Happy Thanksgiving

i hope this finds you all well, feasting your way through a cornucopia of delicious preparations, finding the hollowness in your legs to allow for 2nd and 3rd helpings, all the while nourishing your souls with the excellent company of friends and family, endless stories and discussions, and of course laughter...ah yes...laughter.

it has been just over a year now since i set out to travel and thus the 2nd thanksgiving in a row that i am not in the states for. i am used to missing some holidays given my job, but this is the time of year i miss home the most. last year i was on a beach in s.india eating thai food with my good friends, meg and tim. i this year for the holidays, i treated myself to a vacation in a vacation, a 2 day trek from xela to san padre set on a volcanic lake, lago de atitlan, via a lovely wild flower lined trail with stellar views of nearby volcanoes and mountains, and eventually the lake. i enjoyed more typical fare in the here in san pedro with new friends.

but now i get ´´corny´´. in sharing my many thanks of the last year, you all enter into my mind. while i certainly cannot complain, it is not the same as spending the day with those i am close to at home. the food just taste better. i am quite thankful for the opportunities and travel tales and experiences i have had in the past year, and the good health to make it possible, but more than that i am thankful to have such an awesome group of individuals ¿that is you? in my life...a home to return to. you continue to inspire and encourage adventure, laughter, and lifeª i am bringing on an entire wheel of cheese, i realize, but sometimes i just cannot help myself. hahaha! okay, i cannot figure out where in the hell the punctations are located on this keyboard, so i will just use crazy ones. anyway, i miss you guys, and cannot wait, seriously, for a massive (or many of them) reunion, exclamation points.

much love, katie

Meet The Family

i feel very comfortable in guatemala. i have fond memories and experiences from asia, but i feel like i can relate to central american culture on a different level. perhaps it is the language. now i am not a spanish speaker, but it feels more attainable as it is based on the more familiar common language it shares with english, that is latin. perhaps it also has to do with the fact that cultures are a sort of expression of religion, or at least reflect values and beliefs from a religion. while i am not particularly religious, i am more familiar with a christian=based culture and the deities it displays. i guess, for me, with familiarity comes comfort. with that said, however, south american cultures maintain thier own individual histories, heritage and customs creating a beautiful culture that varies from my own. and it is a friendly people that i am immensely enjoying.

so here is a brief intro to my "guatemalan family". my maestra, veronica, is an intelligent woman and an excellent teacher. we similarly share more liberal ideals, and conversation is rarely boring...for me. but my input is stifled by my language handicap, so i cannot speak for veronica. hahaha. the 2 women that operate the school, yannette and maribel are equally as fantastic.

as for my home living with 3 siblings in their 60s in xela, they are all quite kind and huggable. romelia is a sweet woman, traditionally dressed in colorfully full dress and double braids laced with ribbon. she is a fantastic cook, and i am becoming one with corn as that is the staple of my diet (corn tortillas, tacos, tomalitos...) along with beans...lots of beans...and i love it. i crave the tomalitos. i now need them. and i have been contributing my share of methane to global warming. hahaha! she, understandably can be a little more frustrated with the language barrier, reminding me to use my dictionary and correcting my pronunciation (which i appreciate). she also knows when i speak more english. i guess (somehow) my spanish worsens, although i find that hard to believe. i may have told them that they are a woman family instead of the best. they seemed to take it as a compliment anyway. but i definitely told fellow classmates that i ate women for lunch (in broken spanish).

anyway, jorge and i have become fast friends. he is a soft spoken man, a patient listener, and a lover of music. carlos is the brother i see the least as he moves at a brisk pace and carries a distinguished but friendly air with him. he speaks quickly, and i unfortunately can comprehend little, although i am looking forward to the day that i can discuss with him. i believe they all have much to say and are interested in discussion. unfortunately, i have little to offer at this point.

