Updates

Sorry we haven't written in a while. Here's what we've been up to:

>We went to the opera- It was "The Marriage of Figaro". Very good. We dressed up and had really good seats for only about $30 ($100 pesos). It had 3 intermissions! Sarah and Andrea drank champagne.
>We had Aissa and Ben over for dinner (friends of Joslyn)
>We had Thanksgiving at a friend of some friends of a friend's house. No one could find turkey or pumpkin pie. We had some quail eggs and candy teeth as appetizers. We brought deviled eggs and twice baked potatoes and met some cool people.
>Andrea and Gabby joined a gym! Their favorite things to do are yoga, swimming, spinning and toni-flex. Sarah joined a really nice yoga studio and she's really happy with it. Her favorite teacher is Roberto.
>Sarah has found a new talent as an empanada maker. We have been eating them a lot. She puts things in them like cheese, broccoli, spinach, onions, chocolate, bananas, apples, dulce de leche and beans. Not all at once of course.
>We finally moved into our permanent apartment. We love it so much! It has three bedrooms, it's decorated really nicely, and it has a rooftop terrace that we are free to use, and our landlord Ezekiel is great!
>Andrea started volunteering at "Club Acorn", an after-school program for kids, and she really likes it. It's in "La Boca", the shady part of town about an hour away from our apartment by bus. She is also volunteering at a hospital with Aissa.
>Sarah put an ad up on craigslist for a dog walker and she has her first prospective client! His name is, no joke, Michael Jordan and he wants her to take care of his dog while he is gone for a while.
>Gabby went job hunting for the first time. It was really scary but good for her. Nothing has come of that so far but Ezekiel got her a job interview at the restaurant of the hotel he works at so hopefully that will work out.
>Gabby turned 20 in Buenos Aires on December 12th! Andrea and Sarah made it really special for her. Among other things, we went ice skating!

That's all we can think of right now! We promise to put pictures up soon!

Love, Andrea, Gabby and Sarah

we found an apartment(s)!

we are finally out of the hostel. we found a sweet place, 3 bedrooms, wifi, great neighborhood (palermo viejo), complete with a new gay landlord and a beautiful outdoor roof patio! and sarah's already guilted him into buying us some new wine glasses, so we're happy. but it's occupied until december 16, so we had to move into another apartment in the meantime, which is not our favorite, but we're so pleased to be able to cook, and we've found hours of entertainment watching the security camera view of the front door (always live on channel cinco) and playing with the bidet. (in case you want to learn more on the subject, we found this very informative: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Bidet ) anyhow, we can now receive mail! i know you've all been waiting patiently for this moment. make it count.

Scalabrini Ortiz 1136
2do "D"
C1414DNY
Ciudad de Buenos Aires
Argentina


love you

Las Tres

The nicknames we have received as a threesome since starting our travels (we love them all):

Tres Hermanas - la escuela de la montaña

Tres Mosqueteras - PLQ in Xela

Las Davidson  (and this refers to all three of us or just one at a time, we were always las davidson) - Garden House Hostel

Twisted Bitches - our new apartment and in general

La Pelicula

This is the film that we created to say thank you and goodbye to our wonderful language school (PLQ) in Guatemala. It is the tradition for graduating students to present something. Typically they will stand up and say thank you, tell a story or recite a poem. But since we like to believe we are cooler than everyone else we took this as a challenge. We spent two weeks working on our "proyecto secreto" and everyone was looking forward to something clever and funny from Las Tres Mosqueteras. Of course, two hours before the big event all the power in Xela went out. The only other thing we had prepared to communicate our gratitude and sum up our entire five weeks of study at PLQ was an intro to the movie. Here it is in it's entirety:

Sarah: Primero, nos gustaria decir Muchas Gracias a todos.

Andrea: Hemos hecho una pelicula para ustedes.

Gabby: Entonces, por favor, vamos a la sala de cine.

