everything is in english...!

i indeed made it back safely. on thursday, made it to the bus station on time (after my class ended at 1pm) at 2pm to head to the capital. arrived at 6pm, got a taxi right away (they're all waiting there when then bus pulls in), negotiated a good price for it, my taxista got all lost trying to find my hostel. we talked the whole time and i don't know if he was trying to pick up on me, but he asked if i wanted his number in case i need a taxi again in the future. i'm all, uh no today's my last day and i'm back in the states tomorrow. for dinner, i ate pollo campero, delivered to the hostel and not quite on the cheap side. i will definitely miss the 3 x Q10 deal at the taqueria. 3 tacos for only 10 quetzales! that's about a dollar and a half! good bye cheap, yummy food. slept around 11pm, made a new friend with another girl who was on the same flight as me. we both got up at 5am, got driven to the airport and went through all the fun NO LIQUIDS security check, twice. they took away all my creams, lens solution, lip balm... aiya.

arrived at LAX at 11am friday. customs was fun to go through. blanca picked me up and we were on our way to the UTLA (teacher's union) conference! picked up another friend in LA on the way and we headed out to palm springs with no directions or addresses. yay, adventures are always fun! it's somewhere in palm springs, so we figured we'd find it one way or another. besides, we had numbers of other folks in case we needed to contact anyone. en route we ate el gallo giro, YUMMMMYYYY... pork and beef. how i've missed you both! we arrived in palm springs, drove around a little aimlessly down major streets, then decided to stop at a gas station to find out what was up:

"hi i'm looking for la quinta resort"
"it's in la quinta"
"is that another city?"
"yes"
"where?"
"in la quinta"
"it's not in palm springs?"
"no u have to go 30 min. further down the 10"

HIJO DE LA MAñANA! who would have known? i felt really dumb. all the other union folks talking about the conference kept referring to it as palm springs. so anyway, we finally make it there in the 100+ degree weather. what a resort though! RESORT is the right label. non-unionized, however. ironic, yes. a union meeting at a non-unionized hotel... for the first time. we always have it at a unionized location. i sense we might have it there again next year though... we are a lost union. at any rate, some entertainment during the conference included governor candidate phil angelides and the belligerent, defensive major villaraigosa as guest speakers during the weekend-long conference. antonio = sellout!

so when it was all over, we make it back to LA around 4:30pm on sunday, JUST IN TIME FOR SOCCER! mind u, i still have not been home yet and i have all my guatemala shit with me. my huge traveling backpack and all. good thing i had sneakers, shorts, and a new guatemala jersey! played futbol with folks i missed dearly, and finally went home with my friend meisha in her cool little s2000 ride. a very fun car i learned, as she demonstrated to me the tight turns it could cut... O_O

yesterday i went apartment hunting with future roomie liz. we found a BEAUTIFUL place in k-town. AND WE GOT IT! signing the lease today!! how exciting! i look forward to new changes. the apt ROCKS. it's dope. it has that old school early 1900s look, woodfloors, tall windows in a semi-circle shape in a large living room, gated entry, gated parking, wide but quiet residential street... and best of all, it's right around the corner (walkable distance) from the 24-hour korean restaurants! AAHHHH!! VERY close to both the 10 and 110 freeways. it's not in the part of ktown where u have to drive in through all that traffic, it's just off the fwy. housewarming is definitely in the works! wwaazzuuuppppp~

hoy es mi ultimo dia! yo viajo para la capital esta tarde. voy a dormir en un hotel y tomar el avion mañana a las 8am. goodbye guatemala! i will soon return...

i will update my travels when i am back home...

the countdown begins...

