Chronologically Inconsistent Account of my Weekend

I stayed on another night in Xela because I couldn't work out getting home and everyone wanted me to stay, so I caught a bus off the street this morning around 8:05. I expected to get into Antigua before 1:00, but as it turned out it took another three hours. The bus got sort of lost and sort of trapped up on some very rural mountain roads when a bus broke down on a narrow strip (well, the whole way was narrow) and we had to creep by after thinking about it for half an hour, leaning precariously over a cliff as we passed. Then of course we had to pass everyone who had gotten stuck going the other way, so I was essentially terror-filled for about an hour and a half. Then the traffic is always terrible in Chimaltenango.

Xela was really fun, I actually quite like that city. It's safer, friendlier, and just better than Guate City - also, it's a big city but it's the kind of big city that doesn't have any skyscrapers. The streets are all super narrow and stone tile, it's like old Europe or something. Xela is also better than Antigua - there are tourists and tourist cafes and such, but they're SO much less pretentious and/or dorky than the tourists in Antigua. Xela is a real, friendly, fun and 100% Guatemalan city. It is a bit cold.

We were going to go to a party on Friday evening shortly after I arrived, but I climbed approximately 3,000 feet in approximately 3.5 hours, and half an hour after I arrived in Xela, I got a headache and nausea and later collapsed half-dead on Hannah's bed. Needless to say I stayed back Friday night, and I still had a headache the next day when we and a Danish girl went to the mall/local pacas (like little home-owned Goodwills) and had lunch and stuff. I was fine that evening, though, and we went out salsa dancing with several other people, which was very fun. Before that we also went to go watch a movie at the Blue Angel, this little cafe where you can also pay Q10 to pick a movie and watch it in one of two living rooms with big TVs. Couldn't pull that off in the US, but it's awesome. We watched 3:10 to Yuma, which I loved!

Yesterday we climbed a hill for a view of the city, then hung out the rest of the day with a Russian girl, a Guatemalan guy, a hilarious Mexican guy, and a Spanish guy who resembles a pirate. It was fantastic! We all watched another movie and had dinner at the Blue Angel; Babel. Interesting, intense movie.

So this morning I got up and then followed Hannah to her school up a hill, then kept walking with my stuff and had to ask three different people where to find a bus to Guate (They pass through Chimaltenango on their way, and there I connect to Antigua). I waited a while on the sidewalk, watched stores opening up, then a someone pointed out an mislabeled bus to Guate (happens sometimes - they take a different route than it says on their front), luckily they also yell the name of wherever they're headed.
I was sort of surprised to see another obviously not-Guatemalan guy on the bus, but I had to sit far behind him the whole way and we never spoke until he decided to get off in Chimal, too. When the bus was stopped in the mountains, he stood up and got out of the bus with a bunch of other people, and I thought he was about seven feet tall. As it turns out he's only 6'6". He didn't know Antigua at all, so I showed him to the Black Cat hostel when we arrived and then we went to a very belated lunch at the Rainbow Cafe. He's from Holland, traveling around between his studies of medicine. Meeting people in other countries is awesome.

Sooo I'm probably just going to copy & paste this onto my blog. I didn't take my laptop or camera to Xela since I took chicken buses (well, apparently Camioneta or Canastera are more politically correct terms for the public buses...), in fact I took very little, just some stuff in my little army surplus rucksack. I also mostly emptied my wallet, stowing money in my socks and stuff, which was good because I got it stolen when I was getting off the bus in Chimal on my way up on Friday. It was entirely my fault, could have been prevented, I was being dumb (put it in the front flap of my purse, my purse was at my back, etc.) and I even felt it being stolen but at the time it did not occur to me what was happening. All they got was about $5 and a photocopy of my ID, plus my old recycled materials wallet, so... I just need a new wallet and better judgment.

Photo Update

I love ants. Maybe you already know that. But the wire there is a clothesline... there are now stray ants in my underwear and socks. I mostly feel bad for killing them by taking them away from their highway, but it also just kind of sucks to discover ants in your pants, you know?


Here is one of the zillions of pillbugs that live here in Antigua. This is one of the few that doesn't live in the bathroom.