Needless to say nobody was impressed and we were depressed. But, a few hours later after dinner had been served, the beer had run out and people were just getting ready to leave the power came back on...Sarah immediately ordered Carlos, the director of the school, to herd everyone into the theatre "como vacas". Of course, the people loved it.

Disfruta!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLlkSUfpCfk

-Gabby, Andrea, y Sarah

Vamos Vamos Vamos River Plate

We went to a futbol (soccer) game here in BsAs; we got to watch River Plate (or the River Plates?) play los Huricanes. We were picked up, and of course kissed, by our guide Matias.  Dinner was included, it was grilled sausages or hamburgers at a vendor outside the stadium.  This was pretty great as far as I was concerned, it was made even better watching Andrea enjoy her burger.

The cheer that the crowd was singing during the whole first half when River Plate had not scored was this (as transcribed by our guide Matias, because of course we made him write down the words, he is just lucky we didn't ask him to write down all the words to every song they were singing):

jugadores, la concha de su madre, haber si ponen huevos que no juegan con nadie!!!

I will leave the translation to you all who speak Spanish.

¿De Donde Son?

Almost everytime I tell someone I´m from Hawaii, they do a little cheesy hula dance and I love it.

unas fotos para ustedes

sarah in our hostel

we love these purple trees! they're everywhere


pedis!

our first meal in Bs As. we're quite pleased that medialunas are everywhere too

how sweet is our hostel?

First Impressions

We arrived in Buenos Aires at 5:15 a.m. on November 5th, 2008. We were greeted by two quite good-looking Argentinean boys* who helped us to our taxi. As we were driving, the city was all lit up, active but quiet, pristine, beautiful and topped off by the news from our driver that Obama had won. I would call it a near perfect moment.

One of the first things we did when we arrived in the main part of town was to go get pedicures. Now, I usually could care less about the state of my feet, I'm really not that girl, but even I could see that after two months in Guatemala, they were terrifying and something had to be done. Once this matter was taken care of and we could breathe a little easier, we turned our attention to more important things (almost), like finding an apartment. We found several ones that we liked and have appointments to go see them through next tuesday. We are even playing with idea of getting separate rooms as a way to meet more people and learn faster.

The spanish here is a world apart from that of Guatemala, or I think anywhere. It sounds a bit like Italian to us. For the double 'l' sound, like in 'me llamo', they use somewhere between a 'sh' and a 'j', so it becomes 'me shjamo'. A lot of words are different too. Butter is 'manteca', not 'mantequilla'. It's weird but cool. 

We are staying at a really amazing hostel that is nothing like a hostel at all. Its being cleaned constantly, there are activities everyday (last night was "Emparty"-an empanada party), the staff is awesome, and there is art everywhere. During the day we walk a lot, sometimes just blindly to see what we find and sometimes with a map. Today we stumbled upon a theatre, where we bought tickets to go see the opera "The Marriage of Figaro" (Las Bodas de Figaro), and the most amazing ice cream shop ever where we bought banana split, chocolate chip and a really fancy chocolate that starts with an "N" but I can't remember exactly what the name was.

We also have been needing to take naps around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, we're probably still a bit jet-lagged, and take great relish in filling up our water bottles from the tap (we still can't figure out how to order this in restaurants though). 

Buenos Aires is a lovely city. It reminds Andrea of New York and Sarah found parts that remind her of Denver. You will all love it when you come and visit us. 

Tally of cheek kisses so far: 5 each

*NOTE: Everyone in Argentina is good-looking. And tall. It makes no sense.

Fiambre

The traditional meal for El Dia de los Muertos (November 1) here in Guatemala is called fiambre. As it has been described to me it is a mix of pretty much every vegetable known to man thrown together and cooked, similar to stir fry. (The vegetarians have been looking forward to trying this for like a month.) They also include pretty much every different kind of meat you can think of, ground beef, sausages, lunch meat strips (I think I even found a piece of a hot dog in mine). Then they throw in some eggs and cheese for kicks. Everything turns bright pink because there are beets involved. One thing they failed to mention was that most of the vegetables are not fresh but pickled, and I suspect there are leftovers thrown in there, because hey, who will know the difference?

