i´ve starting writing reminder notes to myself of things i want to write about...but unfortunately, i forgot to look at my list before coming to use the computer.

we are going to get to volunteer a couple days next week at a project called god´s children. it´s a project here in antigua with many services, including a medical clinic, social work services, dental clinic, school, and mothers´program. the school also has a library, which is where we will be going a couple days next week before going to school. we´ll get to read to the kids or have them read to us and look at books. the project started in the 90s with only 35 kids. now they have over 2,000 in the program.

mondays, thursdays, and saturdays are the big market days, the days when people from towns further away from antigua come in to sell their produce. early in the morning, people pour in to set up their stands of fruit, vegetables, tamales, spices, flowers...i´ve been enjoying walking around just looking at all the different types of fruit and vegetables and observing what goes on in the market. it´s not just full of tourists. it´s where you go to buy your produce because it´s fresh and home grown. women and children sit surrounded by their large baskets of tomatoes, chiles, potatoes, cilantro, carrots, onions, bell peppers, cabbage, things i don´t know the names of. it´s a little overwhelming when you have a list of things to buy, like we did when we were cooking, but when you don´t need anything, it´s fun to just walk around and get carried away in the sea of people. this morning i bought a nice bunch of flowers-i couldn´t resist. at the end of the day, you see the baskets of produce tied in bundles and piled up on top of the chicken buses as the vendors return to their homes.

pepsi has joined up with a coffee company here in guatemala and launched a new drink: pepsi capuccino. only available here. maybe someday the states will be so lucky.

hello! this week we´ve had to move our classes to the afternoons so we have the mornings free! we still have breakfast at 7 so we really don´t get to sleep any later but it´s a nice change in our daily routine.

we had a fun experience with our family the other night. i have t-shirt with a picture of a dog roasting a marshmallow over a fire. one of our family members commented on this, and we tried to explain what a s´more was and how you make s´mores when you are camping. they thought that sounded good. so while at the supermercardo one day, we found some hershey´s chocolate bars, angelitos (marshmallows), and fiber and honey (literally what the wrapper said) which were graham crackers. that night we roasted marshmallows over their gas stove burner and made s´mores for the family. i think they all really liked them. and we taught them how to say s´mores and marshmallow. it was a lot of fun to be able to teach them something new!

i´ve also learned that hilda, our house mom, really liked watching mcgyver growing up, too. justin told her not to get me started talking about mcgyver.

hola, buenas noches. so much to write about and so little time. first off, we survived climbing pacaya today. it was a 4 km hike up to the crater and took a little over two hours. during the last hour we probably hiked less than 1km as we were slowly walking through lava rock gravel. it was extremely windy up top but it was neat being there. we couldn´t see any lava or anything, just vapor, but we took pictures and looked around at the other volcanoes. last night at around 9 we looked outside of our room and saw the volcano fuego errupting a little. it was a clear night and we were excited to be able to see the red fire.

last night we also had our cooking lesson with claudia and her mom. the day before justin and i had quite the market experience trying to buy all the ingredients for the pepian and jacon. we had a long list of things. it´s hard because you can´t find them all at the same place and you can´t comparison shop. and the recipe calls for half a cup of sesame seeds but you have to buy buy weight so you have to guess how many ounces. i bought little baggies of rice, flour, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, tomatoes, chicken, different chiles...after school we walked to the church with claudia and began cooking. her mom was there at the church so we had both of them showing us how to roast all the veggetables, make the rice, cook the chicken, and make both dishes. then the 4 of us all sat down to a nice dinner and shared a fanta. it was really enjoyable being able to learn from them and seeing them interact with each other. they both love to cook and were excited to be able to show us how to cook some of their food. we were thrilled that they wanted to show us. hopefully we´ll remember how they did everything. we took lots of step by step pictures and i´m going to get her to help me write down the recipes so we´ll have those to rely on as well.

wish i had time to write more. can´t believe we´ve been here nearly a month. we´re not ready to leave yet...but justin has started dreaming about barbecue. more soon...

