Blogs from Verapaz Region, Guatemala, Central America Caribbean - page 6

(Day 832 on the road)And so my time in Guatemala was coming to an end. From the great market in Chichicastenango (see last entry), Tino and I embarked on our last few days in the country, the natural wonders of Semuc Champey near Lanquin. One American guy I talked to a few weeks ago had called Semuc Champey the most beautiful thing in the world. As anticipated, my resulting high expectations could only be disappointed. While the blue, terraced pools were certainly beautiful and special indeed, they are most certainly not the most beautiful thing in the world. As always, I found myself comparing this attraction to other I have seen, and instantly Huang Long National Park in Sichuan, China came to mind. Huang Long has a very similar look, but it is decidedly more beautiful. ... read more

"How many guatemalans can you fit in the back of the truck? How many? Uno mas!!(one more)" haha that was the joke of the ride all the way here. it was a 8 hour ride from flores to semuc champey but our driver made it in about 6...no speed limit here!! we are at this hostel place where we have met tons of people. one guy absolutely is like in love with me, ha. but really no kidding, he taught me already how to surf and play guitar!! it´s pretty funny! so basically all we have done is go swimming in the frigid waters of semuc champey, we ate dinner where i had my first beer...first guatemalan beer that it ;) then we went to the guy and asked to play music from his ipod and ... read more

Not many photos here again due to the camera theft… the few photos (only the Semuc Champey ones… the Tikal ones were pinched off the internet) we have here were kindly donated by a friend we made in Semuc Champey… thanks Sally! Ok so the bus from the Belize-Guatemala border into the city of Flores was.. um.. hair raising to say the least. We waited 3 hours at the bus station (a single room with one fan and no airflow and a lady at the desk who spoke not a word of english). A bus finally turned up at the alotted time and locals started loading up. We still had no luck with communicating so we waved our ticket about and got a nod that we assumed meant that this was indeed the right bus. We ... read more

Well, I can gladly say I’ve only seen the poop man a few times since the last time I wrote. I actually thought he was finally gone and probably jinxed things by saying so. Yesterday, he was back. Although, I think I will now take him over the new guy. The new guy appeared before when we leaving for school this morning. Somehow, I find it a hard toss up between the guy that craps all over our grate and this guy who enjoys mornings with his hands clearly down his pants. I don’t just mean a little down there. I mean all the way down there, scratching and then bringing his hand back up, staring at whatever he found before flicking it in the air. Luckily, I wasn’t standing close enough to see what he ... read more

I think things are finally coming together for me. As most of you know, I’ve been working a crazy amount of hours everyday at both school and home. I was putting in 16 hour days most days. 8 hours at school and another 8 hours of lesson planning. It was definitely not my idea of a good time and there were days that I really thought I was going to crazy. But, I’m happy to say those days are pretty much out of the way now. My books finally came in and even though it’s only two books, it has already cut down on my lesson planning so much. The last few days, I’ve spent just as much time on lesson planning as I had been before, except this time I’m not stuck on doing just ... read more