only a few days left! i realized what happened with my alarm clock on sat. i programmed it for mon-fri, and what i did was change the time to 5:30 but for weekdays only. good job. apparently i missed a very eventful day. the bus driver and another student almost drowned from an undercurrent and had to be rescued by lifeguards. the 9-yr-old daughter of one of the students who is a father vomited on the way there, and one student got salsa in her eye. to make up for missing the beach, i decided to eat seafood and ate shrimp ceviche at a place my host family recommended me to. ate all by my lonesome, but it was nice. read a little and enjoyed the me-time. also made time to shop around. went to mercado democracia to what they had. needed to get a guatemala nation team jersey. bought one, but later realized it wasn't the official one. ARGH! what a good fake. i should have done my research to see what a real one looked like. but it was my bad too cuz i didn't even bother to ask if it was the official one. oh well, it works for me. also bought books and resources for my classroom and self.

on sunday, i decided to go forth with the traveling alone. i got on the microbus to the main bus terminal, got on the bus to chichicastenango (chichi for short, hehee! i´m immature) for their sunday marketplace. 3-hour bus ride. on the way, i talked it up with two italians sitting behind me. yes, i initiated conversation! i never do that with strangers. we talked about all kinds of things, including, naturally, the world cup final and the insanity that occurred in their country when they won. arrived in chichi around 1, asked when the last bus to return to xela would come, and took on the challenge of making my way through the maze of the marketplace. walked through the marketplace and realized everything was really not cheaper, but in fact more expensive. apparently the marketplace is geared towards tourists. argh. came away with a few things for a good deal. when finished, i got on the bus at 3, and got home around 6... safe and sound! so proud of myself! yay me!

ok, but i am kind of frustrated with my level of spanish. i think i expected a huge leap of improvement, but really it´s not that much growth in terms of speaking. my understanding of the language, grammatical structure and all this other stuff is much more clear in my head, and i have a larger vocab... but i guess i don´t know what i´m using as a measure of growth. i think i'll have to make plans to come back here again to study more! i´m feeling the nearness of my departure. getting kind of nostalgic already.

it bugs!

i think i'm in a buggy situation. i thought intially there were fleas, but nah. it must be bed bugs. i read in a local publication that it's probably bed bugs in the mattress. YAY. i have at least 30 bug bites all over my body, mostly on my torso and neck area. also i have one each on both my thumbs! oh and one on the top of my ear. so much fun. and before i even came here i got a mosquito bite back home on the bottom of my foot. so many fun places to have bites. i'm so bad at self-control that i´m sure i will leave many scars from scratching scratching...

wednesday
at school was movie nite. they showed a spanish (as in, from spain) movie called "mariposa". it´s a beautiful movie. also on my list is a cuban movie called "fresas y chocolate" which i'll have to rent in the future. in the afternoon we had a field trip to El Baúl, which is on top of a mountain. we had to hike up quite a bit. it's of historical importance, as it is where the king of the mayans, whose name begins with a T..., was captured. there is a statue of him on top of the mountain. a beautiful view of xela complements the beauty of the mountain itself. also, u walk to the other side and there is a very cool set of slides that takes u, gosh i can't say how far down. there are long slides that have a series of bumps. so much fun! there are squashed 2 liter plastic bottles there that u can sit on to help u go faster (and also probably so as not to soil your pants). so random, but very fun! got some great pictures that day.

this was also the nite that i got nearly attacked by the dog by my house. i ended up having to climb on top of a car, and i finally made it to my door (i was only 2 houses away!) with the help of a neighbor who calmed the dog down. i think it was a freaky occurrence because it was a full moon. who knows. well, it was also the latest i ever walked home.. alone.. and i had an umbrella in my hand ready to whack someone. anyway, i have never been that afraid of dogs before, and now thanks to that dog i am scared of all stray dogs. there are MANY around here.

thursday
the conference on education in guatemala was the worse conference at our school. i don't know why they invited the guest speaker that they did, but wow. it just... was bad. sooo unfortunate because it was probably one of the topics i was most interested in, being a teacher and all.