I thought I had escaped having to eat this on November 1st because I didn´t eat meals with my family that day, however, they were kind enough to save me some leftovers and serve it to me cold the next day for breakfast. Now, I have eaten some very questionable things here in Guatemala for the sake of not offending my family, but this was too much. It was the only thing so far that has required me to be totally honest with my family because the idea of eating an entire plateful was more than I could handle.

It has basically driven us to leave the country. We are on our way to Guatemala City today and tomorrow we are flying to Argentina.

-Love and Besos

The Race is Over . . . I Think.

Monday, October 27th
For all of you who are competing to be the first to visit us during our travels here is the latest update:

There are rumors that our first visitors (Gabby´s fantastic parents, Judy and Michael) have flown in to Guatemala. I suspect they may even be in Xela at this moment although we haven´t seen them yet. We can´t wait to see friendly faces from home! So if you want to beat them here you better hurry, you may only have minutes before they show up . . . or you may have days.

-Besos

UPDATE:  It is Wednesday, October 29th. Andrea´s birthday has come and gone and still no sign or word from Judy and/or Michael. ¿Donde estan?

UPDATE:  Wednesday...later.  Judy and Michael were driving through Parque Central when we ran into them today.  The race is officially over....but who will be second?

A few things that Guatemaltecos would like us to know about Jesucristo

as evidenced by billboards, graffiti, store names, bumper stickers, bus decor, and general musings to this effect.

El es el camino
El es mi rey
El es mi mejor amigo
Solo él puede cambiar tu vida
El es el pan de vida
El es la vida
El vive
El viene
El es dios
El es amor
El te ama
El es el señor
El es el señor de ______ (muchos buses, tiendas, pueblos, y ciudades)
El es verbo, no sustantivo
El es la única esperanza para ti

My Jero

Escuela de la Montaña, where we spent our first week in Guatemala, is awesome for a lot of reasons. It is a gorgeous mountain setting where we had our one on one lessons in our own individual “ranchitos” surrounded by flowers and fresh air. We spent our afternoons drinking coffee grown nearby, and doing our homework in the hammocks. The school does its best to educate students on the social and political reality in Guatemala, and seems very conscious of its impact on the nearby communities and the general environment. But I’m pretty sure that my favorite thing about Escuela de la Montaña was Jorge.

Jorge is Escuela de la Montaña’s very own herbal medicine specialist. (I think I just made that title up. I’m sure there’s something much more official.) He studied the medicinal properties of plants for years, at a couple different schools, and the man is basically magic. Anytime a student was sick, we’d describe our symptoms to Jorge, which usually went something like:

“hurt” pointing, rubbing stomach “stomach” making fist “no good” “me stomach,” and repeat.
And that was just to describe a sore throat.

But Jorge always got it, and he’d walk through his garden picking some leaves here and there, and boil it all into some magic potion of a tea for us to drink. He saved Sarah’s life twice, Gabby’s once, and I got in on it every time, prevention-style.

Naturally, being a tiny bit obsessed with Jorge and his gift, we made the poor guy walk us around his garden, telling us the names and uses of each herb, while I snapped photos and Gabby and Sarah wrote down exactly what he said. So now we have our own little catalog—let us know dondé tienes dolor. Oh, and Jorge also happened to be son of my host mother, Aurelia, uncle of Lucrecia, and the one who built our ranchitos. For some reason, Jorge declined our offer to travel with us for the next 9 months.

Sorry it’s been so long. I promise to be a better blogger.

