My Life #2: Having Lots of Fun

Meanwhile, we spent the weekend in Ocotepeque and had a blast. Friday night we had some licuados and beers with the Peace Corps guys - the local beer here is called Salva Vida, literally ´life saver´!! On Saturday we (all 5 gingos in town) slept in and took a jalon to a nearby biological reserve called Guisayote to hike El Portillo. It was beautiful, with lots of clouds and trees and a waterfall, but we got stuck in the rain at the end. After a dinner of baliadas, which are basically tortillas with beans and eggs, and hot coffee, we wanted to get back soon b-c it was already dark, so we quickly hopped in the back of a jalon, which was a little fun like last time, but a lot not fun because it was pouring rain!! And we were tired, and cold, and there was lightening very very close by. At one point as we huddled together in the back of the pickup truck, someone said ¨Well, this worked out nicely¨ (presumably b-c we didn´t have to wait long for the jalon), but then we realized how ridiculous it was that ´nicely´ involved our being freezing cold and wet for 30 minutes in the back of a truck in a thunderstorm! We had plans to go out in Ocotepeque that night (there are several bars in town, one with karaoke), but went to sleep early instead.

Then yesterday we didn´t have any plans, so we woke up and watched some of Spiderman 2 on tv until the power went out (I´ve see at least part of a large number of movies on tv here, including bunches of James Bond and the Life of David Gale, which was really interesting). Anyway, without tv to entertain us, Jonno turned to me and asked ¨Want to go to Guatemala?¨ and I thought he was joking, but it turns out the town of Esquipulas is less than an hour away. So we grabbed a couple more gringos, hopped a bus to the border, and 2 taxis later were in this adorable town. The big draw was the Campero Pollo, a KFC-esque fast food place that served delicious fried chicken sandwiches and soft serve ice cream! We were extremely excited for this treat, so much so that a girl that was waiting in line ahead of us asked if she could take our picture! I didn´t realize that just being gringo made us picture-worthy. We went to a beautiful church that has a famous sculpture that people waited for hours to see (we looked from afar). The church was beautiful inside because people also lit candles and just left them on the floor of the church as they prayed. It was lovely, but also a bit dangerous for me in my long flowing skirt. We went to a huge mercado, or market, there, and it was interesting for me to see how different the Guatemalan culture was from Honduras just over the border. The people are obviously more Mayan in background, and many of the women wear the traditional colorful woven cloth, which is so beautiful. Then we went to the zoo, which had a decent selection of animals, but was not the most secure place -- we saw a large group of something that looked like anteaters hanging out outside their cage, and we watched a cute little capuchin monkey squeeze right out of his cage and run for the trees (we cheered him on!). There was also a cute little cave, a mine actually, that you could walk inside. It was very dark and people had left candles along the sides that you could grab, but it was very strange and scary just to be left on your own to walk into a mine. I was remembering trips to the polar caves as a kid where there are guides, and electricity, and rules. But here you just walked in!

Kelly, the new volunteer, comes tomorrow, and it´ll be fun to have a new friend, tho sad that the ¨Jonno and Lori¨ era is coming to a close. We´re trying to figure out what classes she should teach (since of course Carol hadn´t thought about that at all), and how things change when Jonno leaves next month and then again when a guy from Spain arrives in October. I´ll have seniority soon :)