HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!!

I most likely will not have computer access until Monday so I wanted to make sure I sent happy greetings to my Dad and all the men in my life! Love you and have a great day!

Love this place...

So things at the academy have been moving at a different pace this week because Kelly, from Cause For Hope is in town. He has been evaluating the program, seeing where it needs improvement and possible changes. It’s been fun to hear his perspective and see the potential of the academy. Kelly took us out to lunch yesterday. It was delicious and a great view! We went to a restaurant that overlooks Central Park. It was awesome watching the hustle and bustle of the people.

It is hard to be in a place like this and not have a heavy heart. The people here live such a different life than we do. Ben and I were observing today that most of the people work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day.  Every two weeks they earn what we could every two days (yes, things are cheaper here but imagine paying a mortgage and feeding your family on two days salary). Most of the families here have a lot of kids because they also cannot afford birth control. The kids start working at a young age here (selling Chiclets, suckers, shining shoes, etc.) because if they don’t, then they don´t eat.
At the academy, there is a 21 year old we work with, named Edwin. I love him. Not in a wrong way, of course. His family received a microloan from Cause For Hope in which they bought three looms. His family made amazing colorful blankets with the looms and sold them at the markets. When Edwin was on his mission (he returned home 2 months ago) his father came home in a drunken rage one night and smashed all of the looms. His father is now in jail for what he did, but because of it, the family now has no income. Edwin starting working at the academy a month and a half ago. Edwin´s family (all seven of them) relies solely on his income. A new loom costs about a hundred bucks but they can´t afford it. They also can´t get another microloan because they still owe money for the other looms that were bought. It is such a bad situation. Talk about the pressure and responsibility he must feel to take care of his family. You would NEVER know this has happened to Edwin. He always has a smile on his face... always! On his break at work, he watches church conference talks on youtube. It´s cases like this that breaks my heart. At the same time, its cases like this that shows how strong the people are. Some of them live in horrible conditions, but you would never know it by the way they treat you. There are people here that would sacrifice everything just to have us over for dinner. It´s crazy to me.
On a totally different topic, today Ben and I splurged by going to lunch at the Wendy´s. We went there for two reasons. 1) American food rocks. 2) I miss carpet so much and that is the only place in town that has it. Weird, I know. I never thought I could miss carpet so much, but I do. The carpet at the Wendy´s is the flat, casino kind, but it´s carpet! I am already looking forward to when I get home, I am going to do a full on carpet swim and roll. I love carpet.
On that note, have a great day!

My favorite things this week...

1. The markets! Have I mentioned 3 giant mangos for 25 cents, 12 avocadoes for 1 buck, and a dozen bananas for 35 cents??? LOVE IT. On the other hand, I DON¨T love that I am gaining weight. It’s hard not to eat so much when food is so cheap!
2. When the men here get hot, they pull their shirts up to their chest, which makes it look like they are wearing a belly shirt. The best ones have big guts.
3. That everyone greets everyone-even if you don´t know each other.
4. They have absolutely no driving laws and fewer accidents then we do.
5. It cost 16 cents to take the local bus and they come around every five minutes. Very convenient (and not scary like the ones that head out of town).
6. Plantanos chips.
7. The weather.
8. My friend Lily. She makes it feel like we have family here.
9. Frequent parades with excellent bands. Who doesn´t love a good band?

Happy Monday!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! We took things a bit easy this weekend because I have been feeling a tad under the weather. Nothing major thank goodness. The weather here this weekend was really nice, perfect in fact. The weather here changes so quickly. This morning when I was walking to the academy from school, it was so stinking hot. About a half hour ago, it started to dump rain (similar to the storm we got stuck in a few weekends ago) and the power went out. The power goes out a lot here, usually for a long period of time. Thankfully, it was only out for 20 minutes this time.
It is clear that the people at church are getting more comfortable asking us to help out. Yesterday, Ben said the prayer in sacrament, taught sunday school and elders quarum. I just gave the prayer in relief society, which I do every Sunday these days. At least I can do something! It was testimony meeting (on the wrong Sunday, I know. They beat to their own drum down here.) There was a non-stop line for people to get up on the stand. Whole families would come up together and wait for each other to finish before returning to their seat. It was different, but great!
Here are some pics from around town...

Lime trees! I would love one of these in my backyard!

A view of Xela. It looks bigger than it really is. Everywhere is within walking distance here.

Fresh goat milk at the market. The peeps literally take a cup and milk the goat. See that pile of garbage on the right side of the picture? It looks like that everywhere. They NEED garbage cans! So gross!

Meat that has been sitting outside in the sun and covered in flies, anyone? YUM.

I love this pic.

Random thoughts..

