we are alive.

just having too much fun and lacking internet.

highlights of the week
-ruins in Quirigua
-swimming in the lake
-boat ride on the Rio Dulce
-seeing how pineapple ACTUALLY grows
-eating shrimp
-our hotel in Rio Dulce=awesomeness
-hot waterfall combined with cold water

plans for the week
-hiking Pacaya, an active volcano here in Antigua
-visiting El Salvador (hopefully!)

Dear Friends,

I have been reading your blogs. BUT, I haven´t been commenting, so I apologize. I am relying soley on Google Reader to catch up on blogs, and I often don´t jump onto your pages. But thanks for giving me a taste of home...I love reading something familiar when I´m surrounded by the unfamiliar ALL the time!

Love,
Megan

Coban

...stupid internet. I posted this nice long post about coban (and my gripes with the plumbing and pillows here) and it has disappeared. go figure. so this is what you get...at least you get the pictures.

What a relief it is to be in Coban. One, because our driver didn´t kill us, although he probably could have (right over a cliff or something)

Haste Lu-Never San Pedro

For me, San Pedro wasn´t the best experience...if anything it was a nice little peek into a world where personal privacy and ahem...a little tact for others preferences and feelings...mean very little. Personal privacy, as in please, people, use a BATHROOM and not the wall along the road...or the corner where traffic is. Tact, as in, no we don´t want to hear all about your children when you are completely drunk. I´m sure your wife loves that you tell strangers all about your family while completely inebriated. And please, you have a bed...maybe you could make it there before you completely pass out in the middle of the street.

My very last experience on the main road in San Pedro was unfortunately close to a very scary fight, which involved a crazy Israeli, an angry patriotic Guatemalan, and a glass bottle. Said glass bottle crashed onto the street, along with the Israeli, who got pummeled until he gave up. Someone ran to grab a couple lengths of rope, and the townspeople helped tie the guy´s arms and legs until the police got there. Crazy. Crazy. And there were POOLS of blood. It was very disturbing.

The one redeeming thing was our family. Said family had a very unprivate bathroom but they were very kind to us.

Here´s pictures of the church in Santiago and the elders. You might be able to see the barbed wire below. The elders had to let us out because they lock the gates during the block so kids don´t come in and play on the basketball court outside and make a ruckus. We left early because we couldn´t understand a thing...the church here speaks Tzutuhil, their Mayan language.

Todd in the centro...behind us is San Pedro. Catholics here love their "imagens" or saints. Then they use these saints to have a week-long fiesta. I´m sure Saint Peter would approve.

Onto Coban!

An Email I Sent to Family this Week...

...because I am too lazy to blog, and I have no pictures.

No...we didn´t get lost in the jungle...we just got the swine flu!

Just kidding! Its been quite an interesting week here in San Pedro la laguna. We arrived to our homestay on Sunday to find the kindest people ever, with two of the most adorable children. Jessica--pronounced Hessica here--is 5, and we cant understand much of what she says, but she´s darn cute. Today she said ´soy maestra´meaning, I´m your teacher.last night she did homework with us. it was cute.

anyway, the NOT so cute part about this house is the bathroom. hopefully this isnt TMI, but their bathroom has an open window, which opens into the main hall of the house, to which all the bedrooms are connected. so, soundproof we are not. secondly, the toilet has no toilet seat. we don´t know if its because the family didnt have one in the first place, or if it broke and they cant afford to replace it. we´re not sure how the 5 year old doesnt fall in. also, if you go in right after someone, the toilet won´t flush, so you have to fill a bucket with water, and pour it into the tank in order to flush. here´s to guatemala livin!

this wouldnt have been such a big deal had megan not gotten a bacterial infection--you can just guess at what accompanied that--and so it was quite unfortunate for her to be at this house this particular week. she became sick early monday morning, and was very sick through tuesday night. she rallied wednesday, and relapsed thursday, at which point we headed to the doctor for some antibiotics and pain pills--the stomach pain was nearly unbearable, but nearly every traveler to central america gets this type of infection. anyway, we spent a night in a hotel to get a break from the bathroom of ----, and by saturday, megan felt good enough to kayak in the afternoon with todd.

saturday morning, todd hiked up to the top of ´el nariz´or a tip of a mountain shaped like a nose. he really enjoyed it...and megan enjoyed sleeping in. we both felt we had earned massages, and we found a lady from the czech republic doing AWESOME massages for 12 bucks an hour...yep, TWELVE! we are going back again tomorrow! on sunday, we headed to santiago atitlan for church and to see the city. unfortunately, the talks were all in a mayan language, interspersed with some spanish. so we didnt stay long, but we did take some great pictures of the elders, garbed out in the local attire, and of the huge barbed wire fence surrounding the church. also...and this is crazy...todd met a guy on the boat to santiago that he knew in california from pest control...who was also heading over to church. so it was a funny reunion for them...so fun to see someone he never expected to see!

megan also bought more stuff. she is addicted to the stuff here. todd can´t say no, so she is taking advantage.it looks like we´ll be in san pedro one more night, and then off to panajachel again for another night before we head to coban, guatemala, which is near the site of Semuc Champey. We´ll then head to Copan, honduras to see the ruins there, and then back to antigua for one last week of spanish before our tour heads out.

so there´s the update! and oh yeah, all the schools ARE closing here for two weeks because of the flu. they´ve told people not to go to church either, but most people here ignore that, as guatemala is HEAVILY religious. no swine flu in our area though.

love you all!

megan and todd

p.s. it kinda stinks in here. america is so clean. it really is. SO CLEAN.

