Getting Ready

Michael asked Alexa and I to be "helpers" for the wedding! :) We went to the place where the reception was and helped Michael and Daniel set up for the dinner. It was a lot of fun, and they did a great job coming up with the ideas for the center pieces.....very "beachy." They were like these glass bowl things with sand in them and sand dollars with their names stamped on them filled with water and candles floating, so cute! Anyway, here we are setting up.

They ordered sand dollars and then they stamped their name and date on all of the sand dollars. How cute is that???

This was the view from the reception place of where the wedding took place. It was so pretty there.

Mary gave Alexa and I a card to give to Michael the day of the wedding. Inside of it, she put a package of maca, which was what some of the Peruvian people gave us while we were in Korea that they say keeps the men "strong" if you know what I mean!! It was so cute, it took him a minute to remember what it was, but it was pretty funny!!!!

Fun Things!

Of course the entire weekend was fun....BUT....there were a few special events that were quite memorable. The first partially happened while Alexa and I were waiting to surprise Mary. We were driving to the restaurant and we noticed two grown men dressed as pirates. We found this a little odd, and kept on our merry way. Then as we were waiting for them along the pier, we noticed several other people dressed as pirates. We thought, well there must be some sort of convention or contest somewhere. THEN, we ran into this shop for some much needed a/c and we saw a sign for the pirate festival going on over the weekend. Aha, we found our answer. Then when we were out after the dinner at the restaurant, this HUGE group of pirates came in and one gave Mary an eyepatch. So cute!!!

I brought Alexa some Guatemalan beer to try!! Oooohh, what a nice sight of my bestest friend with some of my "home" cerbeza!! Aaaahhhhh......I love it!

One of the hardships here in Guatemala is no Starbucks. ha ha ha. No not really but I did drink a lot of Starbucks in Korea, so it has been just kind of weird to not have it here. I was hoping to add a Guatemala City mug to my Starbucks cityscape mug collection. So while in Fort Myers I made a trip to TARGET (wooooooooo) and had a double whammy when I got to drink Starbucks while shopping in Target!

Mary and Michael had a brunch on Sunday morning, the only problem was they had separate brunches for Mary's people and one of Michael's people. Well, Alexa and I were a little distraught at the fact of having to choose between our friends. So our plan was to go to Michael's brunch and eat quickly and then go to Mary's brunch and have coffee and hang out. Well, little did we know that Michael's brunch was going to be a four course meal (which was AMAZING by the way) and that I was going to get orange juice spilled on my by a four year old, so needless to say we didn't quite make it to Mary's brunch. Lo siento, mi amiga!!!! Here's proof we didn't just sleep in and only go to one brunch!

Lo Siento, Lo Siento

OK, I finally have something to blog about and I have a lot of pictures to show for it as well. I just haven't had time to blog about anything in the past few days. I went to Miami last weekend, which was the surprise and the reason that I couldn't blog about it before now! And then I was home all weekend with a computer that won't let me blog from home. So here are at least a few pictures to get you started. ha ha ha. My roommate from Korea, Mary, was getting married in Florida, and I really wanted to go. I didn't want to ask for a day off before even coming to Guatemala but then after being here and seeing how easy it was to go to Miami and how I could take a day off, I made a whim decision to go!! After making a few secret phone calls to Michael, her fiancee, asking for the day off, booking a ticket on the wrong weekend, calling American Airlines to change my ticket, getting a ticket on the right weekend, an excited phone call to convince Alexa to come with me, I was all set to go!!!!! I flew out a week ago from last Saturday and landed in Miami just a few short hours later, met Alexa at the Budget rental car counter, drove across Alligator Alley through the Florida Everglades, which was every so ANTI climatic, checked into our hotel and Alexa and I were on our way to surprise Mary at dinner that night!!! It was soooo fun and so fun to spend the weekend with my "Korean family." I have a lot more pictures to post and things to write about but I'll feel better if I at least get started!! :) Here are Alexa and I driving on our way to Fort Myers. Yes, Alexa took the picture while I was driving. Ha ha, but it turned out so cute!

This was right after we surprised Mary on the street by the restaurant!!! She was shocked to say the least!!!

Mary comes from a family of seven kids, and they were all there, so cute!!!