¡feliz dia del cariño!

it´s been a good couple of days at school this week. justin has started a new level and has a new maestro who he really likes. one of my teachers has offered to teach us how to make pepian and jacon so we are going to have a cooking lesson friday after school. i think saturday we are going to climb the volcano pacaya. it´s pretty neat seeing volcanoes all the time. the one called fuego, or fire, lets off pretty big steam clouds every once in awhile. i´m hoping for good hiking weather and no spontaneous erruptions on saturday.

one thing that we are both enjoying is living with a guatemalan family. the families here are very close knit. at school the students talk about how many people live at their house. a mom, dad, 3 kids, a cousin, and an aunt or mom and dad, 2 kids, 4 students, and grandmother... we have a mom and dad, one 6 year old son, an aunt, and another american couple. grandpa and a niece live next door and the next house has an aunt, uncle and 2 cousins. it´s not uncommon to have a cousin or niece or grandpa walk in while we are all sitting around the table. and after meals, people tend to stay sitting around the table to visit. life is very family oriented here. we like this, which is a good thing, because when we go home, we´ll have a mom, dad, daughter, son-in-law, grandma, 2 dogs and a cat and a son and aunt nearby!

greetings from the funkey monkey internet cafe. it´s been a nice weekend down here in antigua. today was the first sunday we´ve been able to go to church since arriving. we enjoyed worshipping at the iglesia de cristo here. my teacher claudia invited us to her church, so after breakfast we walked to the service. turns out that it is a church supported by prestoncrest church of christ in dallas. claudia asked the name of my church and i said iglesia de cristo. she asked if it was like hers. i told here i wasn´t sure if it´s like hers. knowing i was from texas, she asked if i knew of prestoncrest. i said yes! she told me that they come down for their mission trips every year. we visited the church this morning and enjoyed singing many familiar songs, only they were in spanish. afterwards, we met the one other gringo there, an 85 year gentleman from abilene who comes with his wife for 3 months every year to help with the church. pretty amazing. he was very nice and i hope we get to see him again.

after church we walked around antigua and decided to tour capuchinas, a convent that was built in the 1700s. like many of the buildings here, it has been damaged by earthquakes. it is an impressive maze of a building with great arched walkways, a circular room with 20 small rooms around the sides where nuns lived, and a beautiful garden and fountain area. i really enjoyed walking around it. the only things i didn´t like were the scary nun maniquins that they put in the little room displays to show what they would have looked like back in the day.

i´m bummed about missing the olympics. hopefully we´ll get to catch a little bit. enjoy them for me. i love the olympics. back to school tomorrow. happy monday!

we went to cerro de la cruz yesterday with some students and teachers from our school. this is a hill that overlooks antigua and has a large cross on it. you can go up and look down on the city and take pictures. it´s a really nice view. it´s not safe for tourists to go alone so we had tourist police excorts. we all had to sign a book before we left so they knew how many people were going. our teachers said it was to identify the bodies. they were kidding-- we were fine and there was more policia up at the top.

we did it! we made it to tikal! was it as good as i had hoped? yes, definitely. logistically, everything went smoothly. we made it to the right tikal, thanks ryan, and enjoyed our trip. we flew from guat. city into flores and had about an hour drive to the park. the park was quite large and we had several hours to explore it. it´s a good 20 minute walk betwen each area of ruins. it´s prety amazing to be standing on a temple and look out at the treetops in the jungle. tikal was built nearly 2700 years ago and has some of the largest mayan temples . we were able to climb temples 4 and 2 by going up wooden ladder-stairs. you used to be able to go up on the actual steps but they are prety steep and narrow and there have been some bad accidents. i was looking forward to running up the steps but climbing the ladder was fine--i just had to get up there! we went up once during the tour and then again later on our own, when all the other tourists were gone-- we wanted to be up to see the sunset. when we went back in the evening, there were only about5 people in the gran plaza and it was very peaceful. we took lots of pictures of the ruins and the birds we saw. we also saw a lot of spider monkeys and howler monkeys. the howlers were in the trees right outside of our room and woke us up early sunday morning. they sound a lot fiercer than they look. overall, it was a great trip and i´m so glad that we were able to go. the ruins and the women of san antonio trip are two of our highlights so far.

