Cherised family, friends, and...family and friends.. ;)

Sorry it's taken me so long to do updates number 2 & 3 (and now 4), but hey...I've been a busy bee!
(And to those who will be receiving parts of this email again...los siento).

And by the way, this email is gonna be like a novel...so be prepared...you might wanna make your own intermission or something like that...hehehe 0=)

Sooo...I don't really remember where I left off, but here goes it anyway.

So Monday/Tuesday:

Monday we met this amazing lady named Ana Maria, originally from the south of Holland, lives in Antigua, Guatemala, and organizes a TON of projects there. She and her partner Carla are two amazing Dutch women. I mean AMAZING. Currently Carla is back in Holland in board meetings and whatnot helping organize more projects with the group there. So back to the story at hand. Ana Maria and Simone (currently in Antigua from the South of Holland as well) invited us in (Terry knows Ana Maria from before) their home and we had a little lunch (Dutch soup, egg salad and salmon salad on toast, and fresh pineapple slices) and talked about what we each do and whatnot. A woman named Janet (who'll also be coming down) made a rough calendar for Ana Maria to give to people and also will bring more copies to sell (100% of donations go to funding for projects) using pics she had taken of Guatemala and they are beautifuL! Everyone should buy a copy!!!! ;) Shameless plug, I know...

So Ana Maria has a dog named Quecha (sp, I'm more than sure of it) who is a street dog about 5 months old named after the most famous prostitute in all of Holland. This woman is hilarious! A little Dutch humor, I suppose hehehe...and dear God, I swear the dog just loves me or something! Always jumps on me! Silly dog...anyway...After visiting Ana Maria and Simone, we headed back to the hotel and relaxed a bit, and went out around 8pm or so to have drinks with Ana Maria and Simone after they went to feed the homeless with a Belgian couple that was visiting. They were going to have a police escort as they always do, but since Monday was Guatemala's Independence day...they had originally promised to do so but didn't. So Ana Maria, Simone, and these Belgian volunteers had to walk ALL THE WAY AROUND the city just to get to the place where they normally feed the homeless because going the way they normally go without a police escort would have been unsafe. Stupid bueraucracy...

Ana Maria and her organization in Holland are building this homeless shelter here in Antigua that will house about 120 people every night. So the current mayor's wife wants to get in on the action and have her name on a plaque so she's on the board, but she never goes to meetings, and when they had a fundraising gala one night...about Q200 a plate...Ana Maria and her foundation never saw the money. The politicians had all pocketed it for themselves...so I think they had gotten about Q4,000 from the people they had brought and collected personally from...but they lost out on a ton of money. So the new mayor and his cabinet are in on January 10, 2004. And they scheduled the opening to be Janurary 7, 2004 so that they can open it with the current mayoral cabinet. BUT...here's the best part...Ana Maria and the organization are going to say that they can't open the shelter until AFTER the 10th because of cost overruns/no beds etc. so that the stupid mayor's wife and that entire cabinet can't take credit for jack. Absolutely brilliant. =)

Went back to the Sky Cafe, had "Pollo a la Plancha" (grilled chicken with avocado, salsa, black beans, and rice...really good), a Gallo (local Guatemalan beer), and yeah. So we all talked, enjoyed our meals/drinks, and I paid with my VISA...turns out I don't really think that they get many credit cards, so the transaction took about 10 minutes to process. Crazy, I know. So Ana Maria and Simone went home while Terry, Maria, and I waited for the transaction to finish. So we headed up to the terrace where we had had brunch the day before and looked out at the night sky and city of Antigua. Absolutely beautiful! Transaction came through and we went back to the Hotel San Pedro.

Next day (Tuesday) I slept in after writing in my journal for way longer than expected, and Maria and Terry were kind (and generous) enough to go to the travel agency and book our tour for Tikal (jungle and Mayan ruins). When they returned, I had finished showering and they even bought me a latte!! Mmm...coffee...so then we headed out to get some money as I had no Quetzales whatsoever and hit up Terry's "favorite" ATM. Thank God the directions were available in English, as even Terry (fluent in Spanish) had trouble at a different ATM trying to figure out the directions and where she could get her money from. Maria went to exchange some US, so that took a bit longer than expected. Prolly took us about an hour to get done with the whole money/bank situation. By then it was about 12pm or so and we wanted to find an Internet cafe (I swear, I'm an internet junkie...Terry's dubbed me the Internet Slut and I've dubbed her the Coffee Slut...just like Jared! ;)) so we did...right next door.