but, the nite made up for it!! FUTBOL!! janet made a goal!! yes yes, it is true. there were more folks from last week, so we had 3 teams and rotated in every time a goal was made. but yes, one of the best guys there threw the ball as goalie and i was right there knee it straight back into the goal. as a victory display i ran around like a flying airplane. and many women represented this time around, about 6 or 7! we all had so much fun that we reserved the field again for this tuesday, which is not a regular futbol day. but i´m ecstatic because i thought that would be my last day to play and i get one more. =)

friday
field trip to san francisco was canceled because there was a nation-wide strike in guatemala. all major highways and interchanges were blockaded. crazy! so the school rescheduled on the spot to go to a glass-blowing cooperative. ok, that didn't really interest me, nor many others. but, as is it turned out, the older students (+40) went, whereas the other 20-, 30-somethings wanted to go ahead and see the strike and blockades. and so, that is where we went. what a inspiration. we took the bus as far as we could take it, then walked the rest of the way for quite a while. the first blockade was cars. there were blockades of tires, cement blocks, people... and when we finally made it to the gathering, we stayed around to listen to the speeches. they are fighting against the privatization of electricity, the phone company, and education. they also are demanding better healthcare and drinkable water. then they played songs of protest over the speakers. beautiful! have lotsa pictures from the event as well.

that nite was graduation and i said my good-bye speech, even though i technically have almost a week left. it's just that i wouldn't get a chance to say good-bye formally because graduations are on fridays, and i leave thursday. (i have to be at the UTLA teacher´s union conference in palm spring by friday). it was a beautiful party filled with good people, good food, and good drinks.

today, i was supposed to go on the school trip to tulate beach on the pacific ocean side, but my freakin alarm was set incorrectly and i woke up at 7am instead of 5:30. i missed the bus. so i wandered the streets of xela. =) it was relaxing and i got some good souvenirs and books. i have less than a week left... time has gone by so quickly.

*%&$*@#

i missed the bus this morning for the school trip to the beach... janet very sad. and as i walked to school just now i saw someone taking a sh** on the street. i believe the person was homeless. now i don't know what to do with myself today. maybe i'll actually have to travel somewhere on my own! O_O heaven forbid.

yesterday's graduation was wonderful and a great bundle of fun. =) i was nervous on my speech but it went well. ok, time to get my but out there and explore solo. *deep breath* i´m kind of feeling lonely. =/ on a good note, i've been good about getting people to walk me home and taking the taxi at nites.

oh yes, the dog story. well the nite after that a strange man lingering around the corner of my street followed me and tried to talk to me, then left as i passed a group of people standing outside a store. i wonder if those weird nites had anything to do with it being a full moon. or maybe just not being smart on my part and walking alone late...

of all the conferences i attended while here, the worst one was the day before yesterday. it was on educaton in guatemala. the speaker was... well. it just was not well presented, and worse yet, the ideas presented just didn't stand up to the standards. more on it later. on friday, we were supposed to go on a field trip to a place called san francisco, but there was a nation-wide strike and all major highways/interchanges were blockaded. a bunch of us wanted to go anyway and see, so we did. the bus stopped at the first of many blockades (objects and humans), and we had to walk for a while to make it to the gathering where union folks were speaking. they're protesting the privatization of education, electricy company, demanding better healthcare and sanitary/drinkable water. it was inspiring to be there! ok, time to go do something with myself this weekend...

scary nights

so being the "brave" woman that i am, i decided it'd be a fine idea to walk home alone very late at night. =P i hope trisha and liz are not reading this, don't strangle me. even worse, please don't say i told u so. so a few nights ago i was walking home and as i turned the last corner to get to my house, the dog at the corner house decides to growl at me. i ignore it and continue on, but the dog growls louder, barks, growls more and gets up and goes after me. ok so i'm freaked the hell out and i end up jumping on top of a car. some of u may think this is funny, but it's not! =( i mean, at least u know i'm ok yeah? i stayed on top of that car for a good 2-3 minutes while the dog continues to threaten me. it wanted blood. so i realized i needed help, and called out very calmly so as not to further excite the dog, "ayudame". the first person to look out their window is a young woman. she just stares at me. the next is a man who asks what's wrong. well, it's obvious. he says the dog is angry cuz i'm top of the car.

to be continuted. must jam....

giving my graduation speech today! ah nervous!

