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.