Dancing

I love dancing. I haven't gone a lot here for a couple reasons. First of all, for safety issues, being a white girl here in Guatemala has its issues. I shouldn't go out by myself of course (I wouldn't really want to anyway) but it's also not the safest thing to go out with just girls, especially white girls. It might be ok to go out with just the girls, but only once you know specific places to go. Which leads to the second issue, I don't know good places to go dancing. When I lived in CT, I had my regular place I liked to go to, Cafe Madrid, which is now shut down :( and when I lived in Korea, we always went to Club Caliente. Well, now that I finally live in a Latin country, I don't know where is safe and good to go. I don't have many Guatemalan friends for them to take me. Well, I finally got some guys that said they would take me out. So I went dancing with them on Saturday. One problem: none of them are English speakers. ha ha. It was still fun. So the next week we went back to the same place and I recruited a few of my gringa friends to go with me. We had a fun time. Here are a few pictures of the night!

Ruth, me and Kelly.

With our friend Heber, that took us.

One of Heber's friends from his soccer team, Esteban.

This is the club where we went dancing. Fun times!


Esteban and I

Out dancing....

The girls, what a fun night!

Market

I had gotten in the habit of going to the market almost every Saturday with my neighbor who has a car! She offered to take me and a few other girls, so we were going almost weekly. I am not even a big fruit and vegetable eater, but for some reason, I just really enjoy going. I think it's partly because I feel like whatever I buy there, I am helping the locals, and also it's a great deal on fresh fruit. There are ladies there making fresh tortillas that I usually finish before I can get home. They are like 4 or 5 for a quetzal, which is like 14 cents. Not bad. I can also get about a half pound of fresh strawberries for about 80 cents. It's just fun to go there and feel like I am a local shopper, since I guess I technically am, since I live here in Guatemala! I took my camera one day and took a picture of the fruit stand where I usually go. It's fun to get to know the people that work there and they tend to recognize the regulars (especially the gringos....haha).

Portal del Angel restaurant

This is this road that goes up this hill and some of my friends and I have seen this restaurant that looks so nice and has a terrific view of the city on that road. We have been wanting to go there, so finally one Friday night, two taxi-ful of us girls went out for a nice dinner. We had an amazing view of the city and what a fun night out. One of the ladies suggested (actually kind of mandated) that we order dessert first. ha ha. What a fun night out. Here is a view of the city lights. The pictures didn't turn out very well, because of the darkness factor and of the glass. This is the only one that kind of turned out.

Laurie and Stephanie, my neighbors!

Ruth and Linda

Visitors

Back in January, I had a few visitors, my faithful girls who would come see me anywhere I was in the world! Mostly because they can fly cheap or free, but hey, who cares why, right? :) Wendy and Erin came down for a few days, during the week, so unfortunately I didn't get to play very much with them while they were here, but we still managed to have a few fun outings together. It's always fun to have people come visit, especially on foreign turf, and show them around a little bit. One of our first outings was to Hooters. It has become kind of a joke between some of my friends that I met in Korea to go to Hooters in other countries. Now, mind you, I've never been to Hooters in the United States, but when I lived in Korea, I would get these cravings for buffalo wings, especially after Alexa and I lived on them while vacationing in Hilton Head one summer. So, I had always heard that Hooters had good wings, so we went in Seoul when we saw it one day. Alexa, my feminist/vegetarian friend and I went to Hooters. ha ha. Quite the oxymoron. Well, it became a weekly or bi-weekly affair in which we would meet there to get our "wings" fix. So now it is fun to go there in foreign countries. In Korea, it was no big deal to go there. Here in Guate, it was definitely a place where only the men hang out. We were not treated very well by the waitresses and you could tell they were not too happy that we were dining there. We were the only women in the place. (Except the waitresses.) But we still had fun and enjoyed the great wings!!!!!

Showing off the Hooters Guatemala menu!

Proof we were there!

Yes, it is hooters!!!

On Tuesday, the girls got to visit my school and meet some of my colleagues and students. It was fun. Then I headed to Antigua with them for the afternoon. Here is the famous arch in Antigua. So pretty.

The big church, La Merced with Wendy and Erin posing.