Odds and Ends

Hi everybody!
We´ve been going to salsa classes here lately. There´s a chico named Elvis who I´ve been partners with a couple times and once he gave me a ride home on his motorcycle. He invited us to go to a salsa club last friday with other students from the class and we went! And it was kinda fun! They do the YMCA just like we do! I´ve never sweat so much in my life. I didn´t take a shower because I was just too tired but my hair was fabulous the next day so it was ok.

We went to a town called San Francisco a few days ago and a mayan shaman (who just looked like a normal dude) told us what our ¨nahuals¨are. They are like the social security number of your soul and they depend on what day you were born. We each had numerous ones but among them, Sarah had a dog, Andrea had a kind of wildcat, and I had a woodpecker.

We have bought our tickets to Argentina and we leave on November 4th! We also have decided to do one more week of school, even though we are already fluent. There aren´t many students next week so we thought we would help the school out, maybe even teach. Our last day will be Halloween! It´s customary for graduating students to prepare a speech or a poem as a way of demonstrating what they´ve learned. We have decided to make a silent film! We will post it when it is complete so you all can see!

Love you all very much!

Skypetacular!

Just a quick note to let you all know we are now signed up for skype so you all can call and leave messages or talk to us if we are online! Our info is...

(307) 466-0141
Andrea - andrea.dvdsn
Sarah - sarahdvdsn
Gabby - gabrielledavidson

We love the comments here and we would love to hear all your voices!

Boda Bonita

We got the opportunity to go with Sarah´s family, Edwin and Lorena, last night to a traditional wedding reception. I thought for the most part that it was the same as our weddings. They played the wedding song as the bride and groom walked through the doors (they also played happy birthday), there were decorations and food and a big ol cake and a band complete with marimba. The only real differences were that the women were dressed traditionally and they did a traditional dance. There were two rows of people facing eachother and they just swayed back and forth, back and forth to the music of the marimba. I think that even we three could do it.

We brought them a gift: a set of tasteful white-with-gold trim cups and saucers. Later we frantically wondered whether we had the same idea of tasteful as they did. Most dishes here have colorful pictures of fruit or flowers or ¨Happy Mother´s Day¨ on them. Were plain ones considered tacky? I think we were okay though because we were served tea at the wedding in cups very similar to the ones we had bought.

Once there, we joined a long procession of people waiting to give their congratulations and gifts to the newlyweds. I couldn´t help feeling awkward as I handed ours to the groom with a meek ¨Felicitaciones¨. And though he was gracious, I couldn´t help but wonder if he was wondering ¨Who the heck are you people and why are you at my wedding?¨ Maybe they don´t think like that here. Probably, the more the merrier.

We didn´t dance except for at the end. It was a special dance for all the women who came alone. It ended up being a different and much safer version of when the bride throws her boquet. Instead of standing in a huddle behind her ready to body slam anyone who gets in your way, you dance in a circle around her. And she throws it 3 times so there isn´t only one winner. How nice.

It was a lovely evening and it was made complete by Edwin´s 80´s mix, including Billy Jean and Eye of the Tiger, that we listened to on the way home.

La Lluvia (the rain)

We have aparently come to Guatemala during the rainy season. One of my favorite phrases to use is "Hay mucho lluvia!" (there is a lot of rain) because, well, I learned the word for rain early on, because I don´t know how to say much else, and because there IS a lot of rain. I may sound a little stupid for stating the obvious, but at least I don´t sound stupid because my grammar is bad, that´s something, no? The locals ALWAYS respond with "Yes, it´s the rainy season". I love the rain. At first I was so happy, the rainy season is fantastic, the rain is fantastic, I love it! And then three weeks went by...

You should know that as we walk through these beautiful cobblestone and mud streets here in Xela we are always watching for dog poop because there are so many stray dogs. So as it has rained for the last six hours and I have to walk to school, in my flip flops because all my other shoes are soaking wet, and I am standing ankle deep in water, I can´t help but wonder what happened to all that dog poop that I so carefully did not step in.

I am beginning to revise my opinion on rain.