Bienvenido a Guate

Once i arrived in l.a. at my stopping point to visit my good friend, heather, i continued south ¿by plane? to guate. having had enough big city action in l.a., i bypassed guatemala city and made a b line to the smaller charming, colonial city and tourist saturated antigua for the night. i found comfort in the quiet cobblestone streets lined with colorful buildings, but i was anxious to get to xela(quetzaltenango) further west for spanish classes.

the next day, i hopped on a "chicken bus" (a brightly painted school bus) and made my way to xela. after a couple of days of spanish school shopping, i decided on la escuela de juan sisay. i opted to stay with a guatemalan family (of 3 60-something yr old siblings, as my shaky translations tell me-hahaha!) in hopes that i can get some sort of grasp on spanish. i feel sorry for them, but they are fantastic...so patient and try so hard to communicate with my extremely rudimentary knowledge. i take my dictionary to the table for each meal begging it for assistance and am often reminded by romelia (my host mother) to use it more frequently, to my chagrin. i feel like i am carrying the dead weight of my frita´ed brain, and i have had to dive into the depths of an atrophied section of it that has rarely been accessed for 10 years or so. whew.

i have been having a few withdrawals from the good ole bike, but guatemala is cool and quite relaxed. and there are muchos montanas and volcanoes surrounding the city just beckoning me to them. i impulsively signed up to run a half marathon my first weekend in xela. i am not quite sure what i was thinking there, but at the time, it seemed like a fine idea and a good way to score another shirt. i sort of forgot about the elevation. haha! i had a bit of trouble ambulating afterwards, but the race was a great course (sans the coke at the hydration stations) and provided me with a nice tour of the city.

2 Wheels Down the Left Coast Sept 27 to Nov 4

i just wrapped up a 6 week bicycle tour down the pacific coast with my friend, Lissa. we rolled into l.a. (my stopping point) on wed. afternoon, and i am feeling better trained than ever for a good ole fashioned leg wrestling competition! it was truly an adventure to fill the senses with views of spectacular coastline, jagged cliffs, mountains dramatically bolting out of the ocean, gatherings of sea lions barking, elephant seals sunbathing, scents of eucalyptus and redwoods, palm trees lining the streets in the south. it was mostly a rejuvenating trip of indulgence, exploring america's left coast beauty and culture from the pace of a bicycle. it became a daily routine to look forward to and crave: wake up, oatmeal and coffee, strategically pack up, jump on the bike and peddle peddle peddle, eat, bike, eat eat eat, find a place to camp, repeat.

among this routine, we passed much open and undeveloped land, miles of farmland, the existence of tiny towns in n. cali of 59-300 and no franchised places to be found for hundreds of miles, enjoying the intimacy of small communities and mom and pop stores (oregon, how i love thee), the novelty of no cell reception or internet access for days, and encounters with numerous friendly folks who could restore faith in humanity to even the biggest skeptics. it was often a meditative focus on the peddle, uphill climbs and the rewarding view from the top and the exhilarating downhill cruise. on the flipside, we eased our way back into society in crazy, eccentric cities like san fran and l.a. sometimes i felt like a dishelveled cavewoman tossed into society. hahaha! anyway, it has been an awesome, challenging, and beautiful experience leaving me with fond memories of coffee drinking, wine tasting, microbrew seeking, chocolate binging, bike and tour talk, flat fixing, camping, solitude to hectic city action, discussions with fellow tourists and locals...the list continues and so may the adventures.

i am nearly ready to find a place to call home again, and i miss you all and think about you often. however, given the season, i am heading south for a couple of months to guatemala for spanish immersion classes and exploring.

Photos of Laos and Cambodia

My internet access tapered, and so did my blogging this last month (in july) i spent in asia. that certainly doesn't mean i enjoyed these countries any less. it is quite the opposite. So, here are a couple of links to the photo version.

http://picasaweb.google.com/coffeewithkatie/Laos#
http://picasaweb.google.com/coffeewithkatie/Cambodia#