Citibank

I started banking at Citibank while I lived in New York and Connecticut. I have always been pleased with them and once I moved internationally it was nice to know that my bank was international as well. Even though there are not branches in Missouri, I do most of my banking online and have always been pleased with my service. Except of course when I have to call Citibank and I get all these Indian people that don't know if Guatemala is outside the United States or not. And no, I'm not being racist, I asked one of them once where they were located and they said said they were in India. I couldn't understand most of what they were saying and they were not very helpful. Anyway, here in Guatemala after you eat at a restaurant, they give you "mints." Usually these are Halls cough drops. Interesting how they become mints. ha ha. Anyway, after eating pizza one night, we got these mints that apparently came from Citibank!! ha ha

I arrived back in Guatemala in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, one bag less, and after traveling all night. I was quite exhausted. I came home to take a nap! Now, my point of coming back to Guatemala for New Year's Eve so I could party like the Guatemalan and have a wild and crazy WARM New Year's Eve!!!!! Well, I got none of the above! ha ha. It was a great New Year's Eve, but very low key as to what I had expected. Not always a bad thing.....I guess. I ended up going over to my friend Kelly's house and she had some other friends over and we just hung out. She has a beautiful view of the city from her rooftop deck, so we went outside to watch all the fireworks. It was quite a spectacle I must admit! We didn't do any crazy fireworks, especially after our "Quema del diablo" experience, but we did have fun with our sparklers!!!

And as you can see from what people are wearing, it wasn't exactly a WARM new year's eve either!!! :)

No we didn't stay up until sunrise or anything, but these are the volcanoes from Kelly's view at her apartment!!! So beautiful!

And here are a few videos so that you can see what was going on in every direction in the city. They aren't great videos but they are still kind of fun!

Flying Back to Guatemala

Wow, so this was pretty much forever ago!!! I had the bright idea to buy two airplane tickets to save money, as opposed to spending more money on only one ticket. So I bought a round trip ticket to New York and then on the inside of that ticket I bought a separate ticket from New York to Missouri. I just spent a few days at the beginning of my trip in New York so I could see Nancy and my other Connecticut friends. Was a short and sweet visit with dear friends. Well, the only downside to this ticket was when I was coming back, I wanted to be here for New Years Eve so the way the itineraries went, I flew from KC to New York on Dec 30, arriving around 8:30 pm, then hanging out in the airport to leave New York at 5:45 am for Guatemala. I figured it couldn't be that bad. It actually could have been bad, but it wasn't. Everything turned out fine. I got to Kansas City, checked my three bags in (free with my "elite" status!! ha ha), sat down at the gate, turned on my computer, had my headphones in and was content. Until the flight kept getting delayed. We ended up taking off from Kansas City about four hours late. I was sure I was going to miss all the last flights from Minneapolis to New York. Well, by the time I got to Minneapolis, I made the last flight, even had time to grab a slice of pizza after I checked at the gate and got my boarding pass. We made it into New York around 11:45 pm. I made it, and two out of my three bags made it. I hung out in the baggage claim area and the office and got my missing bag reported. The guy was a little surprised when I asked for it to be sent to Guatemala! But it wasn't a problem at all. He filled out the paperwork, and I had to take a shuttle bus with my two other suitcases to the other terminal to catch my Continental flight. Laguardia was pretty much deserted. I did find this little bakery that was open, there were about four other people in there doing the same thing I was doing, waiting for an early morning flight. So I parked, made myself at home, and started watching episodes of my tv shows that I was behind on. I think I watched about 4 episodes of Grey's Anatomy. :) These three guys came in that I thought were speaking Spanish and they ended up being from Guatemala (of course I talked to them!!!). It ended up passing the time fairly quickly and then I had two legs of first class on my way back to Guatemala, as I got upgraded due to my patronage to Skyteam! There were no other problems on my flights from New York to Guatemala. Here are some nice shots of Guate I took on my way in.

What a beautiful country!!! I love it!

Three Day Weekends

I don't even know where to start so I'm just going to start from today. I knew I was behind on my blog, but I knew it was really bad when I got an email from a friend (you know who you are!!!!) and all it said was "You are waaaaaaay behind on blogging Miss Tortilla! Better get with it!" No, hey how are you? What's been going on? Ha ha. So anyway, I figured I better post something new on here. I feel like I don't have any new pictures and usually people are more interested in the pictures than they are in what I have to say! :) I do have some older pictures that I'll post next, but I will just fill you in a little bit. I totally can't figure out where the whole month of January went. I mean it's already February 5. Weird. We have tomorrow off school. No one really knows why. Someone said that the administration likes to give us at least one day off each month. Pretty nice, I think. So they chose this Friday, and we have a three day weekend. I am headed to the beach with about six other teachers. I am excited. There will be two babies there, so I will get part of my "Aunt Kammie" fix that I always seem to need. It is kind of cold here in the capital, so it will be nice to get away and get some warmth and sun!!! OK, so cold here in Guatemala at least. I think I'm becoming one of "them." By "them" I mean those warm climate people who start saying it's cold when it is 54 degrees. Which is what it is right here. But also just remember that we don't have heat in any of our buildings, so when it's 50 degrees outside at night, it's 50 degrees inside my apartment as well. Anyway, my hands are super cold right now as I am trying to type! But, we are going to the beach by Monterrico, the same place I went last time as well. It looks like next week it is supposed to get into the high 70s again which will be nice, as opposed to the high 60s only. :) We are leaving early tomorrow morning to make the most of our time there. I am so ready. Next week when we come back I have parent conferences all week, so the kids are dismissed at 1:45 every day and we have conferences scheduled from 2-4 every afternoon, Monday through Thursday. Shouldn't be too bad, just a busy week. My parents bought their plane tickets to come here for Semana Santa (Holy Week) so I've been trying to figure out what we are going to do when they are here. My mom has given me the job as travel agent, so we'll see how well I fare. :) Anyway, I am out for now, I'll see if I can get my New Year's Eve pictures posted! :)