La Merced

We went to this place called the Sky Bar. On clear days, it's a beautiful view of the volcanoes. It was a little cloudy this day!! :(

Wendy in the nicest Burger King I've ever seen! We made her put the crown on for the picture. We just went in to use the bathroom!!!

Wendy loved the shopping there. The markets are really cool in Antigua.

Erin had the best shoes of all - Reef flip flops with a secret drawer in the sole that you can keep some cash, your ID and a credit card. Pretty handy, that's what I will be looking for this summer. Especially nice here in Guate.

Erin bought a scarf or two from this little cute girl, so we asked her to take her picture with us. She was so sweet.

The arch at night while we were waiting for our taxi.

Long time, No blog

Yes, I do realize it has been about a month since I blogged (not counting the post I just wrote about climbing the volcano in January). I am going to go through my pictures tonight and figure out what I need to blog about.

Not that I am trying to make excuses or anything, but I have been super busy!!! I bought a new car, so I spent several weekends/days making phone calls, going to look at cars, trying to figure out how to do everything here in Guate to buy a car, etc. I will write more about my car later, but that definitely took up a lot of my time. I am also working on my master's degree with a program here that my school offers, so I had class for two weeks, which pretty much put me out of commission. My program is with Framingham State University in Massachusetts, and it is comprised of nine classes. I will take 4 of those classes this year, 5 next year. The classes meet for two weeks at a time, 3 hours each evening after school and then two Saturdays for 8 hours. So needless to say, I don't feel like writing any more after my class! I also went away one weekend to the beach and did not take my computer!!! ha ha.

Well anyway, my school day is over. I am heading home in my new car. Will blog more later. Hope I am not losing my audience after such an absence. ha ha. :)

Climbing Volcan Pacaya

Well, after reading this post, you might start to see why it has been so long since I have blogged. I can't, for the life of me, decide which pictures to use. ha ha. These pictures are from January - wow, I really am so far behind on my blog. I am finished with my grades now for second trimester and no grading to do tonight, so we'll see what kind of damage I can make tonight. ha ha. I climbed the Volcano Pacaya back in January after I came back from Christmas break. I was really excited about it and had no idea how hard it would be. ha ha. I am not really much of a hiker but it is an active volcano and you can't just hike up an active volcano any old day, so I went for it. I went with two families with kids, so I figured if the kids could do it so could I. Well, I did it, but I thought I was going to die a few times.

Here is a beautiful view of the Volcan Agua on our way up.

We got one horse for the kids to share. Here we are starting out, I was still up for taking pictures at this point. :)


It was absolutely breathtaking at several points. The steam in the bottom of the picture is coming from an electricity plant that is powered by the steam from the lava.

Time to change positions on the horse. I never got a turn. :( ha ha.

Looking down, so pretty

We had to run down this hill. It was much easier than trying to walk it.

We were eventually trying to get to the top. You can faintly see a line of people (dots) walking up the side of the volcano. We went to the right side, not the very top peak you see.

The volcanic rock

Lexi and Sam showing off some of the volcanic rock. Very light and sharp.

Sam found a big rock!

Hiking up, not fun for me!!!

We are about to stop for lunch. I need to get to that part back behind me.

Lexi and I taking a break.


Lunch break!


Sam, on top of the world!

We are going up where that line of people are going. This was the worst part for me, but we had to go up it to see the flowing lava, which was really cool.

Our first glimpse of the lava.

A better view of it.

I made it!!!! It was soooo hot up there.

Still there, still beathing, still alive.

We even had our guide roast marshmallows for us!

Yes, it was that hot. They were totally charred. Pretty cool.

Look how red his face is as well!

Alex (our guide) even got in on the fun!

Look how red Maya's face is!

Trekking back down, even less fun. :)

Coming down

The volcanic rock was really cool.

We made it through the hard part!!!!

Here is our group after we were pretty much done, just had to hike down the rest of the volcano, which wasn't bad at all!!! What a great day!

The pictures really don't do it justice. It was so cool. Check out the videos in the next post of the lava flowing. It was so cool. Again, don't do it justice!!

Vidoes of the Flowing Lava from Pacaya

Here is some video footage from the volcano. You can tell how windy it was up there. It was soooo hot as well. The lava was so cool, just flowing like a little river.