We went and all hung out after dinner, so fun, and so much like the good ole times!!! :(

The four of us, back together again!!!!

It was a great fun weekend, to spend time with people I love, that know me, and love me for who I am, and I don't have to try to prove or be anything else to them. I LOVE YOU GUYS!! It was truly a wonderful weekend. I miss them already. OK, I missed them from the time we said goodbye at the bar and at the airport!!

Soccer Game

I went to my students' soccer game on Saturday. Since they won, they had another game on Sunday, so I ended up going to that game as well. I went with one of the coaches, so I got to sit on the bench with the kids! ha. It was fun, but that also meant I was closer to the action and could take some pictures of them! They lost on Sunday, but these boys they played against were so much bigger, taller, and stronger! Our guys looked like little shrimps out there! But they were still pretty cute! :)

Shopping

After Bingo, a few of us girls went out to eat for one girl's birthday. It was a really good meal, and then Stephanie and I met up with some other friends after dinner and went out dancing. We had a good time. Saturday, I slept in as much as I could (like until 7 am), got my shower as there were supposed to be some workers showing up by 9 am. I hung out at my place until about 11:30 and they never showed up. Figures. I then called a taxi (ON MY OWN!!! in Spanish) and went to see some of my boys in my class play in a soccer game. When I arrived back home, Laurie was waiting outside for a taxi to go to the market. I decided to go along with her and a few other teachers. It was kinda fun, I bought a few shirts. Nothing too exciting. Here is Sharon at this Mayan furniture store. It was kinda pretty but not really my style.

Here is our green taxi that we hired for the day to go with us and wait for us to do all our shopping. Ended up being about $55 for the day. Not tooooo bad??? ha ha. Some of the Guatemalans laugh at us gringos down here, because we were told only to ride in the green or the yellow taxis. They are registered by the city and have to keep a report of where they are, etc. They are also all metered. White taxis you have to negotiate and supposedly they are more "dangerous." Anyway, here is our GREEN taxi, just to be safe! :)

This was across the street from the furniture store. I was, obviously, a little bored. It made me think I was in Korea or something looking at this!!! :)

When we got to the market, the first thing I went for was to find something to eat, I hadn't eaten all day. This was actually Sharon's food. I had a tostada con frijoles and a plantain. Sharon had a taquito and some other sort of chile something? I also just liked the tablecloth and how colorful it was!

After the market, the other girls wanted to stop at the grocery store. I didn't need anything or want to get out of the cab, so I stayed in the taxi and we had to circle around the parking lot while waiting for the girls. I am not sure why I found this particular sign really funny to me, but it was!

BINGO!!!!

Friday our school had Bingo night. Yes, I realize it sounds lame, but it was soooo fun. It was all in Spanish, so first of all, I am not super efficient at my numbers in Spanish 1-75. All night, I listened to Beh cinco, Beh cinco, Ene cinquenta y cinco, Ene cinquenta y cinco. I got really good. I also learned that quickly recognizing the difference between cuarenta and cinquenta are my hardest numbers up to 75. It was for a fundraiser to help out this school in a rural village that doesn't have much. It was for a good cause. There was good food and good fun to be had at Bingo Night. Oh, by the way, did I mention that the prize for the last round was a trip to CANCUN???? Yeah, I didn't win, but it was still worth it. Fun times.

This is the gym with people filled playing Bingo.

Danielle looks a little confused here trying to keep up with her four bingo cards!

Laurie was the only teacher who came away with any prizes. She won a pair of crocs and a 500 Q (about $70) gift certificate to the New Balance store at the mall!!! She almost won the bunny they were giving away. Her roommate was happy she didn't get the bunny!!!

Even Miguel had to come to join in on the fun.

Not sure if you could tell from the other pictures or not, but only in Guatemala would we be using beans as Bingo pieces!!! ha ha.

As people were leaving, they would give away their cards. Yes, by the end of the night, I was playing seven cards, trying really hard to win the trip to Cancun.

