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Trip Start Mar 14, 2004
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Guatemala  ,
Friday, May 21, 2004

Well, I finished my last day of spanish school today and as you can probably imagine, after all the hard work and stress, I need a vacation. Tomorrow Iīm going to go relax in some natural volcanic saunas and hot springs and Sunday Iīm going to get back on the road and start living out of my backpack again. My spanish is OK and the best way to keep learning now is to practice and actually use it. This, however, requires accepting the fact that major mistakes will be made. Last week, when we were leaving for the The Lake I told a bus driver we couldnīt board the bus because we were waiting for HIS friends instead of OUR friends.
This explains the weird look I got. A couple weeks earlier, my spanish school visited a nearby womenīs prison which was a total hell hole; itīs one of their charity projects. Anyway, I carried a box of medicine and some bread. Afterwards, I told my homestay family I took the prisoners drugs. They found this to be hilarious.. This proves I know spanish stuff now
This proves I know spanish stuff now
 . they all pinched their fingers together near their mouth pretending to smoke marijuana. Rob, from my school, was playing basketball with a bunch of Guatemalan kids a few weeks ago. To communicate, he referred to the guy he was guarding by the color of his shirt, which was yellow or "amarillo" in spanish. Several hours after the game, he realized he called the kid "mantequilla" the whole game instead of "amarillo". I canīt even imagine what the Guatemalans thought of the Gringo that kept calling their friend "butter". The most famous error of all... and this one is in the history books at the school because every teacher told it to me ... was about a student a couple years ago that took a weekend trip to Antigua. After returning, he explained in spanish that he "took a car" to get there. In Mexico, his choice of words would have been fine, but thanks to some different interpretations and slang here in Guatemala, the student told everyone he had sex with a pig over the weekend.

Next destination(s) - probably Huehuetenango, Todos Santos, and Nebuj. All are in Guatemala.
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