Hotel Rio Azul Quetzaltenango

... didnt help that I danced a couple salsa songs. (I just REALLY love to dance). Yesterday, I finally decided to go to the hospital. Sooooo its fractured. About the same place that I fractured it a couple years ago when I had a bike accident. Jones Fracture. <br><br>The hospital sure seemed cavalier about the whole thing. <br>Yep, theres the fracture, here, we¨ll put this **** cast on it, leave it on for three weeks. Dont walk. See you. <br><br>I guess it was all free ...

... i want to do one more week to really enable me to converse freely with the locals. It was so novel to be the student again after so long, and actually be really up for it for the first time. Once we had finished at 4, we went home and spent every night studying away at our desks in our room. I got a little obsessed in the end and on the Thursday actually studied for 12 hours!<br><br>After a sober week, on the Friday we went to a little local bar with Rory ...

... Sure they were delicious but the woman didn't have a cash register in her bra like in Antigua. I handed her a 100 Q note for a 10Q purchase and she didn't even bat an eye (or shake a boob). So I missed out on some local flavor here in town. Now what kind of store is this when all the money is kept in an unsafe cash register?<br><br>I'll know by morning if we are off on a three day adventure hike or finding alternate plans.<br>

... was here doing. They were super helpful and gave me the contact information of the managers of each cooperative around the lake. The next day I called most of them and made casual arrangements to get in touch with them in about a month when I am done working the harvest at the coast and am ready to move on to work at the lake. There are certainly worst places in the world to be working. I am happy that, working with coffee, I get to work in some of the most beautiful places ...

... We then walked the 5 minutes to school<br>(much easier seeing as it was downhill, sunny, and we were pack-less)<br>and arrived just on time for 8 am classes. We were assigned our<br>teachers and went off to our "classrooms." And by classrooms, let me<br>clarify. We each have individual thatch roofed cabanas with a little<br>table and two chairs underneath. The cabanas are spread out in a<br>beautiful garden filled with trees, flowers, and birds. Did we ...

Well I thought I would post something however I have not done much lately. I have been studying hard. It is not easy but nothing worth wild is easy. I am making a little progress <br><br>The key word here is little, my teacher tells me poco y poco (little by little I will learn Spanish). <br><br>There are a lot of small café's here because of the amount of people here studying Spanish mostly northern Europeans but there are a lot of Americans to ...

... think they at least should have paid for or arranged alternative child care rather than having them running around screaming, knocking equivalent of an hour off my lesson, which I worked hard to save to pay for. Soap box moment over. <br><br>Mi pelo es rizo<br><br>My teacher doesn´t speak much English but finds my accent hilarious and can entertain herself for hours comparing how an english word is said in an English accent compared to an American ...

... Guatemala. I love the sounds and the smells. I love walking down the street and hearing tortillas being made and smelling food cooking and charcoal and gasoline. I love the easy sense of humor and generosity of the people. I love the music I hear everywhere. I love that there is a parade for something once a week. I love hearing the ladies in the market. I love that Guatemalans sing along to everything. I love kissing people on ...

... a small local village. At the base of the Santa Maria (the other mountain adjacent to the Volcan Santiaguito), a small group of local villagers was meeting to pray their daily prayer to the mountain before beginning their days work. We passed by as we started to climb.<br><br>For the first two hours or so, the trail was somewhat difficult, but doable. Kinda like climbing up a 14er in Colorado -- possible, but it definately took a bit of effort. At this ...

... on who´s talking, what they´re trying to say, and which language they know how to say it in.<br><br>Our routine here involves waking up, and heading down to breakfast at 7:30. In theory, breakfast is at 7:30, but in reality, it starts 5 or 10 minutes later. Classes (a 10 minute walk away) start at 8, so there´s often a bit of a rush between breakfast and classes. With the schedule John and I signed up for, we have class from 8 to 12, followed ...