A little lesson in hedonism

They say that some people work to live, while others live to work. In Guatemala I would say the majority live to work. Many work two jobs just to support their family, put food on the table and maintain a household. I’ve seen Mayans put one bare foot in front of the other, through muddy paths with loads of wood on their backs to bring supplies miles into the forest to build a school in their community. Here you learn the lessons of hard work, perseverance and strength (both physical and mental).
And if you learn to work in Guatemala, you learn to play in Brazil. Everyday is spent in the sun, enjoying the pleasures of life. It’s a lesson in hedonism, at least in my experience. Beautiful people, breathtaking scenery and exotic food, what more could you ask for- besides all types of music, dance, literature, culture, lifestyles and interpersonal relationships- all, also found here, in the extremes.

This is the vacation home just outside of Uberlandia that I was staying at. They call it Chakra. My days here were very tough; there was a pool, a river, a basketball court, picnic tables by a small waterfall and my own private room. I spent at least an hour a day doing laps in the pool, then I´d retire to some sunbathing while reading and journaling. I made some Portugues flashcards and played basketball and rode bikes at sunset. Life here was good.

In Uberlandia, Paulo lives with his mother in a very nice apartment over looking Uberlandia. His family was awfully nice- treated me to sushi, an all you can eat buffet- where the waiters pull out the chair for you, pour your wine and come by with large chunks of meat on a stick and politely cut you off a small piece- and a lunch at their house of a typical brazilian salad, rice and beans, two meat dishes and some delicious white fish in a tomato sauce. That was my first meal in Brazil, and after two months in Guatemala, it was a gift, to say the least.

We left Uberlandia on Monday (after we missed our flight on Sunday) and spent three nights in Rio de Janeiro. It was an incredable city- my new favorite city, I even prefer it to Barcelona, which I thought was pretty perfect, as far as cities go. I even felt inspired and bought a book called Rio Under Fire. I read it in under 12 hours, I just couldn´t put it down. I been having fantasies of coming back and living here... we´ll just have to wait and see what the future brings.

Now I´m in the Brazilian state of Bahia in a place called Itacare. It´s a quite surfing town with unreal beaches and a rasta way of life. Muite tranquilo. The pictures will probably express this better than words.

I’m still alive, unlike the two dogs…

So the conclusion to four weeks of traveling through Guatemala and Honduras is a vacation home paradise right outside of Uberlandia, Brazil. For the last month, I have been jumping from one place to the next, staying no longer than two nights in a single town. I wish that I had been keeping up with this blog sight a little better, because now the task of recapping the whole thing and displaying it all properly with the images seems a bit daunting. But here we go, from the beginning.


I left Quetzaltenango and first spent two days in Antigua. A nice town, usually one of a tourists´ favorite, with it’s classical churches, colorful houses and nice central park. Although, like I said, a tourist’s favorite, therefore you find what you’d expect from a tourism town- cheap thrills, hotel staff who don’t speak Spanish and a bombardment of over priced souvenirs. As soon as we got off the chicken bus, we were practically attacked by a man, wearing no badge or nametag, or company identification of any sort, who insisted that he knew of all the best tours in the town. Said that he was a volunteer working for the city, then proceeded to take us to his friend’s Tour Company. The tour company was located in the corner of the bus station in a red 1990 model Honda civic. The driver, or tour guide, was asleep in the front seat, and the ´city volunteer´ knocked twice on the window to wake him up. An overweight Guatemalan gets out of the car, slicks back his hair while tucking his short in over his belly and starts to explain his tours. It wasn’t long before Scott just walked off. I was a bit more polite, but, needless to say, the guy didn’t sell us the tour.

