Merry Christmas! (again!)

Christmas was great here in San Pedro. It was a two day extravaganza involving big meals, relaxing, laughing, fireworks by the water and in the streets, and a cup that runneth over...

Andrea, Chris and I did stockings. If you look under Andrea's Christmas tree, you can see our three stockings on the right. In my stocking I got a package of gum, a mandarine orange, cough drops, used lipbalm, some ¨rubbish¨, a few starbursts, and a key chain. Not bad, huh?

I gave candybars, worrydolls, antibacterial wipes, little drink mixes, a few Sudoku puzzles, and I think that's it.

The three of us had a mimosa brunch at Alegre Pub with about 15 other people...many who we had already met. It was a great time, the food was good, the company was good.

After brunch I went for a siesta, and then Christmas dinner started back at Alegre at about 6:00. It was an enormous plate of food which I could hardly put a dent in, but the wine went down easy.

After dinner, we shot off fireworks. There was probably a crowd of 10 or 15. We went down by the lake and took turns shooting off little ones and ¨big¨ones. It was a good time.

Most of us headed back to Alegre for a couple more, and I ended up calling it an early night.

Today has been very, VERY, lazy...but it is the day after Christmas after all!

Merry Christmas!

I'm in San Pedro La Laguna again at Lake Atitlan and will be here for Christmas. The shuttle I was in was nearly hit by a chicken bus yesterday, so that was a little exciting and mostly scary!

I've made a few traveler-friends while I've been in Guatemala. Most of us have been traveling in and around Guatemala for the past few weeks, and it looks like we are all going to meet in San Pedro for Christmas...a place that everyone, including me, really seems to enjoy. Nick-the-Brit will be here and Andrea from Golden, Chris-the-Australian.

Anyway, I finally made it to Monterrico which was my original planned destination. I spent about a week there with an Australian travler, and we met up with two American guys in there mid-20s traveling that we shared a bungalow with on the beach.

There was a little living area and kitchenette and a fridge that we mostly used for coconuts and beer. And we had a little pool right outside the bungalow. There was a nice bar beachside that served food, and from there you could watch beach soccer (yep, in the sand!) and volleyball. I even saw a couple of whales way out in the ocean blow up water and flip their tales!

We got to know a couple of "amigas" who were ten and twelve - Erica and Selena. They were best friends and basically knew each other since birth. Their families owned restaurants, and they were always trying to usher us in to their restaurant. We ate at their restaurant several times, and my Spanish is at a level where I could chit-chat with them a little bit.

They were fascinated by Chris the Australian, who is blonde haired and blue eyed and who also has quite a bit of blonde forearm hair. Several times the girls sneaked a quick tug at his arm hair or neck hair and shyed away and laughed. They told me secrets "that were just for women." It was pretty amusing.

We set off fireworks with them one night as well. It attracted a crowd of kids, and we all had a great time. At Christmastime apparently, everyone here sets off fireworks...including us!

After the American guys moved on, we moved over to another hotel with an awesome pool, and I basically spent 4 or 5 days just relaxing by the pool, drinking beers, having a dip in the pool, another beer... There was also a tree pruned like a chicken. How bout that?!

There were some nice people staying there and one not so nice German lady that we liked to call Inga-bitch. Her name was Ingaborg. She was probably in her late 50s, early 60s and had definitely spent too much time in the sun. She seemed to hate us everyone and everything- music, conversation, smiling, laughing. What the hell is she doing on vacation?!

There was also Jon, a Brit, who was something like 6'4" and had a nice round hairy belly that he seemed quite comfortable with. He was always in his bright yellow swim shorts with this colorful cotton scarf around his neck, that served as his towel. He was a riot and loved to talk shit under his breath about people under the assumption that they couldn't understand English well or at all or at least not his heavily British-accented English.

Jon introduced us to a group of Canadians who had driven a caravan all the way down from Canada with a stop at Burning Man. They were probabaly in their early 50s. They were a lot of fun.

A group of about 10 of us went to the local cirus, which was fairly bizarre, but entertaining. 2 scrawny little monkeys had been chained up outside of the circus tent for a couple of days as advertisement for the circus. They were cute, but of course I felt sorry for them.

Anyway, I think we all checked out the circus for lack of any thing else to do. There were a couple of contortionists, a few skits with a lot of sexual undertones, a couple of dancers dressed in bikinis with beads draped around their waists, and there was an acrobat bar and rope that was never used, and the monkeys sat on the bleachers at watched the whole performance. Well, what do you expect for $3?

There are tons of guns in Guatemala and lots of problems with alcoholism. Everyday in Monterrico, you could spot several men carrying a guns in holsters on their hips and it was never uncommon to see a man passed out along the sidewalk with his buddies just sitting around him.

At one bar we liked to frequent, one night the bartender/owner's nephew was walking around with a laptop back slung across his chest all night. He was mixing drinks and serving beers and changing the music on his laptop which was blaring full blast. Finally, I asked him what was with the bag. He keeps his gun in there. Interesting. He hadn't carried a gun around the last few times we were in there. He explained that he didn't have any staff there that night, that he was alone, and that it was just a safety precaution...as if it were perfectly normal.

--The gun-wielding bartender.

I really had a great time in Monterrico...got eaten alive by mosquitoes, but I managed to decrease my whiteness a bit so I'm not quite so blinding.