So, a couple things I didn´t mention about our trip. While in Semuc Champey, we met a zoologist, Australian named Rossy that was possibly the coolest person ever. He has been traveling for four months. He started at the tip of Chile, gone through all of South America, is now in Central America and will end up in New York....all on a motorbike. He takes each day as it presents itself and doesn´t make plans, so that when his plans change, there will be no disappointment. It was fascinating to me. He had such a positive outlook on life. Ben and I couldn´t stop asking him questions. Then, when at the Rio Dulce, we met a Swiss couple that had recently retired that have been traveling for over a year-starting in the states and will end up in South America. They travel a little more luxurious than Rossy by renting cars and what not. They plan to be away from home and their family for over two years. So, why do I tell you these things? First, so that I don´t  look quite as crazy to my Mom and Dad and second, because it was thrilling to be around people that have such a desire to experience new things.
Since returning from last weekend’s trip I have felt a bit overwhelmed with Spanish- While attempting to study yesterday I had a breakdown. My brain was so overwhelmed at that moment with new words that it caused me to forget everything I had learned.  There are times that I sometimes forget English also. I just sit there as if I am a mute. Ugh.
Last night my school had a ping pong tournament. You know Ben and I went! Sadly, I did not make it to the semifinals but Ben did. Unfortunately he did not win. It was a great time. There were some people there that live or die by ping pong. It was so stinking funny to watch them take it so seriously. Oh man-good stuff.
I don´t think Ben and I have mentioned the dogs we adopted while we are here. There is a mama bear, little brown bear, and baby black bear. Every day when walking home we pass their field, give them a good belly rub and they follow us home where we give them some Fruit Loops. Ben and I have been in mourning all day because we got news that baby black was ran over last night. It´s so sad. I decided that my mission in Guatemala is to find a way to help the dogs here. Once I found that out, I will let you know. There has to be something we can do though!
I hope that all is going well at home. Thanks to those of you who have written us emails-you have no idea how much that lifts us up!

Trip to Paradise...PART 2

So our adventure continues! After a long night of driving we ended up...

in Flores Island. It is a tiny island (when I say tiny, I mean you can drive around the whole island in 5 minutes) and beautiful! We got here kind of late and left early so went did not get to spend as much time there as we would have liked. This picture is a view from our hotel! This island is in the middle of a giant lake in northeast Guatemala. After an early breakfast we were off to..

Tikal!!! These ancient Mayan ruins were incredible!! This is Noah, our guide. He was full of fascinating facts and spoke excellent English. This doorway we are standing in symbolized trinity. The majority of the doorways throughout Tikal looked like this. Here is... 

the main section of temples. We spent a good chunk of time there because there was so much to see. What I found to be interesting was that these people were able to survive off of rain water. There were no lakes or rivers in this area. It is suspected that the water source is one of the main reasons that eventually the people abandoned the place (and because of numerous wars).

This is a giant mask in one of the temples. It was in great condition compared to most of the others.

As you can see, some of the structures are still partly underground. There are many structures that are in the process of being uncovered and numerous that are still completely buried.  

This was one of my favorite stuctures to explore. There were many twists and turns, almost like a maze. I wish so badly that I could take a time machine back in time to see the people in action. While in Tikal, we saw numerous...

Monkeys! Man those suckers can jump! The howler monkeys make a freaky noise that you can hear for miles away. We also saw...

turkeys!! These look nothing like the ones back in the states. They were so colorful and big. They reminded us of a peacock. There were also other animals but we saw the monkeys and turkeys the most. At the end of our Tikal trek, we climbed to the top of the highest temple, almost 300 feet high.

 It was incredible-so worth it! We were above all the trees and could see for miles and miles of jungle with temples peaking through the trees. Awesome. After Tikal, we had another long drive ahead of us. We ended up at...

The Rio Dulce. We had to take a boat across the river to get to our bungalows. It (like everwhere else) was beautiful! This is what our...

bungalows look like. It was a swampy area, being that we were right on the river and all but it was fun because you could watch fish and lizards doing their thing. It was the hottest place I have ever attempted sleeping in. I slept in my swimsuit because it was so hot. After breakfast, we took off on a boat tour. First stop was... 

The Castle of San Philip. This castle dates back to 1554. Back in the day, it sat as a fortress on the entrance to Port Mahòn. There were two main battles that took place here, both were unsuccesful. It was facinating to see how the soilders lived there (most interesting was the bathrooms!). It was a beautiful little island....

as you can see. In the basement of the castle is where...

they kept their prisoners. Ben is siiting in one of the cells. Not alot of room to stretch your legs. There were numerous cells around the room. The guide said that the castle basement used to flood time to time due to the rising water . When that would happen, the water would sometimes rise up to the prisoners knees. The majoity of the prisoners died from malaria or dengue. Here is... 