The following day we took a trip to Pacaya. This is the most active volcano in Guatemala, there’s actually real lava flowing down the sides. We had a prepubescent guide who stopped to explain every variety of plant along the trail. Another tour group passed us, their guide not so interested in the nature. He was older and had a two-foot long gun in his hand. Near the summit, you can climb on the lava rock and get right up next to flowing lava. It’s not quite flowing like you’d expect from the movies. It’s more like there’s hot, glowing lava rock under a layer of cooler black lava rock and the movement of the semi-liquid stone pushes the top level of lava rock forward slowly. As you would expect it’s really hot next to the lava, the soles of the tennis shoes melt and we were able to roast marshmallows. True, we roasted marshmallows over lava, and then proceeded to eat them. It wasn’t until someone mentioned that the gases are toxic and we probably shouldn’t be eating those marshmallows that I thought, hmm, wonder if this information is included in the guidebook or is this common knowledge. I don’t travel with a guidebook, and usually don’t read about a place until after I’ve visited it. So later when I was reading the guidebook I found out that the path is awfully dangerous, there’s been a lot of robbing in the past and fairly recently, hence the two foot gun. The guidebook also said, ´because of this, it’s important to go with a guide, even though usually you wonder how this 13-year-old Guatemalan farmer is going to protect you. ´ It didn’t mention anything about toxic marshmallows, although it did say that a flashlight is necessary. Which it was, and I didn’t bring. After reaching the summit, we stayed until after the sun went down. At this point the entire sky turned pink from the reflection of the lava. Then we had to walk down this mountain in complete darkness. It was fine without a flashlight since I was completely ignorant of the potential danger. I was just trying not to sprang an ankle.


Our next stop was Copan; a little town bordering Honduras and Guatemala known for the nearby Mayan ruins. The ruins are famous for the writings, which since Scott insisted on not paying for a tour, remain a mystery to me. If you ever get the opportunity to see the Copan ruinas, skip the museum and pay for a guide. The hieroglyphs tell the history and the stories of the people. I wish I could tell you more.


Next I stayed a week in Utila in Honduras learning how to scuba dive (so, okay, I lied, I did stay in one place longer than two days). Scuba diving was incredible, an experience unlike anything I’ve felt or even expected. It’s truly meditative being under the water like that; you are weightless, floating sideways, upside down, maneuvering along huge cliffs of underwater rock and through small crevices trying to avoid touching the sea fans or tubular coral while only hearing the sssssssss of the inhale and the blub blub blub blub from the bubbles of the exhale. I swam with a sea turtle, saw three-foot long barracuda (and their teeth), and was able to take a digital camera under water to capture the images. I did five dives and am certified to go to a distance of 60 feet underwater. My next goal is to convince my dad that we should go scuba diving together in the Mediterranean or something. (I really think that this is your thing dad… what do you think, vacation?)

From Honduras I traveled to Rio Dulce, Las Conchas, Flores and Tikal, Coban and Semuc Champey, Huehuetenango, back to Xela and then to Champerico. Rio Dulce is a little town built on a river. We stayed at a yacht club hotel that a girl on the bus had recommended to us. It was a bit pricier than what we’d been staying in, but for $12 a night, the extra cost was worth being treated like royalty. It was the first time since I’ve been out of the US that I was able to control the temperature of the shower. There was both a hot water faucet and a cold-water faucet, which made up for the cockroaches in my bed. There were also free kayaks that we took advantage of.


Las Conchas is a small community in the middle of nowhere. We had to take a micro-van on a dirt road for 1 hour to reach the turn off for the hotel we were staying at. (A microvan that had the capacity to fit 14, but on this trip had managed to carry 24 people, I think that the Guatemalan style of transportation may have something to do with their small size and evolution). It’s difficult to describe this place that we stayed. It’s not in the guidebooks yet, just known through word of mouth. The guy who owns it is an American guy, who after graduating from CU Boulder rode his bike through central and South America, found this place, bought some farmland, and now runs a semi-organized hotel operation. And is complete nut, not dangerous just a little out there. The lobby area of his place is a huge open-air structure with ten hammocks strung to wooden posts and a palm tree leaf roof. We took an 8-hour hike through the montaña, which despite the ankle deep mud, was quite awesome. We trekked through tiny Mayan communities, where the people would go into their houses when they saw us and the kids would stare and laugh at us from the doorways- probably one of their first encounters with white people. We were in the forest, stopped and swam in 100% clear water holes, refilled our water bottles from water in a cave and ended up falling asleep in the hammocks at seven o’clock that night, after a fire cooked dinner of vegetable and beans from the nearby farms.

Tikal was breath taking. You can climb up to the top of these Mayan temples and see over the forest all the way to the horizon in every direction. These temples are in the depths of the forest, so there’s monkeys above you in the trees, mosquitoes and large spiders looming all around you and huge tree trunks and roots surrounded by every tint of green. The tops of the temples are taller than the tallest tree, so at the top you really feel like you’re at the top of the world. Gives you an idea of how the Mayan kings must have felt.


