First Week in Antigua

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Ok so our first week away has been both eventful and uneventful. Firstly arriving here in sunny Guatemala was not without incident. After I had to acquire extra alcohol on the flight by getting Jules to order bloody marys, and consuming a few Heinekens myself we finally arrived in Miami. First impressions, well there weren´t any as we never made it out of the Airport. After an arduous queue with everyones favourite people the US customs, we hung around for a few hours looking at the wonders of American chocolate and oversized drinks. Once we borded the flight to Guatemala things began to look up until we landed. Guatemala city can only be described as a total shit hole and suffice to say we only lay our heads down and headed out first thing the next morning to Antigua. Antigua was and is a different proposition entirely and with its gorgeous colonial buildings and extremely friendly inhabitants we felt that our trip had begun there. We met some lovely people immediately which definately eased us into the trip. Our first aquaintances were a German girl living and working in Spain and whose language skills came in infinately useful as we negotiated getting ourselves a breakfast and an early morning drink. The other person we picked up on route was Rich, a John Travolta doppelganger who had been travelling throughout the area for 3 months. His knowledge of where to go and what to do was in his own words ´legit´, supported by copious amounts of photos. They left the same day although Rich would return to regail us with his perverse knowledge of Guy Ritchie films, and even though his accent was duboius to say the least he did keep us laughing and entertained us with stories of living in LA and meeting celebs, and his glory days as a member of a fraternity (it turns out it is pretty much like old school but without Will Ferrel). We have been here now a little under a week and it has definately been a good start to what should be a memorable and nice and long voyage.




Antigua has provided us with the chilled lifestyle we hoped for and whilst the evenings are cold, by which I mean we need a jumper and everything, the weather during the day has been gorgeous. We have seen a plethora of spontaneous cultural events which are seeming all centred around setting off firecrackers and carrying enormous navity scenes around the town. We have started our Spanish school today which should help us no end in getting on and around for the next few months. We are staying with a lovely family, who provide us with all our meals and a noisy but friendly home to sleep in.

We are accompanied in the house by 3 other students, Devon the incredibly boring Canadian, who I am sure could commit some kind of crazy psychologically twisted murder. Ben, an American who looks 25ish and turns out to be 44 years old, with 3 kids and has completed the Iron Man competition and began his journey by cycling from Canada to Mexico. Darren, a 33 yr old from Landan taawn, who hopes to live in Buenos Aires and become a part of the bustling club scene.

In short Antigua has lots of guns, a fair amount of sun, lots of friendly locals and plenty of nachos! An old guy approached us early this morning in the street and said it right ´the people of Anitgua are poor but have beautiful hearts.´

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Comments

[Monet]

First Post!
Scumbags! Sounds amazing. Good luck at school. First post. Natch!