Paraiso

For the first time in 3 weeks we are all three showered, have had a good nights sleep, have eaten well, and all feel normal again.  We have arrived back in civilization.

Right now we are sitting in an internet cafe in Xela, drinking lattes, eating crepes and using wireless internet service.  It is our idea of heaven.  We actually cried tears of happiness.  I'm not kidding, Gabby started it and Andrea and I both joined in once she got all teary.

We are all living with different families.  Andrea has a family with a lot of kids, like she wanted.  Gabby has a really nice family and she has a great little room with one pink wall, one blue wall, and one wood wall and a huge window over her desk looking out over the city.  My family is really amazing and kind.  They go out of their way to find food that I like and ask me questions, most of which require some sort of pantomime in order for me to understand, but they are very patient.  They have obviously had a lot of students.

We Think Sarah and Cassidy Are Following Us

http://www.cassidyandsarah.blogspot.com

They´re even sneaking pictures of us paparazzi-style: http://picasaweb.google.com/cassidy.claassen/Tikal#5249972578379000850

Thanks, but no thanks

One of the best things about Belize is that even on your nastiest, sweatiest, ugliest, worst-hair day, there is always someone to whistle and tell you how beautiful you are as you walk by.

One of the worst things is that there is ALWAYS someone to whistle and tell you how beautiful you are as you walk by.

We Be UnBelizeable

Pardon the pun, but we are: Unbelievable and in Belize! Sorry we haven't written in a while!

The last time we reported we were in Xela on Independence Day. We dreaded going back to the only 3 beds we could find in our nasty hostel dormitorio. We shouldn't have complained for when we returned our beds had been taken by a group of Israeli girls who were much tougher than us. We only got one bed to share. Gabby was freezing near the window, Sarah was roasting in the middle, and Andrea was freezing near the aisle. It was a long night.

From there we went to Lake Atitlan for a couple of days and then to Tikal (which we soon discovered translates to "Land of Sweatiness"). Tikal is the largest preserved site of Mayan ruins, it is now set in the middle of a jungle. It was once the center of the Mayan civilization.

We arrived at 7:00 am and hiked into the grand plaza which has two of the larger temples on either side of an open courtyard. We had the entire grand plaza all to ourselves except for the carpet of bees we walked through whose buzzing echoed through the entire plaza.

We were sitting on top of temple II trying to imagine what life here was like in it's heyday when we heard a terrifying roaring sound off to the south. After staring at each other in disbelief we were debating whether this noise was A) a hungry lion B) angry Mayan gods or C) a dinosaur. These were obviously the only three possibilities. Right when we settled on C and decided to walk the other direction we ran into a park ranger (or someone who looked official). We asked him "What is..." and we pointed to our ears. He said "It's a jaguar" and grinned.

This was a possibility we had not yet considered.

He had a good laugh and then escorted us to go see the quite harmless howler monkeys in person. [Editor´s Note: there was some confusion with this...the roaring sound was actually the howler monkeys, we were not being stalked by jaguars, nor did we see any...for better or worse. We did however see a tarantula about the size of a plate, he almost ate Andrea, but she´s pretty fast, she escaped.]

It was the perfect beginning to our day at Tikal. We can't describe how incredible this place is. You just have to see it.

So with one more week off before school starts we were wondering where to go when on the bus ride home our driver just happened to be taking reservations for the bus to Belize. As we obviously needed a vacation, we decided, Why not go to Belize?

Early yesterday we were ready to go to Belize, however, our bus was not. We got the 7:30 bus at 8:30 when it arrived and headed to the border. Andrea had read in the guide book that Guatemalan officials will ask you for an illegal "Exit Tax", so when they asked us for a dollar we refused to pay and began holding up the only line. Finally, as the agent realized she couldn't argue with us because "No Entiendamos" (we don't understand) she just gave us our passports and moved on to easier targets. So Gabby paid.

