I love IKEA

no really, I do. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I had a really great weekend. Erik visited from Virginia and we had a mad dash around the monuments and museums. We didn't see nearly as much as I had planned on seeing, but we kept busy. I got to see zoo animals and the Calder at the National Museum, so I was happy.

I had an IKEA kind of day today with my mom. Oh IKEA, how I love you. Sometimes I think I might want to get married just so I can register at IKEA. When I left I said I wouldn't come back to Colorado until they put an IKEA in Denver, but I guess that turned out to be a lie. I love IKEA. So I tend to go a lot when I'm in DC. Today we found a desk and a futon for the room I stay in when I'm here. No more air mattress for me! We spend most of the rest of the day assembling said furniture and I felt like an action hero. Now that I can assemble furniture on my own, I'm a fully independent lady. It had to happen sometime.

The Last of the Guatemala Pictures..

Let out a deep sigh, here come the last of my Guatemala pictures.










- The Canadians in those amazing people's house Nueva Concepcion, the Mayan village where we got stuck on the road to Rio Dulce.

- Me, same place.

-Me when we finally made it to our destination. Check out the dirt tan. I've never been that dirty before in my life. Two days on the back of pickups will do it for you. Good times.

- Federico getting his hair braided (somewhat against his will) in Livingston.

- Clearly I had a really hard time in Livingston.

- Chicken busses in Antigua.

- The Welsh sisters getting friendly at the hostel in Antigua.

So that was my trip to Guatemala. I'm sad that it's over. I can't wait to go back.

so many pictures

Here we have...
- San Cristobal. Luckily for me there were two churches with this many steps in San Cristobal and I got to climb up them all.
- THE POSE! in Palenque. Note the steps. Got to climb those too.
-Palenque without the pose.
- More Palenque. This is what I look like in the Jungle.
-The sunset from Flores.
- Tikal
- The Star Wars picture of Tikal.
- Semuc Champey from the mirador (at the top of about 36 million steps)
- More Semuc Champey

Only one roll left...

mas fotos..

Here's more pictures! These are all from Xela. Except one... I bet you can guess which one..































Once again from the top..

- My room in Xela.
- The view from my room in Xela. Not too shabby, made up for the bare walls thing.
- The other two members of the bandanna gang in Xela. Liz and Erik.
- Streets of Xela. Go Super Chivos.
- Alfombras in Xela during semana santa, the best party in Latin America.
-Big giant semana santa float.
- Erik in the cemetery in Xela. The most colorful cemetery in the world.
- Market!
- Lago Atitlan from San Pedro (this is the one that's not Xela)

there's still more to come...

More Pictures!

Hey, there's pictures from Mexico in the post below this.. check me out. Also, click on pictures to make them big and giant...

Guatemala! So these are pictures from the Mountain School and the fincas in that area. This is where your Starbucks coffee comes from..
















Mkay, from the top...

- The mountain school! Some old finca owner's house where the 12 of us slept and such things.
- Looking down the hill from the school, this is the community church of Nuevo San Jose.
- This is where we had class. If you think you can't learn Spanish in a tiny thatch hut, you're wrong.
- Colomba, the "big city" about 15 min. from the school by pickup
- The pose on a finca. A Starbucks finca none the less.
- A coffee plant (aka only exciting if you're as into this coffee thing as I am)
- This is where they dry the coffee at Finca la Florida, that cooperative finca we visited (aka not a Starbucks finca as the people who work/live there get paid)
- The mountain school gang in the back of a speeding pickup. Que Pelegroso..

Tune in, next time I might actually make it to Xela! Never can tell..

Pictures!

Trying to keep them in order.. some of these are from so long ago you might not remember me writing about them.. Here we go.


























From the top...

- THE POSE! in Zihuatanejo.
- The much debated Mango tree at the pool in Puerto Escondido. After review, nothing like the pear tree in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
- Playa Ventura
- The lovely Tapachula

More soon! We're almost to Guatemala...

Nina Simone and Cookies

Hello. I'm back in DC eating lots of cookies and listening to Nina Simone. Waiting on pictures (they tell me Monday) and catching up on my stories. I watched ER last night for the first time in like a year and wow.. that show went crazy! People are all married and having babies and dying and it's so entertaining! Oh, television.

Stay tuned for pictures.

She's Back

I'm home sort of. I'm back in the US anyway, hanging out in San Diego with my grandparents for a few days. On monday I'm going to head back to DC. It's really good/weird to be back. I can't quite get used to flushing toilet paper down the toilet, and pocket change looks really small to me. I keep thinking that quarters are nickels. Weird, huh?

