Gringos, Escuela, Blogging troubles, and enough heat to fry an egg in my shorts

This is a blog that´s actually getting published on 26June because after three attempts at traveling long distances only to have the power go out in the middle of writing it I gave up. I am not actually in Santa Elena writing this. I am way far away in Livingston and two weeks in roughly two weeks in the future, blogging has become a serious pain in my frickin ass and now I´m trying to finish off a post decribing the tense in a more recent past tense. And after three weeks of intense spainish studies it´s really difficult (no joke) to write in English. Here´s my mind in the pasado imperfecto:

So, We´re currently in the city of Santa Elena for the afternoon. It´s a hot, dirty and very Guatemalan city just south of the city of Flores, which is a hot, clean and extremely touristed city. There is some bitchen salsa music blaring at a volume that nearly makes thought impossible. And I likes my music loud peoples. But this, this is so loud no me thinky. Auna and I are here for the day to send out some emails and such. In fact we were here yesterday and in Flores too. Since both of these cities kinda suck compared to where we are living right now it took alot of effort to talk myself into coming back today solely to write this email. Also, we´ve aclimated (or at least I have) and today is fricken friggity frack hot (I should be at the beach celebrating our host father´s 70th with a couple cuba libres!). But I love blogging. Especially while typing on a keyboard with to n´s.

Okay enough whinny white whale. Last time I wrote something substantial was in Chisec. After that we got up in the morning and caught a microbus to Sayaxche on our way to Santa Elena and Flores. The microbuses in this country, and the culture surrounding them is totally new to me. It´s possible there was something similar in Vietnam and Cambodia, I just didn´t speak enough of the languages. Basically two guys get a toyota mini van bus thingie, get a route connecting a couple large cities with a bunch of smaller cities, and they drive it. Anywhere along the route, people can flag them down and pay a fraction of the total rate to go as far as they like. They yell out the name of the main city they´re headed to everywhere they go. It´s pretty cool. Actually no, it´s really cool. And for some reason even the few things that are a little scary make the whole process even more fun. There are no schedules, and no real parent companys, so whether you´re waiting in a major city outside a hotel or soaking wet outside a cave in the middle of the jungle; you just have to wait. Also they drive really, really, really fast. Which is very good for getting there fast and helps quite a bit with Auna´s motion sickness, but when there are 25 people in a three row bus with seats for 11 and lots of curvy roads with lots of free range livestock it can be..... well almost as much fun as a pack of smokes, some cherry bombs and a dead raccoon.


We got to Sayaxche in the middle of the day and we didn´t think much of it, so we decided to keep going after some carne asada for lunch.

Here`s the river crossing in sayaxche:





That´s right, Auna has been eating red meat. And from what I can tell loving it. Lewd jokes aside we got on another bus to Santa Elena. We had crossed a river (the name escapes me) via lancha in Sayaxche and in doing so, crossed from Verapaz into the state of Peten. Peten has been very different for a number of reasons. Far, far, far more tourists/gringos/estudiantes. Probably because of the Mayan attractions and the super amazing Lago de Peten Itza.





We moved into a hotel in the super touristy town of Flores for two nights and I proceed to get a little case of the sicky sailor and no it wasn´t brought on by the liter size beers. Flores was really beuatiful really over priced and that´s where I got some stomach action that it took the wonders of modern medicine to resolve. Here`s the view from our hotel:



But all and all, Flores kinda sucked, so we were really happy when we got everything squared away for our first week at the language school in San Andres. San Andreas is a small town across the lake from Flores. We hired a lancha (boat) and started out the guy started speaking spainish to us and as it turns out new everybody at the school we were headed to and was so excited to meet gringos actually trying to speak spainish that he walked us up to the school and helped us find our host family. This was no small task for this man becuase he had been attacked by another man with a machete and could barely move his legs.
The next three weeks in the Eco-Escuela de San Andres has been a complete blur of serious studying spainish. We made a few friends and had a few adventures and made a few sweaty nasty trips to the near by cities to try and write blogs. We had a complete blast. Our family was amazing, our teachers were amazing and we took our free time to do some seriously cool things. I will cover these things in another post because I have to try and actually get this one posted. Also in the next post I will cover what has happened between leaving San Andreas (June 23) and arriving here in Livingston.

Oh and this could quite possibly be my last blog with pictures until I figure out how to stop blogspot from cropping my posted pictures so hard that ya´ll are only seeing half of each. I have some awesome pics and I promise to upload more soon as learn how to not be dumb. This stuff is a pain in the ass, people do this for fun? Posting some what comprehensible blogs has been the hardest part of the trip though so I really can´t complain. Actually I keep thinking of a friend on my trip to asia who responded to another friend complaining about how hard traveling was with the comment,¨Hard? what exactly about it is hard?, like deciding whether or not to get pissed before noon? or possibly having to choose between accomodations and which delicious food to eat for ridiculously low prices?" Actually spainish school was hard. But I just understood the lady telling me that my free internet time is up here, so.....



Oh yeah, what in the hell is RSSing?