not feeling so good

nope, not cuz of the food, not cuz of the water... cuz of the bus. i have motionsickness. made the error of sitting in the very back of the bus AND read. i can´t read in a moving vehicle. but yes, now i feel very queezy. super. other people i know have gotten sick from the food and what not. me? no problems thus far, and i´ve been eating everything, including street food and using tap water (not to drink). others have not been so lucky. knock on wood...

so these infamous chicken buses. they are school buses that are painted. u pack 3 to a seat and fill the aisles as tight as possible. it´s really intriguing when the guy who collects the money has to maneuver his way through packed bodies. the back emergency door does not serve as an emergency door. it´s a door. u load up from the back as well, to squash in real good. u have to hurry though, before the bus moves. the money collector is also the guy that handles the luggage on top of the bus. while the bus is traveling at whatever velocity, you hear stomping and shuffling above you, them a clamor behind the bus, and the door opens (all while the bus is flying down the highway) as the guy enters the bus. quite a sight! thankfully on the long ride to lake atitlán my friend gave me a dremamine.

lago atitlán. so beautiful. panajachel is streaming with tourists though. we stayed in a hostel, explored the city. in the afternoon we took the bus, then a ride ride in the back of a pick-up to sololá where we visited a women´s weaving cooperative. they gave an intro and talked to us about their coop, had a q&a session, and we spent like mad (i did, at least). i have much respect for those mayan womyn. they have a school where they keep their indigenous language alive yet learn the national language of castellano spanish. they take care of their land and fight for their dignity as mujeres, all the while keeping alive the tradition of weaving.

my new friend kristina and i took a lancha (kind of a large motor boat) over to san pedro. all around there were messages about jesus. he is alive. he is the only savior. he is coming. he is the only answer. as i am not christian nor religious, this was kind of strange to me. there wasn´t much to san pedro so far as we could see. we then took the lancha over to san marcos which is known for its hippieness (hippies have gone there and never left, marijuana readily available as well). it´s also known for its cleanliness in waters, which is where most go to swim. we met up with the group and stripped down to our swimwear and dove right in! that was my first time ever swimming in a lake. it was clear and cool. so beautiful, i was enjoying so much the fact that i was in a lake surrounded by a breathtaking scenery of volcanoes. i forgot that i wasn´t a good swimmer though, so i had to stick close to the rocks. it´s not like a beach, it just has big ol rocks. but! one of the guys had a ball which i used as a flotation device. =) mommy wow! i´m a big kid now! i also picked up a real pumice rock to take home. volcanic rock floats! i hope that´s not general knowledge cuz yeah.

monday brought about a new week, a new teacher, and a flood of new students. we got the schedule of events for the week. lotsa interesting stuff. yesterday there was a documentary on publicity in america. most interesting points: journalist, credible journalists, were deliberately kept out of guatemala during the whole CIA scandal. basically, the american company of UFC, united fruit company (which, folks, today has broken up into dole, chiquita, and del monte - so beware! read: boycott!) worked in conjunction with the american gov´t to conserve their own interests. they paid off the media and whatnot. they also had familial ties to the head of the CIA and the secretary of the state dept. so convenient. our country had a huge role in the genocide of the guatemalan people, majority civilian, majority indigenous mayan. in the evening i went to a space called la fonda del ché. also kinda much because every foot of the walls had some ché image. a little too much ché for my taste, as in, obsessive. anyway, we watched a video about ché and conferenced afterwards about the time he came here to guatemala in nov. 1953 and stayed for nine months. he believed that guatemala had the capability to have a good revolution if only the president at the time actually struggled and put up arms. instead, their country´s leader fled.

today´s conference at school was by a guest speaker who is a member of the URNG, the leftist political party formed by former guerilleros. the speaker himself was in the armed struggle for 14 years. his ideas are just on point, and speaks to so many other organizations. the social, political, economic relations here parallel that of so many other places. it´s crazy this thing called institionalized -isms! anyone who denies it exists is just shutting their eyes and covering their ears. i liked that he ended the conference with ideas of how to move forward, and what changes need to occur. we can take up those suggestions ourselves in america. what are those suggestions? ask and i´ll tell, i´m typing a lot.

