Guatemala Bjorn

I climbed Mount Agua yesterday. It was 9 hours of straight walking. It was also littered, cloudy and actually somewhat crowded. But good anyways. My favorite part was definitely seeing the armed guard someone had brought shooting his gun into the air at the top....Then handing it around for all the teenagers to see and the point blindly into the fog. I will put a real post about this some other day, along with pictures. It may not be for a while though, as Solomon¨s Porch is coming tomorrow. Then my parents are coming for a week.

There will potentially be no more posting for 2 weeks.

i decided to go to the beautiful city of Xela this weekend. Here are the good and bad things about the weekend.

Bad Things

• I did NOT go to Xela. I went to Panajel.....The travel agency told me going to Xela via Panajel is the west way to get there. This is incorrect. The best way is to go to one of the 3 travel agencies I passed on my way out of Antigua offering cheap, direct routes to Xela. My travel agency only offered medium priced trips to Panajel.....and from there I was supposed to find an Expensive travel agency to take me to Xela.....I just stayed in Panajel.
• My camera was stolen off of my backpack (yes, I am a moron for putting it there in the first place...but in my defence I was only walking 5 blocks, in safe antigua, at midday, in a not too crowded area)

Good things

• I saw monkeys. Lots of them. In clear view. They were hanging from their tails and gliding through the trees and doing all sorts of monkey stuff....this was so cool it almost made up for not having a camera to take pictures of them.
• the rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and exploring.
  

around here they say "provencho!" after you are finished eating...I am told that literally, this means something like "good digesting!" or "benefit".....this is actually very appropriate since digesting anything very well involves some element of luck in Guatemala.

today my teacher finally got the courage to ask me what "gotcha" and "crap" meant. apparently i say them a lot

I went to the beach this weekend.....It was freakin hot (104). However, a cool ocean with incredible waves can fix that. The ocean was definitely one of God´s better ideas.


We (Me, laura, and the two Swedes we live with) also went on a morning (5 am) tour of the jungle river....Apparently the only animals that live in the jungle are egrets....But hey, who can turn down a boat ride that looks like the above picture.


I other news...I´m ridiculously sunburned (note to self: sunblock comes off in the ocean, and the ocean does not block sun). I also figured out what that one crucial thing was that I left at home (I KNEW there would be something)....The battery charger for my razor....I´m going to have to learn to shave with a regular razor or.....Not shave......I´m going with not shaving....

# posted by blog @ 7:16 AM 0 comments

The below two photos are of these amazing carpets that guatemalans tend to make on the street for the processions. the procession is basically a parade where they carry a huge statue of jesus and/or mary around while playing music and wearing different outfits. It is really a huge deal. Since it is holy week, they do this sort of thing every weekend.
The amazing thing is that people seem to volunatrily make these amazing carpets out of colored sawdust-like material and/or flowers. As you can imagine, these things take hours to make. Then the people carrying the statues come and march on them. Really amazing stuff.

close up of street carpet
Originally uploaded by bjornfu.

The other adventure from this weekend was taking a bike trip out to the small towns around Antigua. There is a very marked difference in poverty levels and life style between IN Antigua and Out of Antigua. The below photos should give you a idea of what it´s like OUT of Antigua.

If they don´t want you climbing over thier walls, they put a lot of sharp glass on top of it.... (they do that in Antigua too.....but i still think it´s cool, so i had to post it.
The one on the left there is very typical...once you get out of Antigua, the trash disposal system....well....completely disappears....so people just throw the trash by the side of the road.

And for your daily entertainment, go here. Found by Court.
And the spell check is not working right now......I feel naked.....

yesterday, laura and i went off to visit common hope. a first rate non profit in the area. what i love about them is that they give away almost nothing. they allow those who want to, to help themselves. people are not just given help, or a house or something. they have to earn it through community service, or attending school or other projects like that.

we went on the longest tour ever. not because it was a long tour, but because there was one guy who asked questions about EVERYTHING. the tourguide ended up just calling him the curious one (behind his back as he dug through every cabinet or asked each person how each part of the project was financed. a 1/2 hour tour literally took 2 hours do to the questions of one curious cat. still good anyways though.

we then ambled (trespassed) into a coffee plantation across the street. this was one of the best decisions i have ever made. not only was there a fascinating sub culture of coffee farmers around, but one of the farmers took us on a tour of the mansion of the owners of the plantation (they only came to use the mansion when they were checking up on things...so it was empty). it was an amazing experience. i highly recommend playing the dumb, lost tourist whenever possible. people show you all sorts of cool stuff that way.

ok. so i think i fixed the problem by moving from yahoo to flickr. i´ll finish updating and revising soon....but here´s some pictures and a conglomeration of my old posts. .... so, i moved yestereday into the house that laura lives at. this is a much nicer house, with HOT showers, and a much better family atmosphere (my old house felt more like a hotel). The mother of the house is teaching me spanish. she is quite good at english and an excellent teacher. these really intense 4 hour sessions are reminding me what a great thing homeschool is.....being one on one with a teacher is SO intense. you learn so much more that way.

it is kinda cool traveling with someone you don´t know very well. you discover all sorts of interesting things about them. for instance, i have finally figured out that laura is actually a cyborg. she looks like this 24/7. my next project: does the robotic eye come off when she sleeps?....or more mysterious....DOES she sleep?

**she´s totally gonna kill me if she finds this.....

today i accomplished one of my life´s goals. that goal was simply to see real live lava (my other goal would be to poke it with a stick...but i somehow don´t think that will ever happen). so today laura and i hiked up this large mountain (went on a tour) that was still active! it was one of the coolest things i´ve ever seen. every couple of minutes or so the mountian would spout out fire, brimstone, and real live lava. next on my goals: to see a whale. i´ll die happy if i do that.

yeah....this is the view.....not too shabby

Frida...the daugher in the house, was already the cutest kid on the planet. but apparently she wasn´t 100% sure of her position, so she brought home some day old chickens. she has completely eliminated all other cute children from the competition. i am holding out hope that she won´t figure out that with the puppy eyes and chickens i am now her pawn.

for those of you who don't rabidly track my life, first of all, shame on you. second of all, you should know i'm off in guatemala now till june 12. i arrived today.... events so far: -i had to be at the airport at 3:30 am....so i did'nt sleep last night....i'm quite tuckered out. -one job i can eliminate from my future career path is being the guy who runs in front of the bus to check around the courners and stop any traffic that is coming (yes, seriously, the bus has some guy that does this) -i'm pretty sure i'm not going to go to the school i'm signed up for right now, because some other tourists i met say thier school is splendorific, and half the price.... -antigua is SO cool. it is very touristy...but there are tons of cool bars and restaraunts. -every spanish word i know is invaluable. each new word i learn pretty much doubles my speaking abilities. ok. must sleeeeeep.