Update

Ok, so 2 people were killed on that bus, not 10. What a relief, huh? (sarcastic)

Incident

Well, there was a little scare this morning with a girl from our group. She was leaving her house alone at 9:30 this morning, when she saw a car driving really slowly near her. They stopped, and a man came out with a hanker chief covering the bottom half of his face, and started coming at her. Before he could do anything, she screamed like crazy and started running back to her house (which was really close). The car drove away, and nothing happened. Her house is pretty much right next to ours, so that's wonderful.

Things like this just make me want to go home. Apparently yesterday in Guat. City, some thieves got on a bus and killed 10 people. Why?.......Why? I just don't get it. Once again, I'm living in fear constantly. August really can't come fast enough.

Tomorrow is exam day, and I have 3 of them! Wish me luck! Then it's off to the beach for the weekend.

1 week down, 3 more to go

Ah, week 2.…one of the most stressful weeks. All of the midterm exams are Friday, and there’s so much “unknown.” What will be on the tests? What’s the format? Well, I already know that they’re all essay style, but I’m pretty worried that I won’t know what to write. I’m really trying not to stress out, so I‘ve just been doing the normal routine: Get up early, go to the gym, shower, eat breakfast, go to first class, come home and eat lunch, go back to 2nd and 3rd classes, come home and eat dinner, talk around the dinner table, read a little, then go to bed earlier than any other student in the program. Notice there’s not much time for studying in there. I really should be studying or reading right now, but this only takes about 5-10 minutes to write. I usually just write these in word documents the night before, then copy and paste them online the next day.

One of my housemates, Lindsay and I have been doing a lot together. She’s the one who always goes to the gym with me and we have all of our classes together. She’s from Ohio, near where my aunt and uncle live. It’s funny how us Midwesterners kind of stick together. My good friends here are from Chicago, Indiana, and Ohio. We all went out to the big market that they have here on Saturday. That place is dangerous…as far as spending money goes. I vowed to not buy anything here because I don’t have room in my suitcase, but I kept seeing cute things and I just couldn’t help it. Later that night, everybody in our house went to a Cuban restaurant for dinner, and they had live salsa music. We were pretty much the only ones there…or so we thought. There was a loft above, and who came walking down the stairs to leave? Our professors! Really? Of all the restaurants in the city, we all ended up at the same one? But unlike high schoolers, we don’t think it’s weird to see our professors in public. We actually realize that they are people too, and do things outside of a classroom.

Us Midwesterners went to a buffet brunch on Sunday at an amazing café. Afterwards I wasn’t feeling so well, so I decided to go home while the rest of them found a place to watch the World Cup final. On the way home, I was craving a McFlurry from McDonald’s because I had seen a commercial about a new flavor: Mint chocolate chip! So even though I wasn’t feeling well, I stopped and ordered one, with Oreo crumbs in it too! This McDonalds was amazing. It’s like a nice restaurant with flat screen Tvs, a huge garden and fountain with Ronald McDonald sitting on a bench nearby, and of course a play land. It’s probably the nicest restaurant in Antigua, and it’s by far the nicest McDonalds that I’ve seen. Anyway, I called Mom and talked to her while I ate my McFlurry. Afterwards, needless to say, I felt even worse, but it was soooo worth it! I haven’t been able to eat many sweets since I’ve been here, so I was craving something sweet for so long.

Well, this definitely took me longer than 10 minutes…oopsie! Sorry, but most of my journal entries from here on out will continue to be about nothing. I could make it more exciting by telling about some drama and scandal going on here, but that wouldn’t be very nice of me, would it?

Earthquake!

Last night at exactly 1:20 AM I was shaken awake, not by Esther but by an earthquake! It wasn't too big, but it's always a little scary when you wake up to that. For the two girls in the house from Chicago and Ohio, it was their first earthquake. You don't really want to be in a third world country when one hits. Anyway, about 10 min. later I texted Jordan and he looked it up and it was a 4.7 about 20 miles away, so it wasn't that bad.

I've had two days of classes so far. I really love my linguistics class. The professor is super nice, and I just love grammar, so it's super easy. I can't say the same about my two afternoon classes (4 hours in a row of torture). I hate literature, and my Guatemalan culture class is disappointingly boring. I love learning about the Mayan culture, but I just can't pay attention in his class. It's two hours of him talking at us with Power Point slides. I'm nervous about the tests in these two classes because I don't really know what they would test us on. I'm nervous about not passing. I think maybe I have some form of ADD because I REALLY can not pay attention in those classes. We get out at 7:00 PM from the last class, and it's really dark out, and scary to walk home even though we walk in a big group with the 3 guys who live in our house. At the end of the day I'm just so exhausted and in a bad mood.

In other news, the food is great here! Our host mom really knows how to cook! She's super nice too. Her sister comes to help her out during the day since there's so many people to cook for.

Yesterday, I went with a housemate Lindsay to a gym to get a month membership. We went this morning, and wow, I feel so out of shape. There are classes every day, and we're planning on doing tae bo on Tuesdays. The classes are right in the middle of the gym and the machines are surrounding that area, so it's kind of awkward with everyone watching you. The gym is small, but it's bigger than the one I went to in Spain, and there are lots of elliptical machines instead of one.

Ok, time for class. Later.

In Antigua!