Semuc Champey is a paradise, the kind of place that’d be perfect to close your eyes and transcend to during a time of high stress. There’s a forest covering the mountains, a clear water river flowing through the valley creating swimming holes and waterfalls, and a mirador and the top of the mountain (quite a rewarding view after an hour walk straight uphill in the 90 degree heat). On our trip from here to Huehuetanango we hit and killed two dogs, without even a flinch from the passengers and only an odd enjoyment from the driver, judging from his smile and furrowed brow.

I went back to Xela and then took a trip to the Pacific coast with the students and teachers from my Spanish school. It was a great way to finish the trip. The beach was great; we had a huge house with bunk beds, hammocks, a huge fire grill and a swimming pool. We ghetto rigged a volleyball court with a single string and sticks and played volleyball in the sand. From here I caught a bus to Guatemala City and took off the next morning for Brazil.

And now, I’m really in paradise. I’ll explain my situation here in the next blog, hopefully it comes soon. As always, please don’t hesitate to email me. I love hearing from you and am always curious to know how life at home is. Also, I´ll try to upload more images, but i don´t understand Portugues and am unable to work the photo program on this computer.

Turning Latina

Everyday I become more and more Latina, es verdad. I dance salsa, I put ketchup on everything, including spaghetti, I have broken the habit of throwing toilet paper in the toilet, I journal in Spanish and dream with meringue music in the background, I crave frijoles, tortillas and platanos con crema, I drink dehydrated coffee sin leche, I carry a typical Mayan embroidered bag and I travel by chicken bus and in the back of pickup trucks.


Last weekend we took a trip to Lago Atitlan- muy precioso. This is a huge lake surrounded by volcanoes and mountains. There’s a bunch of tiny pueblos (towns) accessible only by boat. We stayed in a town called Santa Cruz in a hotel without any electricity. It was so nice just to relax under a blooming flower tree in a hammock, just listening to the waves roll in over the rocks on the bank.

I’ve also had the opportunity to watch two surgeries at a private clinic. I scrubbed in, put on the proper scrubs and was right there peering over the surgeon as he worked his magic. The first patient was a six year old girl with a hernia near her groin. The surgeon speaks Spanish very monotonically and quickly making it practically impossible for me to understand, but the anesthesiologist speaks English very well and explains each step to me. The first surgery was great, I left with a smile on my face and couldn’t wait to call my parents and tell about my afternoon.
The second surgery was not quite as glamorous. It was a four hour long surgery on varicose veins in an old woman’s calf. The first part was done lapriscopically which was a great experience. I got to see the inside of a leg on a television screen and at the same time watch the doctor perform this amazing technique right in front of me. I’m going to spare you all the details of the surgery, because it is not a pleasant portrayal of our physical existence. I can’t lie, I lost some sleep yesterday because I can’t get some of these images or sounds out of my head, and my calf hurts from thinking about this. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a noise? If the patient can’t feel the pain, does it hurt? It hurts me, watching it.
This is my last week of Spanish classes, and I am impressed with my level of Spanish. Yesterday, for our schools activity, we took a tour of the city. The tour guide and teacher organizing the trip only spoke Spanish, so I was nominated to be the official translator. That was a pretty nice feeling. I’ve also started dreaming in Spanish, journaling in Spanish and reading my daily horoscope in Spanish.
So I’m leaving Xela next Monday and traveling to the Bay Islands in Honduras to get certified in scuba diving. On the way there I’ll be making short stops in Antigua and the ruins in Copan. I’m traveling with Scott and Paul, friends from New Zealand and London. It’ll be sad to leave, I have a room I call home, a teacher who I’ve become quite close with, and a routine here, but the traveler inside calls, and onward I go.

La cima de centroamerica


Two weekends ago, we packed up our huge backpacks and took a trip to the top of Central America. Volcano Tajumulco, 4,200 meters high. We went with a guide company who lent us tents, sleeping bags and took care of the transportation and food for the trip. It was a two day ordeal climaxing with a hike to the top of this part of the world under the full moon just in time to see the sun rise above the clouds at the top. Increable.



