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