Hoe-leigh-kow! We made it to Antigua! What a bus ride. I wasn’t sick this time (yay) , but some other people were sick. We drove through a huge thunder storm. It was so cool since I haven’t seen lightning in a while. We also saw more mud slides. Man, those things are crazy. We saw someone’s house that had collapsed, and it was pretty sad. Also, when we were almost in Antigua, we went by this area where I think the road actually collapsed and dropped down a hundred feet or so with the mud. It was scary because the drop-off right next to us was huge and the road was extremely bumpy.

Anyway, when we got here, we got our family assignments. I found out that not only am I with Esther, but with 5 other people in the same house….. 3 of them boys. Uhhhh….what? I wasn’t too happy about that. I didn’t sign up to live with boys. Then I saw that the woman who we are living with had a little girl with her. I specifically put on the housing form that I didn’t want a family with little kids. I mean, yeah, they’re cute and whatever but I didn’t want any little ones bugging me to play while I studied. I was really angry on the crammed van ride to the house, and praying that there was more than one bathroom.

So we get to the house and….it’s freakin HUGE…like incredible. It’s just one woman and her daughter that live here. Each group has their own room (me and Esther, two other girls, and the 3 boys) with a bathroom connected! We also have a tv in each bedroom. I haven’t checked for cable yet. It’s seriously like a hotel here. I’m just sooooo shocked, and I feel extremely lucky. She even has a water purification machine thing in her kitchen, so the water is safe to drink here. Also, there’s internet! Can this get any better? Well, yeah, I guess if it were Wifi it would be better, but still! We’ll have to share it between all of us, but the hotel where we are having classes has Wifi, so no biggie. We all sat down and had tea and biscuits and talked to our mom, Ana Lucia. There are seriously no rules except don’t bring boys or girls home that don’t already live here. Oh, and guess what??? We have HOT WATER!!!! AHHHHH! I can’t believe it. I’m gonna pass out because I am so excited as I’m writing this.

Later, as Esther and I were organizing the room, two people came to our bedroom door and introduced themselves. They are this Asian couple from Boston that are living here too for about 3 more weeks. They look so young, but they can’t be as young as I thought because they have their masters degree and have been working for a while I think. They don’t really know Spanish, but they wanted to learn so they came down here for 4 weeks to go to the Spanish school that our host mom teaches in. Oh, and guess what their names are? Apple and Moses ….. Does that sound familiar?

Tomorrow we’re getting a tour of the city, so I’m excited for that! I just can’t believe all of this!

My head was in the clouds

No, really, my head was literally in the clouds. On our bus ride today, we got up to 11,000 ft. I think. Either that or 10,000. We drove through clouds and it was magical. This bus ride didn't get me sick, but don't worry, I was already feeling sick before I got on. By the end of the 2 1/2 hrs, I thought I was gonna die. When we were 4 blocks from our hotel, I almost got out to walk there (the professor told me to). But I figured that I would get there after the bus even though it wasn't moving at the time. I was soooo happy to be in our hotel room! But I'm really sick right now, like the kind of sick I didn't want to be while here or while travelling....the embarrassing sick. I just don't think the food here is agreeing with me. Most of it is really similar to what I normally eat, but maybe it's the way they prepare it? I don't know, but I probably shouldn't have eaten what I ate at lunch today. It was a "ham" and cheese sandwich, but I actually think that it was a Spam and cheese sandwich for real.

Anyway, the highway that we were on most of the time was pretty nice. The only bad thing is that there were some pretty serious mudslides covering two whole lanes. Oh, and something kind of off topic....I have a really hard time seeing the dogs here. They're like wild animals and I saw more dog road kill than I ever wanted to see. I think the saddest one was when we were driving through the clouds, 3 dogs ran across our two lanes to the other side of the highway where there was a car coming right at them (but it didn't hit them). I noticed that the dogs stopped in the middle of the road and when we went by, we saw that they were sniffing what was probably a buddy of theirs that looked like he was hit recently. Maybe he was still alive and they were trying to help him. :( Everybody on the bus sadly said, "Awwwwwwwwww." I wanted to cry. Dogs (and cats) are like humans to me as many of you know.

Sorry for updating when nothing's really happening! Btw....we have a 9-hour bus ride on Saturday! :)

Chi Chi's

Let's see....how can I describe the trip over here to Chichicastenango? Insane?...yeah, that. I'm so car-sick right now. The roads are crazy and this land is so mountainous that you're constantly going up and down 1,000s of feet on the mountains. The drivers are insane. Apparently you can just pay to get your license here, so most drivers suck at driving. They were constantly passing us on curves. Not really smart when there's a thousand foot drop right next to you. And these were public buses too, not just cars. We had to go though a couple of small towns, and we couldn't make this one left turn. The bus driver was going back and forth and back and forth and we just couldn't make it. We created a huge traffic jam for about 30 minutes....seriously. I was trying to imagine if that happened in LA. People would be shooting each other. But nobody got upset here. Nobody's in a hurry, and it must be normal for buses to get stuck trying to make a turn there. People got out of their cars, came out of their shops to help direct the bus. Anyway, we ended up having to go the wrong way on a one-way street in order to make it through the town. That was quite an adventure. We ended up making it to our hotel alive thankfully. I was so tense that whole ride. I think I'm going to take a nap and try to chill out. The thing is, we'll have to do this all over again tomorrow when we leave!