She forgot to stamp my passport, which isn't necessary, but I did not know this, so I went back and insisted that she "Stampa" my passport. She was less than willing but eventually gave in.

I find that many words in Spanish really are similar to the english word but with an O or an A at the end. Just a note to you all, stamp is not one of those words. I don't think Stampa is a word at all, but she got my point.

We all made it across the border. We are now at Ambergris Caye in San Pedro town to enjoy the Caribbean beaches for a few days.

One Love - Andrea, Gabby, and Sarah

So it turns out "estampa" is a word.

Gabby is Famous . . . or Married

Last week Gabby was asked to sign something by one of the village children at La Escuela De La Montana, so she did, thinking of course they want her autograph. I agree with her, who wouldnt? But Andrea and I think she might be married now.

I´m just sayin...

On Tuesday we´re leaving for a two week trip around Guatemala. We really need a vacation. We plan to hit up Lake Atitlan, for some beautiful volcanic lake-ish views and hikes, and maybe some meditation retreat action, then go to the Mayan ruins at Tikal in Northern Guatemala. But that´s not the point. After that we´ll be studying spanish for another 4 straight weeks, so any time in the next 6 weeks we can receive mail at the following addresses.

regular mail:
our name
care of PLQE
Apdo 114
Quetzaltenango
Guatemala
Central America

fedex:
our name
Proyecto Linguuistico Quetzalteco de Espanol
5 Calle 2-40 Zone 1
Quetzaltenango
Guatemala
Central America
*but keep in mind, we´re already total gringos walking around the city with our guidebook dragging our way too massive broken suitcases behind us.

Besos!

A Recap

So, even though I think blogs should be short, sweet, spontaneous and stick to one subject, I think a summary is in order:
We really enjoyed our time at Escuela de la Montaña. We had lessons 4 hours a day in the mornings with really great teachers- Ani, Abby and Eunice (it sounds a lot prettier in spanish). We got to explore a coffee finca (plantation), catch the ¨pick-ups¨(pick up trucks with a metal cage-like stucture on the back) to a nearby town, Colomba, for 50 cents, and be amazed at the different ways our families could serve our four basic staples-beans, eggs, tortillas and vegetables (along with fried chicken and corn flakes for sarah).
Now, we are back in Xela and much more adept at riding the chicken bus and, between the three of us, understanding the locals. Tomorrow is Independence Day so there is much celebrating going on. The downside to this is there seem to be no rooms available because of the holiday so we ended up at ¨Casa de Argentina¨in a dormitorio-basically a room with a bunch of beds. We tell ourselves that it is part of the experience.
Our plans for the next two weeks are to visit Lake Atitlan and Tikal in the north.
Buen Viaje(good journey) to us!

Gabby Has Won "Best Packer Of The Year" Twice...In One Year

A feat which has never been accomplished before in the history of the Best Packer Of The Year award. She is not invited on the next trip.

Como se dice "fishnet"?

My bug spray ate holes in my tights. Yet it fails to ward off the mosquitos.

Safety Is No Problema at La Esquela

So we are living at la esquela with seven other students, a couple of teachers, two directors, three dogs, two cats, and apparently two night security guards, who I have not yet met. We have been warned not to venture more than about 100 meters away from school alone or in small groups unless you take one of the "attack dogs" with us. Now, these dogs are shaggy mutts that will roll over on their backs every time you come within 5 feet of them. Vicious is not the first word I would have used to describe these dogs, so taking them with me as protection was not making me comfortable.

However, the first time i was outside of the school - sitting in a hammock as one does in the afternoon - two children in school uniforms walked by our gate and the dogs went crazy. I was afraid they might go around the fence and bring back some poor kid´s severed hand. It turns out that they know all the students and teachers, but anyone else that even dares to walk past our school runs the chance of being torn apart by Buster, Compa, and/or Capi. So our dogs are a bit protective I discovered.