My last few days in Antigua were excellent. I hung out with some really cool folks and had some good nights out on the town. I went a little crazyin the market there the last day. Oh well.

I'll put pictures up once I'm back in DC on my own computer. Excited? I am.

Adventure! Excitement! Antigua!

I made it to Antigua. I'm going to be here until I attempt to leave on the 11th, so I've got time to relax/sit in the park/watch movies/whatever. It's nice. Antigua is filled with gringos and rich folks, but that's because it's BEAUTIFUL. I'm spending way too much money. Everything here is about 4 times as expensive as it is in Xela (so like half as expensive as it would be in the states.. I'm cheap).

I went back to Semuc Champey for a second time. Still just as beautiful. That time I got a tour of the caves nearby. This involved swimming one handed through water deeper than I am tall in deep dark caverns with only the candle in my other hand for light. Factor in my fear of things that live in the water, and know that I'm a badass. The Indiana Jones factor was high. Mom and Dad should be proud. Highlights- Climbing up a waterfall one-handed in the dark. Slippery, hard, dangerous, good. Diving off a cave wall into the creepy black water below. Que scary.

I found a Canadian brother-sister team who was headed in the same direction as I was, so we decided to try to hitch a ride to Rio Dulce. So glad I waited until I found other people to go with. Everyone assured us that we wouldn't have any trouble getting there in a day. All lies. So we find ourselves trapped in the middle of nowhere (literally, our guidebooks didn't even list the last town we had been through two hours away) at sundown. There's people around, but they're mainly Mayan women who don't speak spanish. We start to freak right out. Lauri of the brother-sister team sees a group of women over buy some houses and has the idea that if we hang around them long enough one might take pity on us and help us. Luckily, one of them spoke spanish, unluckily she told us that only one pickup passes through town everyday, and it comes at 5am. Hmm... She also lets us know that there's no rooms for rent in town. We must have looked worried because she chatted with the other women for a while and they decided that we could stay in their house with them for the night. I couldn't believe it. I would never invite some dirty looking travelers into my home in the states. They didn't even think twice about it. They even offered us their beds. So we spent the night in Nuevo Concepcion - a farm community of about 70 Mam speaking families. We spent a few hours talking to some kids who were learning spanish in school. Practiced counting in English and spanish. Learned some words in Mam. Pretty amazing night.

We got the one pickup out of town the next day and rode two hours in the dark with mostly Mayan men going to work on the Fincas. We finally made it to Rio Dulce and spent the night outside of town on the lake. Visited some hot springs on the side of the lake and relaxed. My life here is really hard. I met some retired folks from Florida who are taking their sailboat around the world. They plan on being gone 7-10 years. I decided that's what I want to do when I grow up.

I spent the next day in Livingston. It was nice to be on the beach. Livingston is the hub of Garifuna (displaced Caribbean) culture in Guatemala. It was so strange after being so used to the Maya. I didn't really know what to do with it. Lots of silly Americans walking around with braided hair. It was a nice break, but I'm glad to be back in the highlands. Although I don't think Antigua is very representative of the rest of the highlands. At any rate, I'm off to drink a latte. Later y'all.

I'm a busy lady.

hola. Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything. I've been moving around like crazy and a little out of range of internet. Since I wrote I've been in Coban, Lanquin, Semuc Champey, Nueva Concepcion (explanation to come), Rio Dulce, Finca Tatin, and now I'm in Livingston. I've been covering a lot of ground.

Semuc Champey - Amazing. Everyone told me that it's the most beautiful place on earth and they were right. It's a 300 meter natural limestone bridge that the river flows under. On top these clear blue pools form and you can swim in them.. pictures will make this story better. Mas tarde.

I had a really good time at a place in Lanquin called El Retiro. I had planned on staying one night in Coban and one night there, but I ended up staying a week between the two. 3 nights in Coban and 4 at El Retiro. Beautiful spot by the river. Young people, really amazing veggie food, and good music. Highlights - tubing down the river on a crazy hot day. Beautiful.

My travel buddy had to leave on the 2nd for Belize. Que Lastima. Guatemala isn't the same without the PLQ crowd. I've been traveling with Erik since my first week here, so it was strange to be alone after all that time. Traveling alone is different, but not bad. It gives you a lot of freedom, and I've been meeting new people everywhere I stop.

I'm out of time at the internet cafe, more to come...

ps. Flying out the 11th, just not sure where to.