Our Second Home

We´re back in Xela, and driving in along familiar streets and seeing all kinds of things and even people we recognized, while in Central America, was a heady feeling. Now we´re settled back in to the first hostel we stayed at when we got here, in the exact same garage converted to a room by pinning a comforter over the garage door windows and dragging two beds in. We ate at the great little taco place called Tacos, No Mas that actually does have mas, and now we´re in to the secret, good, fastly-connected internet place that only costs a buck an hour. So, I have the ´gameday´ thing for the second game of the double header on in the background, and it´s not even slowing my roll. I love Xela.
We´ve been attracting single travellers lately (Joost, I was about to take a stab at you then realized that I gave you the blog address so maybe I´ll pull my punches. But I take stabs at everyone, so it would have been nothing personal). Joost, a Dutch fellow diver, came with us all the way from Utila to Antigua Guatemala, with a few days in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. We had a great time with company, and since Joost had been through there, he had some good insights on where to stay and catch buses and stuff. Just didn´t leave a lot of make out time with three of us in one room, combined with his 9pm bedtime (just 15 min. after Mariam´s). Anyway, this time on the ferry back from Utila to La Ceiba, Mariam didn´t throw up on herself or me, or at all actually. Then we saw the amazing ruins of one of the biggest Mayan cities of it´s time (in the 7-8oo´s) at Copan. They just go on and on, with huge trees and forests growing up between, on and over them. I thought I saw a quetzal for a minute, but I didn´t actually know what a quetzal looked like so figured any bird with some green on it and a longer than usual tail might be one, until I saw a picture of one near the entrance to the park and it was nothing like what I saw. Also, the ruins are kind of scattered on these huge lawns that are neatly trimmed, and I just wanted to say something about lawns. For the most part, they are cut here, by hand, with machetes. I thought that stupid push mower that Paula used to make me use to cut her lawn, that had the stupid freewheel on it that, when you pulled the mower backwards, completely stopped the 20 lb. spinning blades which took a lot of energy for 12 year old me to get spinning in the first place. It was a safety thing so the 12 year old boy you hired to mow wouldn´t mangle his feet, but it was a huge pain in the ass. There is no safety mechanism for these guys, swinging their machetes in a perfect arc exactly 4cm above the ground, ending up with a beautifully manicured lawn. I hope that´s not how they cut the grass at Copan Ruinas, because it looks very tiring.
Next we went back to Antigua, which has become our hub for travelling. I had had a horrible hankering for McDonalds, even after we had a long discussion with Joost about its evils, and they caved and came with me. Mariam got a Cajita Feliz, and refused the accompanying Pretty Polly doll (boys get Ninja Turtles, which are hugely popular here but only allowed you if you have a penis). I got a double Big Mac. That scratched my four-patty itch. Then today we chicken bused it to Xela, on the way meeting a guy from Massachusetts, going from Antigua to Xela and then the Escuela de la Montaña (what we´re doing) who also had to get a new passport right before he left because he put his through the laundry. It´s like the land of frigging coincidences here. He proceeded to get pickpocketed and so we´re helping him out with tuition. Ma, you should expect a check in the mail one of these days (I was right on the Generosity chapter in my self-help book when he hit us up for the cash. What did I say about coincidences?).
We´re heading up to the Mountain School for 2 weeks, in Columbo, where it´s a lot quieter and more Mayan. Looking forward to going back to school, to having everything taken care of in terms of eating and sleeping, and in getting steeped in Guatemalan culture. This school is in a former guerrilla hotbed, and is known for being a little revolutionary in flavor, in terms of the afternoon activities they offer and stuff. I´m looking forward to that.