The trip started with packing the bags. I was carrying tent poles, spaghetti sauce, a sleeping mat, sleeping bag, four and a half liters of water, warm clothes and my Spanish flashcards, which came to a total of about thirty pounds, not so much fun when walking straight up the side of a mountain. The next part consisted of chicken bus rides to the base of the volcano. There were twenty people on the tour with us, so needless to say the bus got pretty full. At one point the driver even turned people away (which is rare) stating as he sped through the bus stop ‘lo siento, tengo veinte gringos’.
These buses are exactly what the name implies- stuffed full of people like chickens. No, there aren’t any chickens on the bus though. These are the yellow school buses that we all rode when we were in elementary school. Only in these buses it’s not uncommon to have seven people in a row, eight if there’s a kid involved. And then the drivers speed up the mountains, passing long trucks around blind corners like maniacs. But maybe I should wait until I return home to fill you in on the extremes of the situation. Don’t worry mom, they’re properly trained drivers, I’m sure.



Just after breakfast one of our friends was really ill and decided not to go on the trip with us. Later he had to go to the hospital because he was convulsing in pain and vomiting blood and bile. Turns out he had a case of salmonella poisoning and had to remain in this hospital for four nights. One of the guides stayed down, so we proceeded to the volcano with two guias, rather than three.


The hike was one of the most physically demanding things that I’ve ever done, but I suppose the views made it worth it. There were points in which I could only take two or three steps before having to stop and catch my breath. The Mayans however who work on this mountain just put us all to shame though. Here we are struggling, sweating, striped down to only one layer of clothes, moving at the rate of a crippled old man, and then a five year old boy will pass us carrying a huge bundle of wood with his head while leading two horses packed full with wood. If you’ve ever seen the movie Motorcycle Diaries, it’s like the scene where they are walking up the road with a couple bags on their backs, and the fat guys falls over on the side of the road and screams out, ‘this is not humanly possible’,then a Mayan guy carrying a huge sack of something just walks into the scene and strolls right up the mountain, no problem.


My friend Paul, a finance lawyer from London, who quit his career to travel for a year, struggled a bit. At one point he said to us, ‘I’d do anything to switch positions with Scott right now’. (Scott’s the friend in the hospital back in San Marcos.) He also said, ‘There is absolutely nothing that would make this trip worth it. I’m using this to check off all the hikes I’d ever do. This counts for Manchu Picchu.’


He was at the end of the line of hikers the whole trip, in the back with the crazy guide from Belgium. “There’s nothing but Belgium vomit coming out of this guys mouth. He just never stops talking.” This guide spoke chopped up English and continually used phrases incorrectly, for example as one point he said to Paul, ‘sorry if I’m being a, what you call it, wise nose.” He had shaggy red hair, which he admitted hadn’t been washed in two months, he wore shorts, yellow socks, and a green hat, and on the way down would wait for the group to get ahead a bit and then proceed to sprint down the mountain with his huge bag bouncing around behind him.

The first day we hiked straight up for five hours. At first it was hot and sunny, and then as we ascended higher it became cold and a little windy. We stopped for lunch, and ate in the clouds. After that, the hike to base camp took place in a foggy mist. We had set up our tents just before it started to rain, which it did all night. We had a small river flowing through our tent, and of course, it happened to be right where Paul had put down his sleeping bag. We woke up the next morning and Paul wasn’t in the tent, but his sleeping bag was. The thought that maybe he had killed himself actually crossed my mind.
We woke up at four the following morning and hiked about an hour straight up boulders and sand to the summit. It was great, we hiked under the light of a full moon and at the top we could see all the surrounding towns below start to light up. From the top we could see the Pacific Ocean, Mexico and into Nicaragua. We watched the sun rise and then watched the shadow from the volcano slowly fade down into the earth. Buenisimo.

viaje siempre

and the trip continues with more futbol games, daily adventures and mas amigos. I went to another futbol game, here is a picture of all of us in a restaurant before the game. I bought a shirt, and even hagled the price a bit, if you can believe that.







We also went to a ceramics factory, in which I got the chance to reconnect with my highschool skill of throwing pots. It's a great activity, getting your hands a little slimy and trying to balance a peice of clay in the center before shaping into what your mind is imaginingg. a little metaphor of life, i suppose.