One of my most memorable moments of the night was when a group of about six boys (my students) came up behind me and were distracting me. I was trying really hard to concentrate and then they started yelling "BINGO" really loudly and pointing at me. The bingo caller stopped and was asking in Spanish, "There is a winner?" "Hay ganador?" I was shaking my head and saying, no no no. They thought it was pretty funny! ha

Catching up

Well, my computer still hates my blog. I have no idea what to do about it. I know nothing about this sort of thing. But I guess for now I will have to start blogging more at school. ha ha. But that also means that instead of blogging every day, I will only have time once or twice a week to do it. Tuesdays are my favorite days ever. I get so much work done, as I only teach one class, and my class is the first period of the day! I have one meeting during one other period, but then I have the rest of the morning and my afternoon free. I usually stay pretty caught up on my grading and such, so I can get totally caught up on Tuesdays and Fridays. I love it....not having to take a bunch of work home with me! :) So last week, after my last post (can you believe it was a WEEK ago???) I'm sure nothing exciting happened during the week.....Thursday I went out to eat with some friends to this fun place called La Playa. Friday at school we played games in our advisory groups. It was fun, and the kids had a good time. Here are a few photos from our advisory game time!

We were victorious 2-1 in playing 10 on 10 basketball. It was pretty much just chaos but it was still kinda fun!!!! ha ha. Fun times!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

OK, so I lied. I do have five new pictures on my camera since I last posted. Here they are! Last Friday, it started POURING around 2:15, as it was nearing time to leave school. It is ending the rainy season here, which means we have some serious downpours. Friday was definitely one of those. It doesn't usually rain for very long, but when it comes, it really comes down. One friend commented to me, "Wow, I didn't realize there was that much water that could be held in the sky!!" So here are a few pictures that I took right outside my classroom. You can't really see, but you can kind of tell the intensity of the amount of rain that was coming down!

My Computer Hates my Blog

I've decided that my laptop at home hates my blog. I am not a computer idiot, nor am I a computer genius. So two things have been happening lately: 1.) I cannot update properly on my computer at home. When I try to get into my blog to write anything new, it will not load properly, therefore, I can type, but I cannot upload anypictures or do anything different with the font or anything. I can just type. But all of the other icons are just these squares with red "x"s in them. 2.) When I actually try to view my blog at home, it freezes that internet window. My computer hates my blog. I have no idea what is causing this, if my computer has some sort of a tortillas and beans virus or what. I can look at other people's blogs, but just not my own. Every once in a while, someone else's blog will also freeze up the window, but mine does it every time. It never fails. So anyway, that is the first reason (or two reasons, technically) for my lack of blogging. I used to do most of my blogging at home and then I would usually catch up on the weekends, but not so much of that anymore! Another reason is that my life has been fairly boring over this last week and I haven't really had anything to blog about. Nothing exciting last week, just working, going home, maybe running an errand in the evening, checking email, watching TV, talking on the phone, going to sleep, etc. So, last Friday after school, I went to this place right by our school where a lot of teachers go on Fridays for happy hour. We hung out there for about 4 hours, just chatting with other teachers. There was probably around 30 or so of us there. It was a fun time. I came home in a taxi with Stephanie, ate a slice of pizza, and was asleep by about 10:00 pm. Saturday, I woke up around 6:30 and started some laundry, changed my sheets, cleaned up my apartment and waited for my meeting with my landlord at 10:30. She showed up with her ever so cute daughter. This was the first time we had met, so just making sure that everything was ok. We talked for almost an hour. She's very nice. Then it started raining, so I just hung out in my apartment, finished up some cleaning, took a short cat nap. Then I walked down the street with my neighbors and we went to Cemaco and the grocery store. Exciting, I know. Then we came home, I ate some dinner, and was asleep by about 9:45. Sunday, I was awake by 7 am, was on my computer, not doing a lot. Stephanie and I had made plans to go to Pricesmart around 10. Around 9:00, a friend who works at the school and I were chatting and she said, hey do you want to go to church with me? I called Stephanie, she said yes, so our other friend, Kelly, took us to Pricesmart, we brought our cold foods home, and went to Spanish church. This one was a bit different as it was ALL in Spanish, no translations or anything. It was fun though. Then we came home, I cooked some lunch. Another friend from school who is helping me with my Spanish came over later and we hung out, watched some TV for a little bit. Then he left, I cooked some dinner later, and was asleep by about 10:30. Ohhhh, one other exciting thing I did was download all the new episodes of tv shows and get to watch them!!!! Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters, How I Met Your Mother, One Tree Hill........Wooo hoooo. Now I can see how my social calendar is going to fill up for the next several months! ha ha. Then yesterday, school, home, today is a half day of school. Nothing too exciting. This is why I haven't been blogging lately. Also, I do have one exciting thing, but it is a surprise so I can't share it on my blog YET. And it has been all I have been thinking about for the past few days, so as soon as the surprise happens then I can actually blog about it!!!!! So there are my reasons. I don't even have any good pictures to post because I haven't taken any! ha. Have a good Tuesday and I will try to be more exciting this week.

