what are those photos of?

from bottom to top. again. and left to right when applicable.

1. the courtyard at casa internacional
2. mick kindly posing next to the overflowing sink of dishes.
3. next to the sign that advises the washing of said dishes.
4. my room. i don´t know who painted the sun on the wall but i like it.
5. hiking at the lake
6. the town of santa cruz
7. our dining slash living room
8. me hiking through corn
9. a bike in an antiguan window
10. an antiguan street. note the rather large volcano
11. that´s right. that´s me next to lava.
12. the dock at santa cruz.
13. lavaaaaa
14. lavaaaaa
15. pacaya from a bit farther away (lava not visible)

there you have it

uno semana mas en xela

hola todos, espero que se encuentren muy bien. estoy bien aqui. tengo uno semana mas de clases aqui en xela y pienso que despues esa, voy a estar lista a salir. mi español esta mejorando mucho pero a veces es muy dificil. algunos dias son mejor que otros. esta semana (para ustedes quienes han estudiado español) estoy aprendiendo el subjuntivo y estoy econtrandolo un poco mas dificil que otro tiempos. pero esta bien y por lo menos siento comoda en conversaciones con la genta aqui. he encontrado que viajando es mucho mas facil cuando sabes la idioma del pais.

and that´s quite enough spanish for right now. i really tried to throw in as many tenses as possible. i hope that those of you who know these things will appreciate the attempt.

life is good. i think the last time i wrote i had just moved into casa internacional. i have now lived there for almost three weeks and it is great. at the minute the city does not have any water. tres dias sin agua. that is, three days from today. i am not really sure how that´s going to work out for us, especially in the bathroom department. however, on most other fronts, the house is a good thing. both of the other girls have moved out as of yesterday, so it´s just me keeping the balance in the place but i am afraid that it is a lost cause. as is evident in some of the photos, dishes are not a favorite evening activity. anytime activity for that matter. becuase i heard about the water thing, yesterday i just said fucki it, i am going to clean this stupid kitchen and so i did...no joke it took me two hours. good times.

school is going well too...i really do feel like i am getting better now...every day i make a few less errors than the day before and every thing i learn now feels like a puzzle piece falling into place. at this point, new information is a bit like being given power. anything is possible when you can throw down perfecto pasado condicional progresivo. ha.

apart from school, i have been keeping myself nice and busy. two weekends ago mick, student from australia, and i went to lago atitlan to see what we could see. it was amazing...apparently at some point the whole lake itself is thought to have been a crater (it´s huge, so this is hard to imagine) but at the moment it is *only* surrounded by like five huge volcanic cones. well, we wandered a bit, spent one night in this small village that is thought to have some sort of magnetic power field thing around it. whatever it is it attracts all kinds of meditation and yoga types. nice and relazing and great swimming. the next day we hiked along the coast of the lake for the day in order to get to another small town. probably one of the most enjoyable things i have done since i have been here, it felt like we were on the coast of the ocean because of the landscape. totally magnificent. all in all, a really really great weekend. so great that i think we are going back this weekend.

last weekend, mick and i (the m and m show) headed to antigua on another adventure. really, our main purpose was to climb pacaya volcano and see us some lava!!! antigua is nice. really nice, a little too nice even. there are so many tourists and a complete excess of beautiful cafes and restaurants and fun bars. really very unlike the rest of guatemala. however, it was admitedly nice to just chill out in cafes all day studying and walk home from the bar late at night and not be worried.

oh ya, and the LAVA. so we saw it and it was pretty cool. very cool actually. i mean, how many places in the world can you hike up and see LAVA? i have no idea, but just outside of guatemala city is one of them. as you can see from the picks, we weren´t just viewing through the camera zoom either, we were pretty freakin close...so close that we were hot wearing just tee shirts and the night was really cold. walking on the lava field (the black solid stuff) was really hard and a bit scary...every once in a while we would come across vents that would set our walking sticks on fire if you just put it close. i was pretty sure that a river of lava was going to open up underneath me and that was going to be the end. a pretty good way to go though. despite my fears, we went, saw some lava, and hiked down. in the dark. what is with us and hiking in the dark? it isn´t fun, it´s hard, and you can´t see anything. anyway, a cuasa del dark, i dropped my fleece on the hike down through the lava field and was near tears at the bottom because i am really quite attached when a guatemalan guy who had been behind us came walking down with it. i was so happy i hugged him.

well, tonight at the casa we are cooking comida de italia. robyn is coming back into town with her boyfriend iain and some other students are going to come over so we can speak horrendous spanglish to each other while making exquisite food.

after next week i am going to leave here, which will be a bit sad but i am think i am ready. it is south from here i think, however no tengo un plan as of yet. no one here is going that direction so it looks like it will be solo. mick is going north to mexico and geoff is off to work on a coffee farm so my travel companions so far will be left behind. i am really looking forward to the heat (it freezes here at night) and the ocean...next blog will have pictures of waves.

i hope veryone is doing really well, and if anyone feels like something new and exciting i am headed to ecuador after new years!! feel free to pencil it into your dayplanners.

