Villa Real Plaza Quetzaltenango

... day care centre for single mothers that have to work in the day, so that should be more fruitful. We will just be doing whatever is needed, looking after the kids, administration...hopefully it will be testing for our spanish! Its been a really big learning experience having the opportunity to really get to know and hang out with the local young people here, even though they don't necessarily have the most money or opportunities, they are still the most ...

... speaking gobbledygook.

There is then a young teenage lad who appears and disappears, usually coinciding with when the above girlīs hot mates are visiting or not. Finally there is another younger girl who is much quieter and spends most of her time giving us (quite rightly) bemused looks.

Dalila, the mother, unfortunately has bowel cancer which we think we understood correctly means she doesnīt have too long left. She is a lovely lady ...

... the man that yells out the door) was younger and he was being border line verbally abusive to people to try and get them in the Micro. "its raining!" "your getting wet, dumb**s" "yeah, stay in the rain, you need a shower!" ect... Anyhow, sitting there watching him, I felt something stir inside me. Something a little like love. Not for him, but for Guatemala.

Then I realized what the feeling was...I am falling in love ...

... are both local musicians about to open a cafe underneath our house, and found a cafe today which sells hummus and vegetarian food! so all in all, we have been extremely lucky since we got to Guatemala. It will be amazing to see our spanish progress, anyway, hope you are all well. we have brought the manchester weather to Xela as it apparently rains for a few hours everyday! I will try and post some photos soon!

Lots of love x

... the top towards the crater (a distance of about 2-3 hours by foot), where we would camp for the night. This would allow for a close, clear view of the crater in the morning with an additional 20-30 minute hike.

So, with this plan in mind, we began to continue along the trail and descend the mountain. At this point, the trail changed from a frequently used path to a more obscure, bush-whacking sort of ordeal. In addition, the terrain changed ...

... place than any I have been so far.

This is a place where when you ask a women how many children she has, she answers with the number living and the number dead. A place where a women that finished fifth grade is considered well educated. Where there is a noted absence of old men, Killed or disappeared during the war.

This is the Guatemala I came to find. And so far, it has been every bit as hard as I thought it would be...

... feet long, and 3 feet tall. Your job is to search through, and find any shoes you want to buy (hopefully a matching set, I presume?) and then buy them. Same thing goes with clothes -- mens, womens, pants, shirts, whatever, all in a pile. Typically, they seem to separate kids clothes, and occasionally they separate tops and bottoms, but not always. The plus side to all this is that clothes are cheap. Although our gloves cost a ghastly 10Q for ...

... be able to see the whole valley below us. I have never seen the clouds and the mist move as quickly as it did at our campsite. Very cool.

We cooked and ate dinner, and as we were finishing, the clouds cleared, and we were granted one of the most dramatic sunsets I have ever whitnessed. And I appologize for not being able to describe it to you, but it would be like trying to describe the color red without the other person knowing what red looked like. Lucky for ...

On the way from Nebaj to Santa Cruz El Quiche, I puked in a bag and threw it out the window. Yeah, I was still really sick from the food poisoning picked up in San Juan Cotzal. But I was kind of used to not being in the most pleasant of places, nor in the most pleasant of conditions. Luckily the minibus wasn't very full at all. We passed through Chichi, which I never did get too, and right on to Los Encuentros, where I changed buses to Quetzaltenango (Xela). When I caught the first ...

... in the church next to a nun.

On Saturday I woke up super early and took a chicken bus to Chimal and then a pullman bus to Xela. Originally, the plan was to go all the way to Huehue, spend the night there, and head to Todos Santos Sunday morning. But after 6 hours of travel, I decided to stay in Xela for the night instead.

So, I'm still here in Xela. I found a killer hostel with loads of other ...