tonite i´m checking out a conference at the entremundos collective space. there will be a discussion about u.s.-guatemalan relations. that should be REALLY telling. ok, i feel funky though cuz i´m relaxed from the hot springs i just got back from, and yet this pounding swirling headache is nagging me. perdón for a dragging tone in this entry. on a happy note: i LOVE the food here!!!

back in xela, back to school
lake atitlán was a sight alright. my first time swimming in a lake! and my chicken bus experience definitely followed through in its reputation. visited a women´s cooperative and dropped all kinds of cash on buying their fair trade textiles. ate street tacos finally! and i´m still alive folks. started a new week today with a new teacher. watched a documentary this afternoon about publicity in american media. i´m on my way right now, though, to some place called Fonda del Ché where i will be attending a conference (its says video conference, maybe they´re showing a video?) about ché guevara and the guatemalan revolution. the place sounds like a good space. time to go find it and check it out...

end of trailer. feature presentation to follow!

institutionalized -isms

went to a conference yesterday about racism in guatemala. it´s crazy! (for lack of better words i keep resorting to ¨crazy.¨ leave me alone, i have at least 100 new words in a different language occupying my brain.) there is a huge indigenous population here. i mean, u walk around and u see a lot of folks in traje típico, which is local/traditional mayan clothing. u also see women effortlessly carrying large bundles on their heads, without hands. i heard k'iche' by the market area today. anyway, i don´t have the patience to explain the institutionalized system of racism against indigenous peoples right now. it´s deep, but not new. it was like in hawai'i when i learned about racism there, against the kanaka maoli... same shit! stuff like u can´t claim native lands unless u prove u have native blood, whereas the government well knew that most of them didn´t have such records. here, it´s largely a language issue. i´ll explain later.

yesterday´s futbol game was the BOMB!! the locals are insanely good at soccer. oh my gosh. i was only one of two women who went to play, but i held it down. thanks. well, as best i could i should say. i made two assists! one was almost a goal, it just needed a tap in. the other i stole the ball from mid-field and passed it across to my teammate who then scored! our team won, and i think i made a point for women while at it. i played very agressively, but i had to. i was proud of myself for even being able to last that hour in the altitude. there´s apparently about 25% less oxygen up here in the highlands than where i´m used to. i can´t wait for next week´s game!! unfortunately, i´ll be missing out on xela´s home futbol game tomorrow nite, and there isn´t another one i can attend while i´m here. they´re very exciting i was told. =( oh well, another year! i can always come back, and maybe make a trip to neighboring countries, like cuba, while at it...

today was my last day of class this week with my teacher. he is so knowledgeable about languages! he speaks spanish, k'iche', and english. he is a professor and he is really intrigued with language and how it shapes/determines one´s way of thinking, expression, etc. next week i´ll have a new teacher. i wanted to walk over to the other side of the park and buy cambrayes, which are local mayan sweet tamales. sooo yummy! my teacher didn´t even know about this store, and when i bought us some he said it was really good. thanks to trisha for letting me know about it! they only sell it on friday mornings from 8-9. soooo delicious. my teacher was pleasantly surprised that i enjoyed local food. then he showed me a place in the mercado comercial where they sell atole. i had one of arroz (rice) and he had one of etole (corn). yumm... our last day was good. i bought a newspaper and realized how freakin hard it was. in the last hour of our session, i told my teacher about my family history. my dad´s, my mom´s, and my own... for an hour! i cried during the telling. in the end we had a great wrap-up, exchanged words of wisdom, life, etc. i was also surprised that i was able to express so much in spanish. of course he helped me here and there where i was stumbling. a good way to end by connecting through human spirit. =)

when i came back to my host home after lunch, their dog zuni (whose name actually comes from ¨sunny¨ but is said with a spanish pronunciation) and carmen and maria were in the courtyard. they were letting the pets out for some sun. they have canaries, an iguana, fish, and a baby turtle. the turtle was in a tub for a bath when zuni went over to sniff the turtle, then when he pulled his head up the turtle was no longer in the tub!! carmen grabbed zuni´s mouth and pryed it open to find the turtle with its body parts all tucked into the shell. it dropped out and was fine. bad dog! he knew he was being scolded, and the look on that cockerspaniel´s eyes and the way he was carrying himself about, he knew he had done wrong. so cute!! and later when i was admiring the fish, he was so jealous he kept coming over and bumping and rubbing up against me. what a character... i think that´s why he snatched up the turtle in his mouth, cuz we were playing with it and giving it all this attention.

