February Plans

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Not too much has been happening lately. Just living life in Xela 😊 I started teaching English to a really nice lady 3 times a week. Her husband is Canadian and she'll be moving there in a few months so we're working on just getting her already-good English even better! I'll get paid in Spanish lessons (my choice), so that's pretty rad. It'll be nice to get some formal Spanish in while I'm down here! We only have 10 days left of our TRAMA volunteering. It's a bit bittersweet. I really love the association and everything they do for so many women in Guatemala, and I've been able to travel with them and meet some really great people through volunteering. But at the same time, it's a lot of work some days and it can be a bit too stressful. Rog and I have been working hard on helping put together a new catalog for the store. It should be finished before we leave (that's the goal at least!). It's fun, but putting in 10 hour days and stooping over a computer so much is not. The catalog is looking pretty great right now though, so that's cool. I'll be sure to post a link to it when it's all done and up online 😊 You might recognize a certain blogger on one of the pages (spoiler:: IT'S ME!) It'll be a good resume builder, that's for sure! I've been in touch with some of my nanny families from Duluth about working for them again this summer and it's looking like that's what I'll be doing! (Jeff V. - if you are reading this, I tried sending you an email from Roger's email account-- hope it worked!) I'm really excited knowing I'll go back to working with the kids. I was surprised at how much I missed interacting with them while away! I can't wait to see how big they all are when I get back!

Anyways - I named this blog post "February Plans" because we have BIG PLANS for February and I am TOO EXCITED!! Roger's sister, Teresa, her boyfriend, Jesse, and our roommate, Jason, are all coming to visit!! For awhile I just thought it was going to be Teresa and Jesse -- they were all keeping Jason coming a surprise from me! They totally had me too! It was only a few days ago, I figured it out. You can't spend literally every minute with someone for 4 months straight without being able to read their mind a little bit 😉 Nah, it was just because one day Roger like leaped out of bed, got dressed and was like, "I'm going to go pay for our tickets to Tikal now," and pretty much ran out of the door before I could even open my eyes. That's pretty much 100% opposite of anything he's ever done... ever 😊 I was a bit suspicious so I asked him how much the bill was for all 4 of us (my tricky wording). When he said he couldn't remember, I responded with, "What?! How can you not remember... it was this morning!" and kept pushing it -- he just kept saying it was a long morning and he didn't remember haha After I figured it out and confronted him and learned it was Jason who was coming, SO many things started adding up. Like once, Roger asked if I thought Jason would fit on the couch. At the time, he played it off so I didn't think anything of it, but now it's like *facesmack* duhhhh.

On to the actual plans now! Roger and I will head into Guatemala City on Feb. 5th and meet them at the airport (yay! hugs, high fives and hellos will follow) - the next morning, we'll hop onto a tiny plane and fly 45 minutes out to Tikal (last time we were on busses for apx 10 hours... this will be so much better). We'll have a guided tour and lunch in the park. Our hotel is right in the park too so that should be awesome. I hope I see a jaguar this time! The next evening we'll head back to Guatemala City (by plane) and then hop on a bus to Antigua (I think it's only like a half hour bus ride or something). We'll stay in Antigua for a few days, climb a volcano, sight see, etc before heading back to Xela. I think we'll have a week in Xela where we'll show T, Jesse and Jason all our favorite restaurants, TRAMA, other things to do, etc. And celebrate my 25th birthday (HOLY COW I'M OLD). Before they leave again, we'll spend a weekend at Lake Atitlan - everyone recommends it so we're pretty pumped! They fly out the 19th and then we'll have about a month left on our lease at Casa Xelaju before the next adventure starts!

There's a ton of exclamation marks in this post, I apologize. I'm just super excited for February to get here 😊

That's all for now folks! Thanks for reading 😊

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Super February
Looking forward to your future blogs.