So this week and weekend was another classic week in Guatemala. Most of the week was the typical Antigua life. I have 2 tandem language partners now. One Guatemalan girl at 9am and a Venezuelan girl at 10am. It's really great because we meet up for an hour every day and talk half the time in English and half in Spanish. It is so nice to have native speakers to practice talking with and both girls are super nice! The Venezuelan girl actually took me to go get my haircut at this really nice salon where she usually goes. She complimented my hair and I told her thank you, but I really need a haircut. So she offered to take me the next day and it was so nice! I got a really nice haircut in a fancy salon for only $10USD!!! So cheap around here..score!
So the teacher at my placement asked me on Monday if I wanted to teach the class on Friday since the teachers were going to be busy organizing a donation of supplies all day. Obviously I agreed in a heartbeat! I was so excited to have the class to myself and to be able to do a fun activity with them! I was also a bit nervous considering nobody at the school speaks a lick of English. I was going to have to teach the whole day in Spanish, but it was a challenge I was ready to take on! I bought enough supplies to make sensory gel bags...I found it on Pinterest a while ago and have been wanting to make them...You fill a Ziploc bag with hair gel and glitter and then seal it up tight. The kids can then put it on the table and use their finger to "write" in the gel. The kids at my school have been practicing pre-writing skills like drawing horizontal, vertical, slanted and curved lines. So first, I read them a story that had a lot of illustrations with lines and then we made the bags and practiced drawing our lines and shapes. The kids had a great time and surprisingly were very well behaved for the activity! I was also very proud of myself for being able to explain and carry out the entire activity in Spanish! :) Fortunately, my friend and roommate was helping out in my class that day as well, so having him there to help with the activity was extremely helpful..Thanks Mike!
So after a successful day in school feeling very proud of myself, we hit the town on Friday night. It was our roommate Emily's last night so we went out to the bars with our old and new housemates. We hopped around to 3 different bars, had some drinks, played some darts, danced on some bars..you know, all the fun stuff! ;) haha Saturday morning it was up early and off to Monterrico for the weekend! :)
Our shuttle picked us up at 8am and began our 2.5 hour journey to the coast! We checked into our hostel which was actually very clean and nice. Then we all grabbed some lunch and hit the beach! 12 of us went in all, but 6 people went back home Saturday afternoon and 6 of us stayed behind to spend the night and return on Sunday. When we first arrived, some guy talked us into paying Q50 (about $6) to go on a tour of the canal the following morning. Despite the fact that we knew we wanted to go out and party that night, we somehow agreed to meet him at 5:15am the next morning for the tour. We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't be too hungover for the morning! That night was good...we walked around to find the cheapest dinner possible and ended up finding burritos, burgers and beer for about Q40 ($5ish) each. WIN. Then we headed out to search for bebidas. We bought beer from the market and walked along the beach, which was really nice at night since the moon was so bright. Then we hit a small chill bar for "happy hour" which, in Monterrico, lasts until about 11pm since they party until 6am. Gin and tonic for $1?!?! YES PLEASE! It was getting later and some friends wanted to go to a club to dance. We found a place crawling with locals shaking their culos to salsa and merengue which was awesome and authentic for about 5 minutes. Some guy grabbed me and wanted to dance. At first, I was like cool! I get to salsa with a local! How authentic! And then I saw that he had a gold tooth and was like ok let's rethink this...I walked away to go to the bar and he popped up there about 5 minutes later wanting to talk with our group of friends. Problem was, he spoke 0 English and tried talking to my Dutch friends in Spanish. He was just creepy overall and was very persistent with our group of friends. A little later when we all went back to the dance floor to give it another go, he popped up again, this time, wanting to dance with my friend Morgan. Thanfully, there were 3 guys with us who grabbed us away to dance and saved us from this weirdo. After a while, I felt uncomfortable with his persistence and 4 of us decided to leave. It would have been a great night if it wasn't for this loser because everyone else at the bar seemed very normal and chill. I was pissed, but it was definitely safer to go home. A local who spoke English and grew up in California was sort of our protector