I'm looking forward to relaxing in San Pedro for several days with my friends and then I will be heading to Tikal.

I'll try to send more pictures soon.

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving!

I don't know where the time goes. I thought I would have tons of time on my hands once I FINALLY left on my trip, that it would no longer be go-go-go for Mo, that I would be tanning (or burning) on a beach somewhere... but I guess I'm a person that goes-goes-goes and somehow I struggle to find time for Spanish homework, emailing, posting to my blog, etc. Maybe on this trip, I can learn to slow down, to do less and relax more. Hard to say. Too early to tell.

Today I'm feeling a little lonely, I'll be honest.

Several people I've met while I've been here and around Guatemala have asked me what it's like to travel alone, if I'm ever afraid, if I get lonely, etc.

What I usually say is that I haven't really been afraid and sometimes I get lonely, but not very often and sometimes it's okay to feel lonely anyway, but that usually I'm good at meeting people so it's not so, so often that I find myself alone.

On this trip when I'm feeling lonely or depressed, I really try to nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand. I think, "Why I am feeling like this? What can I do to change how I'm feeling?" or "It's okay that I'm feeling like this, and it'll pass." Sometimes writing in my journal helps. Sometimes calling home to friends or family helps, but sometimes I can't because I don't feel like talking about how I'm feeling. And sometimes an extra dose of fish oil is all I need!

Today I took the fish oil, called my Grandma, and now this post is kind of like writing in my journal, but I'll spare you the real journal entry for today! What I thought I'd do is respond to some questions about my Thanksgiving and share with you an excerpt from my journal on Thanksgiving. (I'm feeling better already.)

Thanksgiving day, I had my usual Spanish lesson in the morning. Oliver and Becky stopped by in the early afternoon to retrieve some stuff they had left with me. We lounged around my room for a while chit-chatting, which I really enjoyed. Doug popped by quickly. Nancy popped in and out a few times. It was lazy and casual and felt like Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving dinner may have been the least traditional one I've ever had. I ate in a little Guatemalan restaurant in the back of a "tienda" (a little convenience store, but not like 7-11. Think way smaller, dingy-ier, no slurpees, etc.). I dragged Oli and Becky (who were recovering from food poisioning, bad water, who knows?) along with me to meet Nancy (my Canadian "mom") at the tienda restaurant with no sign or any indication of a restaurant. Nancy was there with an 80 year old gentlemen named David.

David has been living in Guatemala for the past 19 years or so working with the indiginous poor here in a village somewhere outside of Antigua. He was fascinating, hard of hearing, and thoroughly enjoyed his boxed red wine. I think he's married, but he's wife doesn't want to live in Guatemala with him.

There was no menu at this place, so when I was tried in my best Spanish to politely order something that didn't contain meat (or chicken for that matter!), David suggested I order the "caldron" or something like that. It was basically a vegetable soup - made with a chicken broth, I'm sure - but I ate all the rice, potatoes, and other vegetables out of it and pretended that one bite I had with something weird and rubbery in it wasn't a little piece of chicken, and I left most of the broth in the bowl for fear my stomach may not receive it lovingly.

It was a mellow Thanksgiving. Turns out David didn't know it was Thanksgiving until this week. Nancy is Canadian, so her Thanksgiving was in October. Oliver is German, so no Thanksgiving and recovering. And Becky, who is American, was recovering as well. So those two weren't all that jovial, and even so, Oli was kind enough to go back to the hostel twice to retrieve the boxed wine I had left. First to look for it outside of their room door where I told him I left it, and a second time to get it from the kitchen where I actually left it, which I remembered once he returned the first time and told me it wasn't there.

So although the evening and the food weren't exactly exciting, the company was great and in any case, I was thankful. From my journal:

"...in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I think I need to list and explain some things and people for which/whom I am thankful..it's really more people than things.

1. Doug - my first friend in Antigua who is sort of like my Simmel of Antigua.
2. Nancy - my "mother" who feeds me regularly, checks in with me daily...and likes to talk about men, Guatemala, yoga and the magic of Antigua, etc.
3. Victor - my Spanish teacher who is fascinating, knowlegeable on a very wide variety of subjects, and most importantly a firm believer in God and the miracles he has experienced. I could write a whole book on Victor's experiences with miracles.
4. Becky & Oliver - who have really been my best friends here. I care for them greatly and they for me. They have been a constant source of companionship & entertainment, and I will really miss then when we finally have to part ways. They have become like family to me.
5. I'm thankful for Nick-the-Brit and Nick-the-American who both individually and separately gave me insight on life and love and travel and relationships, from two very different perspectives...and very different than my own.
6. I'm thankful for my nice room (with the occasional big spider or cockroach) and the hot shower, which could never compare to the U.S., but I'm thankful nonetheless.
7. I'm thankful for the safe & uneventful travel I've experienced.
8. And last, but not at all least, I am thankful for my family and my friends who support what I'm doing, for those who check on me regularly as well as those who think of me often.

I am so very, very blessed."

So, although my shirt was on backwards most of the day today, at least I don't have my undies on inside out! I succeeded at feeling better and am looking forward to meeting up with Andrea from Golden, CO in a couple of hours!

As always, thank you so much for your emails and comments!