name of the volcano that just erupted. I read up on the event and the airport in Guatemala City is closed - which mean Mr. Idaho is stuck there as he was supposed to be leaving today. Guatemala City is covered in ash. My little host brother (who is just the cutest!) doesn't have school today. I am not sure where exactly he goes but his school was cancelled for the day. Antigua is far enough from Guatemala City that nothing around here has really been affected. I was planning on climbing Pacaya this week end with CSA -- but I don't think that's gonna take place anymore. :( I really wanted to go up it and roast marshmallows in the lava. Oh well. * Sorry Ang! :(

Today in class was my first little "quiz" or test covering everything I have learned. Mi maestra said I am doing really well :) I already know how to conjugate 8 verbs and have a least a list of 500 words -- which means by week 4 I will know 2000 words....maybe. This week end will consist of reviewing everything and solidifying all of those words in my brain. I have made flashcards for myself so that I can review them over and over. Teresa (my teacher) and talked a lot about little kids and how much we love them! He little boy is really cute!

She showed me some pictures of her and her husband along with their little boy :)

Yesterday was merengue night *pictures available*. The place where I went to was at Mr. Idaho's school down the road from mine. The director of his school is French so I got to meet him. We spoke in French for at least an hour. It was SO NICE :) At that school there are also two girls from Quebec and so we spent time listening and laughing at each other's accents. There was also a german lady, which means I obviously had to talk to her too :) Last night I was speaking in French, English, German and Spanish. LOCO! It was so much fun!! :)

As you will see in the pictures I have found a little French Crepe place. They have wi-fi so I have been spending time there working on my homework and of course blogging. :P

Day 2 and 3

Every evening I spend a good three hours on homework. Teresa assigns me a lot to do, which is good because I really want to learn! My family helps me with my homework as they check it once I am done and they are very impressed with the amount of work I am able and have to do.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I signed up to go on a trip to a small town outside of Antigua where I got to see the work of an organization called Constru Casa. They are sort of like Habitat for Humanity where they build houses for people who do not have the means to buy a house for themselves. This one family in particular that we went to see has been through a lot! The mother is all on her own and has 9 children - two of which have died because of illness. Her youngest (he is very cute!) was born some sort of problem where he had to stay in the hospital for one year before he was allowed to have surgery. Now he is well and able to walk. :) Thanks to Contru Casa she is living is a house with a roof and solid walls where she can close her door and windows. (Pictures available).

Today I went to a coffee farm and learned about the history and making of coffee in Guatemala. *Gemma - Take a good look at the pictures from the coffee place :) It was really interesting.

Tonight I am going to do some merengue :) - Pictures to come.

Day 1.5

After my first day at school, I tried to find my way back to mi casa and got lost. lol. I walked around Antigua for two hours trying to find my house. I sort of remembered the name of my street and so I asked a lady to help me and she pointed me the in complete opposite direction! haha...God's works in funny ways because I found a French school as I was walking around the town. PERFECT! I walked up to their gate and asked to come in. There were two French guys there and I told them I was having trouble finding the house that I am staying in. Being the French people that they are (as some of your know...) they were sort of helpful and very sarcastic. None the less I asked to use their internet so that I could look up the address of my house because I had it saved in an email. All went well and they pointed me in the right direction and gave me directions that I could actually understand. As usual all of them were smoking -- ha typical French. They told me to come back if I was still lost. Luckily I didn't have to because I was able to find mi casa :) I could have taken a "tuck tuck" , which is a little wagon of a thing, but I wanted to walk and find my way on my own. It makes me laugh that I had to use French in the middle of Antigua to find my way back to my house -- Oh how languages come in handy.

When I got to the house, mi mama told me that Mr. Idaho went looking for me. Ooppss :P Now I know my way to la escuala and back so I won't get lost anymore. :)

Day 1

Upon arriving in Guatemala City, Eddy (my driver) picked up from the airport and drove me to my host family's house. He doesn't speak a WORD of English and I obviously don't speak any Spanish -- Perfect! The entire drive to Antigua consisted of me spitting out random spanish words I picked up from my new dictionary that I read in the airplane, French and his limited English. We managed to talk about where I'm from, where I go to school, what there is to do on the week ends and the weather in Antigua.

My host family is wonderful! Mama doesn't speak any English, which means I'm gonna have to kick in the Spanish ASAP! There is another person staying in the house but I can't remember his name...oppps :P He's from Idaho and has been here for one week and is leaving this Friday. His Spanish is very good so he has been translating for me. We walked around Antigua for a couple of hours right when I got there. He showed me the places to eat and land marks around the town so that I can find myself easy and not get lost. lol (got it covered Chief).

Antigua reminds me a lot of the D.R and I wish I was back there! However, I'm so happy to be here and love learning Spanish and being in Antigua! It is rainy season and so the sky is pretty much overcast everyday. People have told me that it will be like this for a while and if it rains it'll be in the late afternoons.

Mama makes great food! This morning I woke up to fresh Papaya, pineapple and strawberries and an omelet-- Just like the in the D.R :) Mr. Idaho walked me to school because no one knew where it was. It's only about a 5-7 minute walk from my host family's house.

My teacher's name is Teresa. She is so cute and small! :) We immediately started on the lesson and she was very impressed with my pronunciation, which made me happy :) She told me it doesn't sound toooo American. The building that the school is in is half inside and half outside. Basically -- there is no roof. There is a small court yard where teachers have their desks set up. Each table has place for one teacher and one student and a white board. It's great because there are lots of students around the court yard with their table, teacher and white board and they are all learning Spanish at which ever level they are at. (pictures to come). Teresa assigned me some homework for me to work on from the things we have been working on all day. She's so great!! We talked about the Bible and out families, Switzerland, and Antigua. She asked me if I knew Christian Spanish songs so I showed her the Revelation song online and told her about the D.R and how we organized outreach events. She LOVED LOVED LOVED the song said that it is full of the Holy Spirit :) Agreed!

Welp....that's all.