for the weekend (even though we nicknamed him the Los Angeles gangster since he looked like he was straight out of the hood). He was safe though, and he walked the 4 of us out of the bar to make sure the other guy didn't follow. Once it was safe we headed for home, leaving our two friends Natalie and Miles behind. We figured they were going to hop around to the other beach bars and head home in a couple hours. We got home at 1am and went to sleep shortly after. In the morning, when my alarm rang at 4:45 for our tour, I looked over at Natalie’s bed. To my dismay, she was not there...Hmm, maybe she crashed in the guys room for some reason. I walked in their room to wake up the other guys for the tour and holy shit they were not there either. Engage panic mode. I violently shook Johan and Rouke awake and explained to them that Miles and Natalie had not come home for the night so the only logical explanation was that they had been drugged, taken and sold into human trafficking. Obviously. All jokes aside, I was very panicked that it was 5am and they had not returned. I knew that the bars stay open until 6am, but I know the two of them and didn't think they would have stayed out for that long. I immediately thought of the creepy guy at the bar and knew that anything could have happened to my friends. We went outside the hotel and there was only the hotel guard sitting outside. I realized that Miles had his cell phone so I tried calling a couple times. He answered on the second try and after me yelling at him he said they had been sitting on the beach, lost track of time and in their drunkenness, fell asleep. When they returned 5 minutes later, I hugged them because I was glad they were alive, but then immediately gave them a motherly like speech telling them that they are stupid and we are in Central America, anything could have happened and I was genuinely mad at them for worrying us so much. They were still drunk, so I think they understood most of my motherly-like rambling, but they apologized multiple times and then stumbled back to the rooms to sleep.
Well, Dratalie (Natalie's drunk nickname) was in no capacity to come on the canal tour, so it was just myself, Johan and Rouke. It was all fun and games until we got to the boat and had to sit two by two. They got on first and sat together, and since we were missing Natalie I sat behind them on my own. The boat was full so some little Guatemalan guy wearing a cowboy hat sat next to me. Sad face. However, despite the random person next to me and the old fat Guatemalan woman who was asking stupid questions and tipping the boat behind us, it was a great tour. To clarify my mean girl-esque comment, we were in a row-boat like situation and she was sinking her side of the boat down. I was in front of her on the opposite side and I had to sit all the way on the edge of the boat to attempt to even out the weight distribution. Also, she asked the guide if you can take the turtles out of the canal to sell them. ???? And then, she asked if you can cut down the mangroves to use to build your house. NO lady you cannot. You cannot just destroy a natural preserve habitat to make a buck and save on money to build your hut-home. So shut up and stop asking dumb questions. Anyway, it was a really nice tour. The guide was pushing the boat gondola style with a giant stick and it was really cool to see the mangroves. We saw tons of pretty birds, some weird fish with 4 eyes and watched the sunrise. It was definitely worth $6 to wake up in a beautiful place and take a relaxing morning ride through a canal.
After breakfast overlooking the ocean at our hostel, we hit the beach! The undertow was not nearly as strong as the day before, so Rouke and I braved it out into the water past the breaks. It was so nice because the day before we had to stay by the shore with the sandy water crashing on us since it was too strong, but it was much better to be a bit farther out swimming around and ducking under the waves. I got a much deserved margarita after all that swimming, and also got a non-deserved sunburn. I reapplied sunscreen multiple times, but it must just be something about the black sand that turns my white girl skin into a lobsta. My whole body got a killer tan (like darker than I have ever been! yay!) except that my back and boobs are a little extra crispy. But its cool, I got aloe!
All in all, it was a beautiful weekend in Monterrico! I realized while I was on the beach contemplating my life, that I only have 3 weeks left here :( I am halfway through with my trip and the thought of going back to my life at home made me want to cry a little bit. Going back to work and CT just seems so blah. I am already mentally planning my next trip abroad...I'm thinking Iceland. However, I still have 3 weeks here and cannot wait to continue my adventures in Guatemala! Stay tuned...next weekend it's Lanquin and Semuc Champay...aka waterfalls, caves, and lagoons! Bring it! :)
