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.
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