other news from antigua...there was a small earthquake the other day. i thought the shaking divider wall was just from my foot tapping it, but justin and his teacher felt it and said it was an earthquake. my first earthquake and i didn´t know it. . we saw some roasted iguana at he market. we probably wouldn´t have recognized it if it hadn´t been for the 4 feet sticking up in the air and the really long tail. maybe we´ll farkle to see who gets to try it before we go...or not. . we got to learn how to make green salsa the other day from our house mom. we took pictures of each step and will try to make it when we get home. h0pefully we´ll find the right kind of chiles and tomatoes. if not, we´ll just boil and blend whatever we find and say it´s what we made down here. i´m working on getting the recipe to the pepian dish i mentioned before. it´s one of the typical dishes here served with meat and rice. the women said it takes severl hours, 3 or 4, to prepare. i jokingly told justin that there was probably a secret mix that the women use but they say that they have to work all day preparing it. and what do you you think we found at the supermercado a couple of days later? yep, pepian mix! we´ll be bringing a lot of that back with us. along with lots of the pouches of black beans. i promise we are actually learning how to speak spanish and not just how to eat guatemalan food. (and we have broken down and had burger king twice.)

so things continue to be going well. we still feel fried after a day of classes but are getting used to the schedule. sorry to hear about the seahawks. anyone a personal friend of max lucado or rick warren? max lucado is one of my teacher´s favorite authors, and she´s currently reading a purpose driven life. wish i knew them to get them to sign a book for her...okay, have to go. time goes fast when you are paying for the computer per minute. blessings.

happy friday! we finished up our week of school and are getting ready for our trip to tikal tomorrow. we get picked up at 4am and will drive to guatemala city for a flight to flores. then we´ll check into our hotel, have a guided tour around the ruins and have the afternoon to explore. we´ll come back on sunday afternoon. unfortunately we had little control with our flight time and we will be in transit during the superbowl. go seahawks! maybe we can catch the end of the game when we get back to antigua around 8. i was looking forward to going to the monoloco and having the nachos that i´ve heard so much about.

we spend a lot of time walking around antigua everyday after school and on the weekends. justin is really interested in all the tool stores and wood stores. we´ve found a couple galleries with very impressive furniture made from wood and a little shop where two guys carve little frames, crosses, wall hangings...it´s fun walking around and stumbling across interesting places and everyone is very friendly. justin also wanted a t-shirt from a tool store in antigua for a souvenier. we haven´t found a store that has shirts but we were given a keychain with the store name, which was very nice of them!

okay my time is up. more when we get back!

hola! today was field trip day. we signed up for a trip to san antonio. actually the complete name is san antonio agua calientes (hot water but there are no hot springs). about 15 students and teachers piled aboard the ¨chicken bus¨ and went about 30 minutes away to a smaller town where we learned how the women weave the material for their clothes, their traditions, how to make tortillas...

here are a couple highlights: since justin and i were the only married people in the group, we were given the oppotunity to role play a traditional wedding ceremony. we were dressed in the typical clothes (i´ll have pictures later), were blessed in the indiginous language, and had a dance. they said typically the blessing part by family and friends can last 2-3 hours and the dance can last 6 or more. then we all were able to make tortillas and eat them with pepian, one of the traditional foods of guatemala. it´s muy rico! it´s made with tomatoes and 3 types of chiles and you serve it with up to 3 kinds of meat and rice (we had chicken). i´m hoping to learn how to make it before we leave.

on the way to the town, we saw coffee farms. forget starbucks-- here you get it directly from the tree! we were able to grind the beans and then have some coffee. i lived in seattle for over two years and managed to get away without drinking any, but you do not say no to the women of san antonio. i had mine with asucar.

school is going well and when it´s over we go on long walks exploring the town. i made a friend at the market the other day, a woman named nelly. she said i could come practice my spanish with her whenever i wanted. i am pretty excited about that because my teachers tell me i need mucha practica!

this weekend we are going to tikal, some of the largest mayan ruins in guatemala. i don´t know why i´m so interested in the mayans because they were pretty violent people. i think they played basketball with heads? well, hopefully there will be no role playing of that. i´ll tell all about that trip later!