DONE

today is the last day at the campus. Me and caleb got up at 4am to drive to the airport and say goodbye to everyone. it was sad - i've lived day and night with thoes people for 5 months straight, and now i wont be able to see them for at least 3 weeks.
Calebs brother arrived this morning. tonight were grabbing a hotel in antigua, and then we're off to Tikal for a few nights. after that, not sure where were going.
My flight comes in at sea-tac airport at 2:30 am on june 25th. So ill see you all when i get back.
cheers

almost done

we are just starting our last week with Joann and Slava from trinity. We just finished our last week in our homes and the soccer playoffs in san pedro was yesterday. School ends in 11 days. Most of us are finishing off our gift shopping (sorry guys, but dont expect anything from me. i havent really been in the shopping mood). I've got plans to do the last few things that i havent done yet and feeling sorry for myself couse i have to leave guatemala. but at the same time, i've had enough school and im ready to leave the campus- and i cant wait to see all my family an freinds - and impress you with all my newfound maturity ( una buena broma)(aha).

for thoes who i havent told, me, caleb and his brother ( or "caleb, his brother and i" for all you critics) are taking a few weeks and traveling around central america. The plan is to head up tikal agian, then through the Yucatan in mexico, back down through belize, honduras , el salvador, and if i got time, Costa Rica.

Las Lisas

These are just a few pics from our trip to Las Lisas. and a ruin around antigua.

still alive

so i know its been a while since my last post, and i dont really have any good excuse, but i have been busy. After El Salvador we went back into our homes in san pedro and finished off our final papers and wrote our spanish final exam and did our final oral. For most of us, it went really well. We had a free day before taking off for tactic agian, so we decided to hike volcan Agua. Its not an active volcano, but it has an amazing view. It was 3700 meter up. I was feeling sick agian, didnt eat the day before and i didnt have any energy. i probably shouldnt have gone, but im glad i did. it was one of the hardest things i've ever done. I prayed for strength each step up. At the top, we couldnt see much, except for the clouds bellow us. But Fuego, the active volcano, was erupting nearby. we couldnt see it, but could definitly hear it erupting and rumbling.
We had to run down the mountain because we didnt want to get stuck in the dark. Comming home from santa maria, the town at the base of the volcano, was fun. no buses, taxis or tuk-tuk's were running. eventualy we found a guy with a truck who we paid to drive us back.
the very next day we left very early and sore for tac-tic. This time we didnt do as many kids ministry stuff, but we did a lot of painting and moved a lot of block. We painted the inside of a churh in tac-tic and the outside of a new school nearby and moved block into the back of trucks and then unloaded them at a construction site where they are building another school.
And good news. I went to the docter the other day, and he didnt think that i have a parasite, which means i should hopefully stay healthy. but i do have a cold, and i just gave it to everyone else here - suckers.
And we have some new freinds. there are 10 students from trinity who are living and taking classes with us. So its a big diffrence from 7 to 17 people on campus, but i think its a good change.

El Salvador

Ive been getting lazy with this whole blog thing.
Just a quik recap of the past few weeks. We've been working on our final exams and papers for Cross cultural communications, anthropology new testament survey and spanish. It was a lot of work and stress, but now im almost done everything and can look forward to new round of classes to do it all over agian. Last week we took off to El Salvador for the weekend just to relax. We rented a house to ourselves overlooking the beach. Some of us took surfing lessons, went swimming, almost drowned a few times -it was awsome. It was nice not to do anything but sit in the sun.
Now im back living in my guatemalan homes for a week and then off to tactic agian for a week.

Semana Santa

The past week was Semena Santa. Its a huge catholic holiday to mourn / celebrate easter. The 2nd largest semana santa celebation in the world happens every yeay in antigua. Thousands of people from all over come to see the processions and the parties in the streets. For almost a whole week, marching bands playing death march music follow behind these floats walk up and down the streets. Diffrent people and families sometimes spend a whole day creating eloborate carpets made of flowers, fruit and colored sawdust that the processions walk over.
Its was really impressive to see 80 - 90 guys carrying these massve floats that weigh several tons through the streets for hours - somehow it ties into the whole penence aspect of catholocism. The creepy thing was that everyone, including the spectators, wears black and even with thousand of people on the streets, everything is lmost silent. We tried to some street ministry stuff during the main night, but a bunch of catholic goons got really upset, so we had to leave. THe smoke in the pictures is the insence they burn ahead of the floats. Somtimes there was so much insence burning that you couldnt see the other side of the street.
Next thursday our group is going to el salvador to relax on the beach for a few days. should be nice, especialy since school has been so crazy lately.

"Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean"

yep, im still alive. Ive been away for a while. First living in homes and then on a trip to Tikal ruins and the Caribbean. But the trip went ok. Parts were good other parts were horrible. We left really early on wednsday morning. But the two days before the trip i got really sick I almost didnt go, but at the last second i changed my mind and jumped in the car. The 9 hour ride to Tikal was miserable. The next morning we went to the Mayan ruins. it was so much fun just to walk around and climb up the temples. Again, we got in trouble from security for climbing around on the wrong parts. i even threw up on the top of the biggest temple in central America – my proudest moment. allways seems like we never have enough time to spend at these places. we left from there and drove to the coast of Belize, on the Caribbean.
To stay in Guat we have to renew our Visas, which means having to leave the country for a while. Belize was a crazy country. Really threw me off when everyone spoke English. - there was also ton of asian people mennonites - something you don’t see where I live. On the coast, where we stayed, its all blacks. We were one of the few white people in the whole city. We took a boat out to a typical Caribbean island with white sand and palm trees and spent the day snorkeling in the reef.
The next morning we drove back into guatamala, and stayed at a place called Livingston. Its an island just off the coast of guatemala. the only way to get there is an hour long boat ride through rivers and around the islands - the whole area used to be where all the pirates would hide out and keep their treasure. you can still see pirate forts there. Agian, the whole city was black, except this are was a lot more touristy, so we didn’t stand out as much.
It was such an amazing trip, but i felt sick for most of it and couldn’t eat much – which is the only thing you do on road trips.