mucho amor,

mer

pics explanation

forgot this bit
from bottom to top again
1. the cemetery here in xela. actually that's outside the real cemetery but people are still buried there. mostly i took it for the view of santa maria, the volcano we hiked.
2. the cemetery in zunil shrouded in cloud. kites are meant to be a kind of connection between those on earth and those dead.
3. in zunil still
4. waiting to go to fuentes georginas, the hotsprings.
5. THE hotsprings
6. on top just before sunrise...that's robyn wrapped in my sleeping bag and mick shivering to the right.
7. trying to stay warm
8. the sun
9. robyn what i tell her to do even though she's cold she can barely move.
10. me
11. the big volcano you can barely see in the distance, just beyond robyn, is tajamoco, the tallest in central america at 4200 metres. maybe next weekend.
12. so happy we did it.

pics!

well ok, pics will come later. the computer is beings soooo slow. well i haven't blogged, as it were, in a while, so lots has happened. i have to admit i feel pretty funny blogging, even just saying that word, because i am pretty sure that only my parents read it. haha. hi parents. good times.
anyway, it's been a while. school is going really well. i am week number five right now and am pretty much planning on three more after this. i know, that's a lot of school. however, there is a lot to learn about a language it turns out. i have an awesome teacher now who calls me hija, or daughter, and she has told me that i should study for that much longer. i trust her, and for now i am happy to study. i was not, however, happy living indefinitely with a family. it was not bad, it is just not that great. ahhhh the pics are speeding up! that means you get more. anyways, so no more fam. i am now living in what is known as casa internacional. there are eight of us who live there...three guatemaltecans, two of whom are teachers at the school and one is a mountain guide, one girl from holland who has lived here for three years and is the girlfriend of one of the teachers, one girl from the us who is the girlfriend of my old teacher, gabriel, ciprian (who i lived with in the family) and mick, another student from australia. it's really nice so far to have some more freedom and a whole lot more opportunity to speak spanish, as that is pretty much all that is spoken in the house. it is fun as well to shop at the market and figure out what to eat here and how to clean it so we don't get really sick. so far so good. my room is far nicer as well and it actually works out to be about the same price, cheaper if you're really good about not eating out.
so that's the current living situation.
last week was a short week because wednesday was the day of the dead. it's a very big deal here...everyone goes to the cemetery which is transformed into a kind of fairground and hangs out at the graves for the day, drinking and eating and basically living another day with family who have died. it is not sad at all...the graves are all decorated and everyone is having a good time. it's like a party at the cemetery. that day i also went to another town nearby, right in the mountains, to visit their cemetery which was very different. all was beautiful.
last weekend robyn goldsmith (lived in my house in halifax the year before i lived there...i know her because she came to visit for a week in halifax last year) came to visit for weekend. she is working on a farm about four hours from here, crazily. on saturday we went with the school to fuentes georginas, natural hotsprings in the mountains about half an hour from here. when we got in we were pretty sure we had just found the meaning of life. they were extraordinary. the view was even better. and it felt so nice to be in hot water, which is really hard to come by. from there we could see santa maria as well, which is the volcano that towers over xela. we could also see that it was shrouded in cloud for the whole day. thus we waffled all day about whether or not we were up to hiking it that night. it is supposedly the hardest climb in guatemala and the idea is that you do it starting at midnight in order to be at the top for sunrise, when you'll have the best chance of being cloud free. we decided though to give it until the very last minute and at 7 (the very last minute) we decided to go for it. so, after an hour of non sleep, the headed out in a truck to the base of the volcano at midnight. there were five of us...robyn, mick, a woman from spain who used to live in casa internacional, and another from the states, who funnily, has just finished two years of peace corps in the philippines. and me. we met our guide and his two dogs at the start of the trail and started out. the moon was one day away from full, so while it was clear, it was so bright we didn't need lights. however, as we climbed up and up, we became shrouded in cloud and had to hike by headlamp. it was hard go for sure, not aided by the fact that i think i had eaten something before that made me feel terrible. the altitude is also something else. anyways, in between wanting to throw up, i and the rest step by step ascended in the dark and wet. we reached the top at about four thirty with an hour left until sunrise. i have not been so cold in quite a long time. mick and i both had sleeping bags but the rest did not have them. i don't know what i would have done without it. we literally lay down against some rocks to block the wind and huddled in our sleeping bags. shiaaat. finally the sun came up and we struggled to fully appreciate because of the temperature and the wind. the view was stunning though. the peak is at 3800 metres. that's pretty high. anyway, we huddled up there for a couple of hours taking pics and checking it out and then headed down. all in all, i am really glad we did it, but at the time it was hard to distinguish good experience from discomfort.
all in all, life is well, as said previously. slowly slowly sentences start to form themselves in my head and life becomes more and more like it has always been this way and less and less like a trip. however, christmas will be in costa rica, i think with robyn's family, who is flying down to see her, and then it is new years with the padres. thanks for the emails from those of you who send them. i love hearing about what you are up to.
adios for now,
mer