When in Guatemala...

You....

1. Ride in a chicken bus, or, in the back of an old Toyota. 2 Quetzales is a steal! (That´s about 16 cents, by the way)

2. Visit their creepy, but colorful cemetaries. I´ll take my dead under the ground, thank you very much.

3. Visit a Catholic Church. Which we have several, but out of ¨respect¨we didn´t take pictures. Respect in quotes because Catholic churches here are creepy, like the cemetaries, not beautiful. No offense to anyone Catholic. The churches are filled with macabre pictures of Christ suffering on the cross and life sized Christ dolls lying in a ¨tomb¨at the front. It´s just weird for me.

The Thomasons Go Mayan

Today we had the opportunity to go with our Spanish school to a Mayan ceremonial cave after classes. I probably mentioned this in another post, but there is a very large Maya population here(long after the Catholics tried to purge them out). There main deity´s name is Maximon and this group of indigenous people still offer sacrifices (often burnt) to him. This is the cave where the local Maya come to offer sacrifices. You can tell from the top that they use it alot, because it is black from the ashes.

This is a view of Panajachel and Lago Atitlan on the road up to Solala. In the afternoons, it usually becomes overcast, and we got up there before the deluge, luckily!

This offering was still smoking...our maestro said that they usually offer sacrifices on Wednesday afternoon. We would have seen them there, if it wasn´t for anticipation of the rain...they came this morning. Apparently, they occasionally offer animal sacrifices. Their choice of animal? The chicken, which they call ¨pollo negro¨ because by the end, they burn the whollllllle thing up. In fact, our maestro could tell it was chicken just by the smell left over. Yeah, its a bit Old Testament.

On the way down, we walked past this gorgeous waterfall along the main road, and of course, stopped for pictures!

Some Random Pictures

Sunday is our homestay mom´s day off (unfortunately for us Mormons), and we have to buy dinner. So we went out twice. The picture below is of the first place we went to, right after church, El Bistro. It was nice to have some ¨American style¨food...we sure miss our cheese and butter! We LOVE the juices here though, my favorite is the limonada...and Todd has lots of favorites!

In the history museum. A big, fat pot. I wanted to take it home.

The mercado in Santa Catarina. You need to ask permisison to take a picture, and you usually offer a few quetzales in return. I ended up buying a beautiful table runner from this lady. I am in LOVE with their textiles. IN LOVE. It´s becoming an addiction.

Our homestay room. It´s cheery, eh (insert a question mark there, the keyboards here are spanish'ified.)

Oh yes. Me asleep in the airport. Or TRYING to sleep is more like it. We had six hours to make our connections, we still had to run for it, and we were the LAST ones on the plane. Boo O´Hare airport for your crappy directions, nonworking flight board, and lack of communication between any and every department!

So there you go. Guatemala in a nutshell. It´s fun!

More of the Reserve

The end of the trail. My smile is a bit fake, but that´s because Todd made me hike the trail first. And I was dirty. And I was sweaty.

The Thomasons Go Ziplining

Just outside of Panajachel is a natural reserve with a zipline, so we though ¨what the hey¨ we´ll take a look at it..Uhhhhh...AWESOME. Not one, but EIGHT different ziplines, and we zipped and zagged pretty much through the jungle and over a waterfall. We took a bit of a hike up in our fancy zipline gear, past some waterfalls and spider monkeys (farther down below). It was awesome. Really really awesome. In fact, so awesome, we´re not really sure the USA can handle the liability!

Here comes Todd! My mom referred to us as Tarzan and Jane. No, I wasn´t scared at all! You just sit....and GO!

Here comes Jane.

Our little monkey friend. We actually saw three of them hanging out.

On a suspension bridge going over the falls.

The reserve also had a longer nature trail and a butterfly garden. We took the trail after our ziplining fun, and were disappointed by the way Guatemalans treat the earth. I mean, I´m no treehugger, but they throw WHATEVER onto the ground...which runs into the street...which runs right into the water. It´s really gross. So we had to tiptoe around a bunch of trash below the waterfalls. However, the zipline totally made up for everything!

The Thomason Spend a Mornin on Lake Atitlan

On Saturday, we spent a fabulous morning on the lake. The currency here is in quetzales, which are smaller than dollars, so when you hand a wad of those to your private boat driver, you feel positively rich! (Which we aren´t) Our captain, Juan, took us out to two small towns on the lake, San Antonio Palopo and Santa Catarina.

Guatemalans chug out fabulous weaving like its nobody´s business. Okay, they don´t chug it out. It looks hard...but cool! Hence we had to take a picture. There are many indigenous Maya people here. A few tribal remnants are left over, and you see an example of their dress in the picture below.

San Antonio from the boat.

Before you get to Santa Catarina, we stopped in a place where hot, HOT water meets the cool water of the lake. The thing behind us...yep, volcano, but its dormant. However, there must be something HOT underneath!

Just hanging around the flora. I have taken lots of pictures of random flowers (and Steph, cala lillies grow wild here as well!)

Todd enjoyin the breeze. I think he was born for this life!