i will be leaving early tomorrow for lago atitlán. it´s apparently one of the most photographed lakes in the world. sounds like a happening place, lots of everything. i´ll be gone for the whole weekend, so no updates until sunday evening. wish me safe travels! this is definitely going out of my comfort zone. but once i do it, i´ll feel my world has opened up even more. chicken bus, here i come!

politics

cuba. i asked my host family today if they had heard about fidel castro and the recent news. they were aware that he had some kind of stomach operation, but they didn´t know he relinquished power to his brother raul. my host mom spectulates that fidel has actually in fact died, but that they are not announcing it. she thinks this because she hasn´t seen any photos of him after surgery, in a hospital bed, etc. i´m not reading enough to agree or disagree with that. but i agree that the u.s. is certainly making plans for something drastic. thirsty for more blood is our country.

guatemala. yesterday nite i went to a very cool collective space where they hosted a discussion/testimonial from a victim of the guatemalan government/army. pedro told his account of how he was captured, interrogated, and tortured during the civil war. it started when the army captured and interrogated a 14-yr-old boy in his village, threatening him and demanding to know who the guerillas and leaders were. in fear, he named pedro as one. the army the captured and tortured him, even though he had done nothing and was a part of nothing. for 8 days they tied him up naked, cut his face, kicked him, one soldier even bit his ear... thereafter they put him in a car and took him somewhere in the mountains where he was dropped into a deep hole. they dropped large rocks at him, threatened to burn him with gasoline, hung him briefly 3 times, and shot bullets at him. by the end, there was no inch of his body that didn´t have a mark, and his entire body was blackened from the wounds. when he was finally released he went back to him home, he was to patrol but couldn´t because of his condition. he was being monitored by government officials, so it was then he realized he had to flee to mexico. there he had to blend in as a mexican, speak like them, dress, eat, etc. like them. he lost much of his culture during the time there. the mexican government, realizing that many guatemalans were fleeing to mexico for persecution, created laws such as children cannot attend school if they don´t have mexican papers. his children could not attend. anyway, finally in 1998 a group of almost 200 guatemalan refugees organized themselves and returned. this was after the 1996 peace accord that was signed between the government and the URNG, the former guerilla group that is now a political party. the refugees were able to get land, materials for housing, etc. today, this group runs a collective community as well as several projects to help sustain themselves and the community. they run a tortillería, a bee project to sell honey, and a school. their board of directors is elected by the assembly every 2 years, and they have a women´s committee and an elderly committee, because they are very important groups he says (and i agree!). my thoughts? well, we can talk.

language. i´m really frustrated with my spanish right now. i think i must be a difficult student. i ask questions that are kind of all over the place. i have so many questions and i´m always jumping from this topic to that. my teacher is really patient with me though. anyway, i understand so much better than i can speak. i still stumble and take a LONG time to think. it frustrates me. lotsa other folks are fearless and just talk and get the point across, even if there are mistakes. but i´m such a perfectionist that i stop and think and think to make sure that i conjugate the verb correctly, that i use the correct masculine or feminine article, that i use the correct vocabulary to express something... arghhh. it´s been almost a week and i don´t feel like i´m where i should be. maybe i´m impatient, or i just expect language to magically fill my cerebrum.

plumbing. u can´t put your toilet paper in the toilet because the septic system can´t handle it. showers have a mechanism on top of the showerhead that heats the water. u are NOT to touch this mechanism. weird quirk: u have to negotiate between temperature and water pressure. if u want a hot shower, u have to have low pressure. if u want lotsa pressure, u have to have a cool shower.