Now that I know that they are vicious, I wondered how to get them to stay with me as I venture down the road. It turns out that all you have to do is call them as you leave the school grounds and they just stick with you the whole time you are gone. Buster (Andrea´s personal favorite) often accompanies her into town when she goes for her meals. The first day Buster even went inside with Andrea like she (yes, Buster is a girl) owned the place.

They are smarter than most people I think, and sometimes better company...but they all have fleas so we make them sleep in the hallway.

Buster is pictured above...vicious, no?

Mucho Love

Never again

And so, the thing which I dreaded most of all-riding the chicken bus- has come to pass, without me even realizing it. True, I did notice that it was packed to roughly 6 times it´s intended capacity and vaguely wondered why the woman next to me was on my lap, but there were no chickens in sight. Who knew?

La comida

Every day each of us eats three meals with a family in one of the nearby communities, Fatima or Nuevo San Jose. And by eating with, I mean I sit at the table and eat, while one family member is obligated to sit and talk to me. Mine is a 14-year-old girl named Lucrecia. She never eats, just watches me. This is 20% awesome and 80% awkward silence. Once we get past the obvious small talk--where are you from? what´s your favorite fruit? how many friends do you have? (Lucrecia has 14)--I usually just say any random spanish phrase that comes to mind (Maria es en la cocina style), or tell her how bueno the food is for the 50th time.

Everything comes with corn tortillas. Today for breakfast I had spaghetti with corn tortillas. For lunch, mashed potatoes with corn tortillas. Um, yes, operation gordas gringas is in full effect. Miss you all and photos soon. Amor.

Busses and Malaria

Today we bravely ventured out of our hotel – on the recommendation of our hotel owner we did not take the Chicken Bus to Antigua. I think we may have missed out on an adventure there, but it was too late in the day and we didn’t have time. Luckily we did get to spend some time on the bus. On our way across town we caught our first Guatemalan bus, but missed our stop because we hadn’t realized that as the bus nears your stop you should wait for the driver to slow enough to change gears and then you jump off. We figured it out soon enough, and on the way home we crossed two lanes of traffic to jump onto a moving bus. The driver then proceeded to tell us that the bus didn’t go to where we were headed, but as we stood there looking confused he decided to drive us to our doorstep. I think maybe he didn’t know how else to get us off his bus. It was a good day.

Also, I got bit by a mosquito – think I might have malaria. Does anyone know if the symptoms include paranoia? Gabby just brushed her teeth with tap water – I think she might have a water borne illness.

Humor does translate – we got our first joke in Spanish today – well, it was more of a play on words and wasn’t so much funny as clever, but in a desperate attempt to not BE the joke for a minute today we laughed. Gracias Tacontento, Gracias.

Tomorrow we are on a bus to Xela for our first night at the school...buenos noches.

(above) Gabby and Andrea at Museo National de Arqueologia y Etnologia

Um…so we ate at Taco Bell.

I don't want to talk about it.




Gabby and I had a great first day of feeling like idiots and making locals laugh (which come to think of it sounds a lot like our life in Green River Cass), and Sarah joined us last night. We somehow got a room that could fit 30, with two giant decks, and our own private bathroom, so we’re livin large in Ciudad de Guatemala. Currently, there is someone making a very important-sounding announcement on a loudspeaker outside our window. We’re not sure if he’s saying “there is a fire in the building--please evacuate” or “it’s very important to get your RDA of potassium.” Since he appears to be selling bananas out of the back of his pickup truck, we’re guessing it was the latter. We’re here one more night, then off to Xela to begin studying Spanish!

Welcome to el bloggo! Mucho mas later.

Hey Hermana, Go Hermana, Soul Hermana

So we don't have our plane tickets or even a real plan yet, but we do have a blog! First things first, I mean seriously. It's mainly because I had a million other more important things that I should have been doing. Don't try this at home kids, I'm a professional procrastinator. Here's to our journey!