The place is called Monoloco...literally...Crazy Monkey. Hehehe...tons of students from all over the world inhabit Antigua, and apparently Monoloco is one of their favorite places! So I tried sending some emails out from there before we had to be at Ana Maria's (Los Tulipanes -- that's the tile on the outside of her house) house by 1:15pm because we were gonna go to Alotenango (sp?), a local village about 15 mins by bus from Antigua. So we went to there house, walked over to the bus, and got to the local school there in time. Bus cost Q1.75, and since I don't currently wanna do the conversion...let's just say that it was CHEAP. The school was started by this wonderfully amazing man named Julio Cesar who is the school's director, principal, teacher, founder, counselor...you name it, he is it. He even went for one whole year without pay because he believes in this school so much! How much more dedicated and amazing can you be?!?!?!?!

Julio Cèsar gave us an introduction od the school and showed us pictures of the beginning stages of the school (very primitive -- they had cinderblocks and pieces of wood as their desks) to what we see today which are decent wooden chairs and tables. A vast improvement, I tell you. They have no electricity or running water, so they make do. And it looks pretty good...they have the walls decorated with art projects and the back table has all their toothbrushes and cups. They're trying to teach the children good hygiene and cleanliness and whatnot, which is great.

Simone teaches the kids English, and has been there about 2 months or so, and will be leaving in about 2 weeks to go back to Holland and reenter the "real world" where she'll have to find a job! Eek! Anyway, the group of us and about 4 other Dutch girls were there to look around and help out. A German girl also teaches math there. So while Ana Maria and Terry were interviewing and taking pictures of these 3 girls who are being given scholarships to go to secondary school (through the Dutch organization Ana Maria works for -- one wants to be a doctor, another a teacher, another a lawyer -like me!), we all sat in on the class that Simone was teaching. Then Terry pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to watch/play/teach a little boy who was by himself and not in the class. Of course, I said yes.

His name is Gerber, and he is SOOOOO adorable!! He's 6 years old, has a sister named Lesbia (11, who, like Gerber, stuck to me like glue), and another brother about 8 or 9 or so. Terry had brought this sticker book with her that had circus themes and so as I knew some of the animals in Spanish, I would ask him how to say this or that in English and we'd just go back and forth with that. So as I was sitting there teaching Gerber and he was also teaching me (Spanish, duh), and it just started to POUR. And I mean 10 ton cats and dogs. Insane...the weather changes really quickly...we were in Antigua where the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and then 30-45mins later...pouring rain. But thank God it didn't last too long. About 20 mins or so. The kids had a break from English class, so a few of them came and joined me at my table (all in all I think that I had like 6 or 7 kids) and we played with the stickers and Terry had brought this Winnie the Pooh (YAY!) painting book where the pigment is already in the pages and you just need water and presto! Instant colored picture! So we got some water...hmm...wonder where that could have come from... ;) and painted. The kids gave me the finished masterpieces as presents. How cute!

So then classes were over, the rain had let up, and we were taken on a tour of the village to which Gerber and Lesbia were stuck to me like glue...pretty amazing stuff we saw. I took lotsa pics, so I'll have plenty to show people when I get home...for those of you not fortunate enough to be in the greater Seattle area...if you ask nicely...I'll scan some for ya. ;) After that, said bye to the kids, got on the bus, and went back to Antigua. Unfortunately, I forgot the paintings from the kids at the school...sad...but it's all good. They can hang them up on their walls and whatnot.

Finally at Wednesday:

Maria and I went to bed at like 11pm, woke up around 3:30am, and caught our shuttle to Guatemala City airport at 4:30am. Sat there for awhile, then got on our plane to Tikal around 6:45am. Landed in Flores about half an hour later, then got on our shuttle to Tikal National Park to the Hotel Jungle Lodge there. Ride took about an hour or so. Then we dropped our stuff off at our bungalow, went back to the main lodge, and our tour of the Mayan ruins began around 9am. The tour was amazing. Absolutely beautiful. I'd say the temp was prolly around 80s but humidty was about 80%, and that was killer. And I mean killer. On our tour, we had a Swiss couple from around the Zurich area (Thomas and Andrea) with their 18 month old son Eric...SO CUTE! They've been living in the Bahamas for about 2 years and are gonna live there a little longer before they go back to Zurich and settle down for good. Eric is 18 months old and he's already been to 12 countries. Seasoned explorer, he is. We were saying that he should work for the National Geographic Society...lol. We also had this guy from Holland and another from Brussels. Good tour, good guide, good God.

All in all the tour lasted about 4 hours, 4 bottles of water between me and Maria...and yeah...it was long, humid, and hot, but tons of fun nonetheless. After the tour, they provide lunch, so we had that...it was alright...nothing spectacular. Asparagus soup, chicken fajitas with steamed carrots and potatoes, and pseudo-bananas foster (with milk, I believe). Then Maria went to the visitor's center to buy some things, and I got my book and headed back to the lodge to read outside. That didn't work out so well...for me, that is. I sat out there for like 10 mins or something and couldn't stand the heat and the bugs anymore so I had to go back to my room. Insane. So I took a nap, showered, and slept some more. Basically slept the day away. Literally. Woke up every so often and heard the Howler monkeys right outside our room. So they have generators there and they turn off everysooften to save energy...and thus we lose the abillity to have the fan on. UGH. It was an experience, let me tell you. It was beautiful and fun, but I think that one day at Tikal is plenty. Unless you're a zealous hiker/absolutely HAVE to go walking around some more, only then would I recommend an overnight stay. The heat and humidity kill you, so if you get there early enough like we did...one day is plenty.

