Life as usual or nearly

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I can't believe it has been 23 days since I wrote. Bob is righ to give me heck. So here is the next installment.

After Gaetan and Alex left, I got in a quiet and nice routine. Spanish classes most mornings, teaching English on Tuesday, meeting with friends for meals and chats. The most memorable times were endless conversations in Spanish with my teacher, Lucia; great meals in La sabor de India, one of Xela's best restaurants, with Penelope and Stanley who were my neighbours and saying goodbye to the kids at the school. After my last lecture there, they had a little thank you ceremony: speeches, songs and dances. It was very touching.

On Friday the 27th, I left Xela to meet Steve in Guatemala City. I left at 1430 hrs thinking I would get to the airport at 1930 hrs at the latest, have a leisurely meal and then meet Steve. It did not quite turn out that way. First, the bus stopped at a side road restaurant, as I knew it would, for a short break. Don't know what happened but all of a sudden, the bus was surrounded by three police pick ups (this is how they travel here) and countless policemen. They came in the bus looking very official. First, they had one guy get out with his luggage. Then they came back to pick up 2 more guys. Then they asked all men to get out and searched the bus once more. All this searching took over one hour. In the end, we all got to continue until Guatemala but the cops followed the bus, which in a way made me feel very secured. All this meant that I got to the airport by 2050 hrs and I figured that I would just be in time to get a coffee and meet Steve. Not so fast.... First, here it seems that you get to wait for your friends outside the airport. So no coffee. No problems, I think, Steve will be in in a few minutes. Not so fast.... His plane is over 30 minutes late but I have no way to know that. Is he late? Was he very early and somehow we missed each other? Is the plane at the bottom of some oceans or crashed in some mountains? Luckily, he showed up and we got on our way to Antigua. By the time we got to the hotel, it was nearly 2300 hrs, and we were tired and ready to sleep but... the hotel was next door to a disco that had a live band that played until 0100 hrs. Finally, the band stopped and sweet sleep came for a few short hours until the rooster started crowing around 0400 and kept it up until 0730 hrs. Those guys have no sense of timing. We got to "enjoy" them for 3 mornings. More about Antigua later.

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