Strawberries!


And some pretty unidentified flowers.

Raccoon Kidnappage and Wounded Spiders

Here is a picture of Candy, the dog who orchestrated the attack on my room. She and two others went upstairs and into my room while I was gone, peed on my bed and stole my beloved FAO Schwartz plush raccoon puppet and kidnapped him to downstairs, dragging him through dog poop and mud and puddles:



And here is a picture of, what, a CAMEL SPIDER?? IN MY ROOM LAST NIGHT??? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Bob, the 7-Legged Terror (Now deceased, death by flipflop):



Sweet dreams, folks.

PS: I would just like to add that I killed the spider reluctantly and with a pang in my chest. I try not to make it a habit of killing critters I'm not going to eat, as most of you know.

I've moved to Antigua!

Right now I'm in an internet cafe on my laptop. It's right around the corner and down the street from where I'm living, which is pretty sweet, although not surprising because it is, after all, Antigua.

Actually, pretty much everything in Antigua is around the corner and down the street. Antigua is, like, one or two square miles.

I appear to be living in a large building that houses several residents, whatever students pass through, and a home furnishings store. There is only one other student living there right now, a German girl who's been touring Latin America and is now here to take some Spanish classes, though at a different school than the one I'm at.

Our rooms are up some narrow concrete stairs to the second floor. We share the world's second smallest full bathroom (The first smallest is probably on a boat somewhere), where the sink is almost in the shower and the toilet is almost underneath the sink. It's pretty adorable. My room is also pretty small, but the bed is pretty big and the sheets fit, so that's nice. It definitely isn't as moldy as my old room, but I have to wait for those allergies to wear off before I know for sure how allergic I am to these living arrangements. I can leave the door open pretty much all the time, so that helps a lot, although mosquitoes seem to be a bit of a problem. I need to buy some toxic chemicals, stat.
I arrived here yesterday around 10:00 AM, got settled into my room, then wandered around town in search of food and entertainment. I couldn't find Cafe Rainbow, because I suck at reading maps, but I think I walked by it so I'll probably be able to find it eventually. I ended up at Cafe La Condesa, which had only one thing on the menu I could eat (Salad with orange slices and toasted macadamia nuts) which kind of sucks, but the salad was delicious. It just didn't fill me up very much, so I ended up buying a bag of sliced mango and 6 tortillas off the street and sat in Central Park (Plaza Mayor) and ate that while listening to the Peruvian music being played.

I came back to my room later, read for a few hours, used up way too many phone minutes talking to my Mom, and then headed back out around 6:15 to find dinner. I missed Cafe Rainbow again, and went first to a grocery store and bought snacks, and then got drawn into La Peña, a nice but pretty inexpensive gringo-owned restaurant. I had a delicious chicken-pineapple shish-kebob dinner, listening to more live Peruvian music and intermittently chatting with a kid from the US, my age, staying in Antigua to study Spanish before going to college in the Fall.

I made it back home in the dark, thrilled to be in a town where I felt safe at all hours of the day or night - there are always friendly-looking people on the street, lights on in restaurants, etc. Yay! I am so glad to be out of Guate city.

It started pouring rain halfway back to my house, so I booked it, made it back slightly damp, read for a while, and went to sleep.

I woke up around 1:00 AM to the sound of someone typing on a keyboard... in my ceiling... it took me a while to recognize the sound as rodentia. Awesome. At least they don't seem to be actually in my room (Only pill bugs, flies, and mosquitoes there!) and not in my snack stash. Hopefully it stays that way.

This morning I woke up at 6:40, got ready to go, had breakfast with the other student and the owner of the house, and a little before 8:00 I walked the 500 yards to my school, which happens to be in the renovated ruins of an old convent.

I met my teacher, Leticia, and began my 3 1/2 hours of classes + 1/2-hour break. I can see already that the next approximately 7 weeks are going to be intense, and if I'm not a spectacular Spanish speaker by the end I must have gotten run over by a tuktuk before I could finish.

That didn't really make any sense... but I'm actually sort of tired. I'll probably be in here pretty often, since I have every afternoon to myself. I think I'm going to to go the plaza now and buy me some tortillas and/or mango.