Feliz Cumpleanos!

This weekend was pretty low key, after all the excitement last weekend. On Friday night, another teacher came over and we hung out and just watched tv and stuff. Saturday I lounged around for most of the morning and afternoon. I walked down to the Cemaco store by our house and the grocery store to pick up a few things. I wanted to make Danielle a cake for her birthday. There is this amazing chocolate cake that she introduced me to at this cafe. It is chocolate cake with this stuff that they call Arequipo (I think....something like that) in between the layers. It is this caramel/dulce de leche sauce that is pretty much just amazing. So I was going to try to duplicate the cake for her. I have to admit it turned out pretty good!!! She really liked it. I had to have Stephanie help me ice the outside of the cake, because I didn't want to ruin it! But, my mom explained a trick to me to cut the cake into layers. I made two round cakes from the mix and then she said you can use dental floss to split the cake and put the caramel in the middle of the layer as well. So I did it and it worked fabulously!!!! I was pretty proud of it. I should have taken a picture but I didn't! Oh well. We went to Danielle's house for a barbecue that night and then we went to Antigua to go dancing. The place was kind of cool, but I really wanted to dance to latin music! :) We still had a good time though. Here are just a few pictures that I took out dancing. I didn't take too many. :( Here is the birthday girl and myself!

This is me with Miguel and Danielle, they are so cute and fun!!! What great friends! Miguel thought he was pretty cool! ha ha.

Kenny.....Queny??

My name is hard for Latinos to say. I will admit it. Anytime we are in a loud place or if it is over the phone, it is really hard for them to understand what my name is. They don't have that short a sound in their language, what is in my name, Kaaaaaaaaaammie. So when I lived in Connecticut and my friends and I first started going out to the Spanish places, I would usually just say my name was Maria. It was just easier, they could understand it, and it didn't really matter much that they didn't know my real name. So, I've had a few issues with my name so far here in Guatemala. The first funny incident was when I got in a taxi one night. When you call for a taxi, they ask for your name and then when you get into the taxi, your name is on this little screen. Well, I had someone call for me (I'm still too nervous to do it) and when I got in, I looked at the screen and it says, "Kenny." Well, ok whatever.....Kenny, Kammie? So I just laughed and texted my friend to tell her. Then we ordered pizza the other night. Again, made my friend do it. He gave them my name though since we were at my house. So when we got the pizza I noticed on the box my name......see if you can see it in the picture:

QUENY BASS......nice! I am really going to have to change my name if I am going to live in a Spanish speaking country! :)

Pan Chapin

We have quite a bit of planning time at my school. I do use a lot of it for planning, grading, getting ready for the next day, etc. I rarely have to take work home. There are times though when I would rather spend time with friends at school than do work, especially on those days when I have a lot of free time (like today!!!) Sometimes I do take work home, but it is pretty much by choice. Twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) I have coffee dates with my friend Danielle. We usually go for the iced coffee/frozen drinks, but lately I have been on an Americano rampage! They are so good! About three weeks ago, Danielle also introduced me to Pan Chapin. Most of you know what a picky eater I am, so I don't try a whole lot of new things. It's also a little intimidating to ask about something and what it is in a different language. Danielle lived in Honduras for a few years teaching and she is also married to a Guatemalan, so her Spanish is pretty darn good! One day she says, "That pan chapin looks good." I asked what that was. She said, oh it's just bread with refried beans in it. I said, only that??? She said, oh and some cheese. So I said, hmmm, I will try one. WOW. It is sooooo good! It is pretty much like a bean burrito but on bread not in a tortilla. They put it on this George Foreman type of thing and warm it up and toast it and it is soooo delicious!!! The name comes from pan = bread and chapin = a Guatemalan person who is very proud to be Guatemalan! So since beans are one of the staple foods here, it pretty much = Guatemala! Oh, PS, their refried beans are sooooo good, because they are actually made from black beans. Yummmmmmmy. I just finished my Tuesday pan chapin!