Thursday:

Checked out of bungalow 9A at 1pm, walked over to the visitor's center and got some gifts. Then went back to the main lodge, sat around reading for a bit, and our shuttle picked us up around 2pm. Got to the airport at Flores, and waited around for our 4:30pm flight back into Guatemala City. Got picked up by our shuttle and dropped off at the Holiday Inn around 5:30ish pm. Since we didn't see Terry in the lobby (she thought we were getting in around 6pm) we decided to go up to the front desk and check into our room ourselves. Turns out the people there couldn't find our names anywhere in the database even though we are with the Healing the Children Foundation. So we kept trying and they kept trying and took our passports to check names/whatever, and I'm about to give up when Terry comes strolling in at 5:50pm and gets things in order. Thank God. I was so tired.

Finally got our room and put our stuff down. Then we went out to dinner around 7:15pm with Enrique and his daughter, Dr. Don, and Diane, Terry's roomie for the next week or so. Don had found this place earlier in the day and wanted to go there so we all headed out...turns out we couldn't find it and when we finally did, about 30 mins later...there wasn't any room. So we went to Tre Fratelli, this really good Italian restuarant about a block away from the hotel. Crazy, I know. After dinner was bed. And that was Thursday.

Friday:

Woke up around 7:15am, got ready, went to complimentary breakfast downstairs, and got ready to go teach First Aid at Camino Seguro, the garbage dump school. We got down there around 9:30am or so and setup our stuff to teach 8 teachers about First Aid. Let me just say that I am extremely grateful to Don for getting the Red Cross First Aid videos in Spanish. That saved a lot of time, confusion, and helped us all out in the end. We had Diego, Lisette, Isabel, Maribel, Julio, Julio, Alejandro (Alex), and Araycel (?). They were wonderful students, had plenty of questions and examples to share and were fantabulous. The class went better than expected, and we all had a lot of fun doing it. After the teaching part was over, we handed out the tests for them to take to "certify" them in First Aid. And I took mine and passed with flying colors...woohoo! ;) Oh, and we had "Pollo Campero" for lunch, which is like the Guatemalan equivalent of KFC but so much better. And they're everywhere!

After all that was said and done, Maribel took us around Camino Seguro where we saw what I was initally expecting to see when we got there. They had put us in the safest and cleanest part of the school they had. THey have about 3 different sites around Camino Seguro. So we walked around and they place is amazing. To see that people live in those conditions with my own two eyes was just amazing. SUch an eye opening experience. And the fact that the teachers and volunteers are so dedicated was incredible. Imagine a garbage dump and that being the neighborhood you live in. Squallor, trash, dogs, people, everywhere trying to survive. Kids playing in teh garbage and gettign hurt every single day...I would have taken pictures, but I didn't and still don't..think that that would have been a good idea.

So Got back from Camino Seguro and took a shower right away, relaxed, Terry and Maria went to get Terri from the airport, I watched "Much Ado About Nothing," CNN, stuff like that, and waited for them to get back. Afterwards we all relaxed and ordered room service. So cheap. It's like $10 for an entree. Amazing. Anyway, after that, went to bed.

Saturday (today):

Woke up, and here I am in Antigua. We decided to come here for the day as Maria is leaving the beautiful country of Guatemala tomorrow and Terri has never been. Took a taxi to get to the "bus station" (it's not really a station...more like a meeting place...), got on the bus, and the adventure began. Bus was packed with people...I mean, we were sardines in a can. But it was fun. Squished, but fun...ran some errands with Terry, went to Ana Maria's house to drop off a couple bags and some of the glow sticks that I told her I was going to her when we went to Aluotenango for the kids at the school there. Dropped off Terry's laundry (about $2 for the whole load) and here I am in Monoloco for the past couple hours writing this email and chatting with people online and catching up with scores and news and whatnot. So yes. Here ends the novel because my hands hurt.

Hope you enjoyed it and I'll prolly have another one out for you tomorrow. Maybe. ;)

Glad you all were able to sit through this! Take care...oh, I've discovered a few more bug bites..yuck. It's raining again...yay for tropical weather! And we're catching our shuttle back to Guatemala City at 5:30pm so I should get out and do something...in the rain...yeah...not so good. Whateva.

Take care and I love you guys lots!

Love,
Jessica *MUAH*