transportation. main source of public transportation here is called a chicken bus. yes, in spanish they call it ¨chicken bus¨, but of course the bus is pronounced like ¨boos¨. i have yet to ride it. i think i may be taking one to lake atitlan this weekend, if i choose to go there. don´t know yet what to do with my weekend. it´ll be lonely i fear, because liz and trisha leave tomorrow. that just means i have to force myself to make friends with folks at my school. eep! i´m secretly an introvert.

i´m meeting people from all over the world. england, sweden, japan, all over the u.s. the guatemalans call people from the u.s. "estadounidense" which quite literally would be united states-er. the term "americano" is not used because in realidad both continents of north and south america is america, hence everyone is american.

the hot springs was so relaxing! wow. there was a large pool with naturally hot volcanic water, and then private bath rooms with even hotter water. i could only stay in there for less than 10 minutes. then the guide showed us the source of the water. amazing! it gets heated within these rock walls. u could also drink it, as it has so many minerals and no parasites. it cleanses your system and is good for your health. and so i filled up my bottle, but had to be careful because it´s hot. the water tastes lemon-y with a pinch of salt. my skin is so soft. i sound like a commercial...

ayer fui al parque central para reunirme con mi amiga liz. fuimos al mercado comercial porque quería comprar varios cosas y recuerdos. yo compré una camisa típica, una falda guatemalteca, una pelota de fútbol, una CD de marimba (música nacional de guatemala), y regalos para unos de mis amigos. liz también compró muchas cosas. estoy celosa de ella porque compró una camisola del equipo Xelajú. no tenía camisolas en mi talla. después, fuimos a visitar a otra amiga trisha. ella estaba aprendiendo... weaving. que suave! luego fuimos a cenar en un restaurante maya que se llama Utz Hua. mi maestro me dijo lo que significa, pero no me recuerdo. él habla k'iche, un idioma indígena de los mayas. de qualquier manera, yo ordené un plato de Quichom de pollo y bebí cerveza Gallo (la cerveza local). fue un día muy divertido ayer!

translation:
yesterday i went to the central park to meet with my friend liz. we went to the marketplace because i wanted to buy different things as well as souvenirs. i bought a traditional/indigenous woven shirt, a guatemalan skirt, a soccer ball, a CD of marimba music (traditional guatemalan music), and gifts for some of my friends. liz also bought lots of things! i´m jealous of her because she bought a jersey of the local soccer team here in xela called Xelajú. they didn´t have jerseys in my size. afterwards, we went to visit another friend trisha. she was learning weaving. how cool! later wee went to eat dinner at a mayan restaurant called Utz Hua. my teacher told me what it meant, but i don´t remember. he speaks k'iche, an indigenous mayan language. anyway, i ordered a plate called Quichom chicken and i drank Gallo beer (the local beer). it was a very fun day yesterday!

it is day 3 here in xela. i´ve had 3 days of spanish class one on one, and already so many things are much clearer in my head in terms of the language. i can´t wait to see what 2 more weeks will bring. yesterday i met up with my two friends liz and trisha in el parque central. we roamed the city, shopped, studied at a cafe, ate out at a mayan restaurant. i spent so much money (which in u.s. dollars was really not THAT much). i´m happy with the things i got. i will definitely slow down on the spending though. really happy about the soccer ball that i bought! still looking for a guatemalan national futbol team jersey in my size. i got my eye on a guatemalan futbol though... i saw one passing by a store today...

today i´m going on a field trip with my school to the volcanic hot springs called aguas amargas. i´ve never been to a hot springs at all before, so it´ll be cool to have my first one be here! tonite my school is showing a documentary or film, not certain, called ¨fresas y chocolate¨ which is about homosexuality in cuba. not sure either when the film was made. yesterday´s conference topic was extraordinary, and i almost understood all of it!! one of the folks at our school was the radio speaker of ¨La Voz Popular¨ which was the guerilla news broadcast during the conflict. freakin crazy!! her stories are amazing and inspiring. i will record them later, because for now i must lunch with my host family. until then!