Our campus is connected to the university campus, we just have to walk through a gate, so they have two coffee shops that we like to frequent up there! This is where we always go for coffee and pan chapin.

Hot Girls Read

Sorry I didn't post this weekend, for some reason my computer at home has been weird on blogger the last few times I have tried to post so I will have to do most of my posting from school. With my awesome schedule here, it shouldn't be too much of a problem!!!!! So I just had to share this funny bit of info before I post about my weekend and a few other random pictures that I wanted to post. We have our advisory class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a half hour. Every Monday is what we call Libros, where the kids just read for the 30 minutes. They can bring in anything (appropriate of course) to read for that time. Well, the kids aren't super fond of it but it works. So today, these girls come in and ask what we are doing in advisory. I say, it's Monday, Libros. One girl says, aaaawwwwww, like yuck. And this other girl says, oh yeah, it's Libros. Then she proceeds to tell me, "Miss Bass, I have a bumper sticker and it says, 'Hot Girls Read.'" ha ha ha. Anyway, I just found that very humorous that a 7th grader would say that! :) Have a nice Monday!

Our trip back home!

Our trip home ended up to prove itself pretty interesting as well. We had to figure out who all we knew that was down at the beach and then who had a few extra spaces here and there to get us and all of our luggage home. If all else had failed, we could have sent our luggage home with some people and caught a shuttle or a bus back into town. I didn't really want to do that and mess with it after the rough ride down there! So we found one group who didn't have any spaces for people, but they had space for our luggage. Then we had another group of friends who had space to fit two more people, tightly! Then there was one other teacher who we knew was there but no one had his phone number. So we called around to some others and got his number and called him. He had room for two more as well. Since he is Guatemalan and he said we would be leaving around noon (Guatemalan noon that is......) Stephanie and I let the other two girls ride home with Stephanie's roommate, since they needed to get Jenna to the bus so she could get back home where she lives. Stephanie and I sent Jenna and Janet off with the girls at around 11:00 am and went to pack up and relax in the hammock until we heard from Jorge. We heard from him around 11:45 and he said, one more hour. We were like ok, no problem, we knew it wouldn't truly be noon when we left! So then we relaxed for a bit longer. He showed up around 1:15. No problem, we got our bags in the car and he says, "Oh, there's a little problem. My friends are all drunk down at the beach." Oh great. So we were like, well what are we going to do? He said, well, I just want to wait with them for maybe another hour to make sure they are ok. So we went to go hang out with about nine Guatemalan guys who, mostly (not all), were pretty drunk and probably had been for about three days for the holiday!!! They were pretty funny though. When we first walked up, there were these two cops standing there and I was like oh great, here comes some trouble with the Guatemalan police (I was picturing myself calling someone from a jail cell or something when I couldn't speak enough Spanish to say that I was not involved in anything!!!). Well, when we got closer, I notice the police are just standing there holding their cups of whiskey as well. They were there drinking with them. Nice. So anyway, we ended up hanging out there with them for about 2-3 hours. They were pretty entertaining and I also got this awesome picture with the Guatemalan police. I was pretty disappointed though that you can't see their huge guns that they all carry. They are to the side!

After his friends finished their fourth bottle of whiskey, they were finally ready to leave. Stephanie and I got to squish in the back of a Honda Civic with another Guatemalan guy and there was another drunk guy pretty much passed out in the front seat. As we were driving home there were a few Independence Day parades that we ran into in these little small towns. They were really cute and only took about five minutes to pass. I had Stephanie try to lean out the window to take a picture for me!

Here we are having fun squished together in the back seat!!!

We were a little over halfway home (about 5:30 or 6 by this time) and the guys were like, oh are you hungry? We are going to stop for dinner. We were like ok sure! So we stopped, along with the other truckful of guys that were drinking on the beach as well. They were so loud and obnoxious at this restaurant. Anyway, we finally finished eating, and then Stephanie and I made them take a picture with each of us so we wouldn't forget them. ha ha. Like that would have happened.

We hit a little bit of traffic on our way home and then finally made it home around 8:15 or so!!! But at least we were safe and we were truly glad to make it home alive!!!!