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