Ben and Mike pretending to defeat the competition.  Our boat ride continued..

for another 2 hours. Along the way there were little islands covered in colorful birds and patches of lilypads, like these. They were fun to see because there were birds that liked to hang out on them. We continued on to the...

town of Livingston. This sunken ship is on the shore of Livingston. We didn´t get too many pics of this place but we should have. It was like we were in a completely different country. Livingston is totally secluded. There are no roads to get here, you must take a boat. The majority of the people here are black and have a Jamacian feel to them. It was beautiful and we ate fresh fish right out of the ocean. One of the most unusual things here were the aligators in the park. Uh, creepy!  

We headed back on the boat and then had a long car ride back to Xela. It was an incredible trip and left us with smiles on our faces!!

Trip to Paradise...PART 1

On Wednesday night we had the sister missionaries over for dinner. We attempted to make the most American food as possible. Pretty sure we are their new favorite people because they were close to tears when they saw the food. Tortillas and fried chicken can get old after a while. Ben took off after dinner to play soccer with the guys from church. The two sisters in the middle stayed late and helped me with my spanish. It was a good time. Thurday morning we were off on our adventure of a lifetime! First stop...

Coban! This is known as the cloud forest. We were not there for long, just to sleep and eat dinner. There were not very many clouds that I could see but it was still beautiful! There were a ton of these guys (the parrots) chillin around. After breakfast we were off again! This whole country is literaly a giant mountain range-not one flat road to be found. There were some dodgy roads but for the most part it wasn´t too bad, except....

the road to get here. The road was as high as you can get in this country but the real scary part was when it would rain (everyday), the dirt caused a weird film on the road that made it slick. It was like driving on ice. Uh, talk about anxiety (again!!!!). We headed down into this mountain range as far as our little van would take us and then we had to....

throw our luggage and ourselves into the back of a pickup truck to continue to our destination. Not our usual way to travel in the states, but it worked. Once we arrived....

Paradise. Our bungalow (which was in the middle of nowhere-there wasn´t anything else around) was incredible. There were amazing tropical flowers, banana trees, coconut trees, cocoa trees, etc. all around us. If you are ever looking to runaway and start a new life, this would be the place to come. The bungalow sat on...

this giant river. It was so peacful to sit there and watch the beauty. Once we got settled, we set off to hike Semuc Champay.

It looks like a fairly easy hike, but it wasn´t. Remember this whole country is mountains!!? Not to mention it was so freaking hot. It was the kind of heat that sticks to you. About half way up....

it was time for a break. I thought I was going to pass out. This trip has continually reminded me of how out of shape I am. Ugh. But, once we got the the top...

it was SO worth it! This natural wonder amazes me. At the very top of this picture you can barely see the Semuc River. At that point, the river starts to flow underground in a cave that runs underneath the pools you can see in this picture and then comes back out near the bottom of the pools. The pools are clean water that run off the mountain walls. 

  

We hiked back down the mountain and checked out where the river begins to go underground. It was beautiful. Along our hike, we found some....

friends. The were not very happy to see us but they were very interesting to look at. By the way, this is one of the few garbage cans I have seen in Guatemala and it alone is worth taking a picture of. After that long, hot hike, it was time to cool off!

Whoop, whoop. The best swim of my life! The water was a perfect temperature, it was clean and best of all it was just what the doctor ordered.  

You can´t really see but this tree hanging down has these pretty little purple flowers all over it and purple petals have sprinkled down over the water. We swam right there and I felt like I was in a puzzle picture. It was perfect. We headed back to the bungalow to call it a day and get some rest for the next days adventure...

Kan Ba!  We explored these caves with candlelight! There were parts of the cave that you could...

walk, like this. And other parts that were so deep you had to swim like a three legged dog because one hand was holding your candle. Once we got into the cave pretty deep, Ben decided to .....

Take a jump into one of the deep spots. Uh, scary! He was fine though.

This was our final destination in the cave, right before we turned around to head out. It was so cool. The cave is 13 kilos long, we only explored 1 kilo. The furthest anyone has gone into the cave was 11 kilos because it gets a bit hairy the further back you go. Once out of the caves we...

took a stroll down the lazy river. This is the river that our bungalow is on so we rode the river until our bungalow-about 30 minutes. In the middle of the river there was a bridge about 30 feet high. Ben also jumped off this. I guess he was feeling a bit jumpy.

Once we ate some lunch, we were on the road for the rest of the evening. Up until this point, the trip was incredible. Never thought it could get any better, but I was wrong.