Goodbye Dinner

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This morning I woke up around 7:30am with enough time to shower and grab breakfast before one of my roommates and I headed out to walk around Panajachel to do last minute souvenir buying. Admittedly until this morning I hadn’t bought any souvenirs, I had bought one small shot glass that had Guatemala written on it, but that’s about it so I wanted to actually buy something. After walking around for a little bit I found a wool blanket that had the quetzal bird (bird of Guatemala) all over it and since was a much better price than a blanket I had looked at a couple days ago I bought it. My roommate and another volunteer that was with us wanted to buy a chess set made from stone so they headed back to the store where they saw it and I made my way to the hotel to pack my last minute items. After dragging my luggage down the stairs with the help from the guys that worked there I found my seat on the bus and waited for everyone else to get back to the hotel. Once we were all there and the luggage was loaded we began our trip back to Guatemala City! We stopped at our halfway point for lunch but just before we got to the restaurant we were going to stop at my stomach started feeling really uncomfortable; when it was finally time to order I opted for granola, yogurt, and fruit parfait instead of heavy meat. My stomach still felt wonky after lunch but there wasn’t much I could do. We got back onto the bus and traveled for almost 2 more hours before reaching our hotel in Guatemala City –the same one we had stayed at the first night. It took a while to check into our hotel but once we did my roommates and I walked around and found ourselves back at the crepe place that I went to with my other roommate the first night in Guatemala! Once again, the crepes were amazingly delicious!!! We stopped at the hotel after our yummy crepes and my roommate and I headed back out while our other roommate stayed inside. I got to take some nice pictures of the city and we got to explore a little more. At 6pm we were supposed to have our one final meeting in the hotel before we headed out to our last dinner together so we still had quite a bit of time before we needed to be back. We had walked around for a bit when we figured we should know what time it was before we walked any further; at the restaurant we found out that her watch wasn’t set to the right time so we had to find someone to get the time from. We asked the nearest person for the time and he said it was 5 o’clock, since we knew we had an hour we worked it out on her clock so that we knew when the hands were in a certain position we had to go back to the hotel. We walked around for a while, found the market –the real market, and got lost. By far that is my favorite part of travelling to any place: getting lost and finding the real places not just the places catered towards tourists. We walked around some more and took last minute pictures before doing one last watch check and started walking back to the hotel. According to her watch we were on time, early even, to the meeting but apparently not; when we walked into the meeting room in the hotel everyone was already there and sitting down… we were the last ones to show up… well that was embarrassing. In the meeting we talked generally about the trip and some people talked about why they liked it and the VIDA coordinators talked a little bit as well; it started to get emotional pretty fast. After we had our mini ‘meeting’ we walked to a nearby restaurant that no one would have known existed if Danny and Xinia hadn’t lead us to it; you had to walk into this empty parking lot/alleyway and then it was just around the corner? As soon as we walked in they had already set up a giant long table that took up the majority of the restaurant. When we sat down the waiters came around and took our drink order –which ended coming in these huge margarita-type glasses. We had made quite the dent in our chips and salsa when the doctors made an appearance! It was a really nice surprise since I thought they had left with the interpreters yesterday. Shortly after their arrival the food came and it was a …wait for it… MAKE YOUR OWN TACO BAR!!! It was like Christmas. They put down several long wooden panels that held the various meats and condiments across the table and the baskets of warm tortillas. We all went in on making our own tacos and they were the best damn things ever! They actually tasted like the normal Thursday night tacos I would get in Mexico with the fam – ahhh memories. After we were stuffed full of tacos and the doctors had given mini speeches about working with us on the trip we all walked back to the hotel; I should have brought my jacket with me because I was freezing on the walk back. All of us crammed into the hotel lobby and conversed for a while and, of course, took pictures together because at least half of us wouldn’t be seeing each other tomorrow. Half of the volunteers were getting up at an early 5am to go to the airport while the other half were getting up at 10am to go to the airport –lucky for my roommates and I, we all were going on the later bus. After I had taken the pictures I wanted I went up to the room to relax and do my last minute packing. I decided to wear my outfit for tomorrow tonight so that I won’t have to unpack, repack, or do anything with my suitcase except lug it downstairs. With the T.V. playing Latin pop music and me catching up on this travel blog I’m enjoying my final night here in Guatemala City.

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