Every Friday the school has a fiesta for all the students who are graduating. the group picture is of the party, and these are a few of the people that i've been spending my time with. Locos, pero muy divertidos. Mucha gente ineresante aqui.

For some minor updates, the dogs continue to bark, and the tapones de los oidos don't block out this noise. I'm hesistant to push the earplugs too far into my ears, unlike my mom who has to pull them out with tweezers after sean and I spend the night at her house. And now i have two other students living in the house with me: one from oregon and the other from Canada. nice people, although i think i mentioned the paper thin walls before. well Chiperion, the guy on the other side of the room, has started conversing with me through the wall. Now where do i go to find some private time? I can hear everything he does in that room, everything. he's a nice guy, one who talks in hyperboles and laughs aloud when he does his homework. the other night, he says 'oh wow', then says 'hey amy, so you know the word for fox.' i reply with a monotone, 'no'. 'it's zorro, that's probably where they got the name of that movie. wow, i'm never going to forget that!'

I climbed up a mountain to see an active volcano. that was pretty neat. the volcano erupts every thirty minutes, mas o menos, and huge plumes of smoke rise from the top. As the smoke rises, you can hear the earth trembling. quite an experience. Here are a couple of pictures.





This last weekend I climbed to the highest point in Central America, el cima de volcan tajumulco. i'm currently in the process of writing a blog in espanol explaining the trip. i have some incredable pictures as well, so i'll include them. Don't be decieved though, these pictures are from the other, active volcano.

Well everything here is good, and i miss you all. always looking forward to getting emails from you all, so if you get some extra time write me and let me know how life back at home is. amy.cacace@gmail.com.

For now I must be off, i have two hours of salsa dancing classes ahead of me. i signed up for five private lessons this week.

A home away from home.
I tried to write the title in Spanish, but not quite there yet.


Here is that mirror I was talking about. Que bonita, si?


So I put pictures all around the white paper-thin cement walls and am quite amazed by how this semi-smelly, chilly bland room became my sanctuary. I bought a soft pillow and figured out that a hard bed is a perfect place to do yoga on. So much for trying to find a yoga mat. Now if only I could find some tapones para los oidos (ear plugs) my room here would be complete. All night I hear dogs barking and whining right on the other side of the wall behind my bed. I now understand how it's possible to shoot a dog with a shotgun. I can't lie. I have to wear an eyemask becaue although the window behind my bed is made of some strange glass that inhibits people from seeing through it, it doesn't block out the light. And the hat is the best attempt to block out the dogs. los perros de infierno. The other night I was dreaming that I was trapped in a basement and there were german sheperds gaurding the exits. I contribute this to the incessant barking. Not only do they keep me from falling asleep, they have made their way into my dreams. Que malo.




Spanish is a very neat language and my classes are pretty rigorous. I wake up at 6:30, actually more like 7:10 do to the uncontrollable urge to snooze my way to breakfast. Breakfast is at 7:15, and I lucked out because my homestay woman is a great cook, apparently one of the best. Yesterday for breakfast I had blueberry pancakes with a chocolate chip smiley faces on top, real maple syrup and a banana on the side. que rico. today for lunch i had fried califlower, and for fried califlower, it was prepared quite nicely. I claimed to be a vegetarian, I remember the unidentifiable meat they served me in Costa Rica and wasn't really willing to take that chance again. Apparently being vegetarian is an odd concept here, muy extrano, I was told. Oh well, i swear they were eating the meat from pigs feet yesterday. I'm probably wrong, though.

Kind of got on a tangent there, back to my classes. I also lucked out on the teacher, I have the best one, i've been told. Her name is Lucky,(ironic?). I've already made about 100 flash cards of irregular verbs. I think my mission of learning Spanish here may be successful, unlike that in Salamanca. Un poco mas fiestas en Espana. Also, the school has daily activities. On monday I learned about Mayan philosophy (in spanish), and yesterday we had salsa dancing lessons. I'm planning on becoming quite a stud on the dance floor. they offer group lessons everyday and I can buy a pack of 5 private lessons to Q260, which is less than $35. Tomorrow we're visiting a ceramics factory and get to try to throw pots. Throwing pots (on the wheel, not against the wall) is a specialty of mine from highschool, so I can't wait. This weekend we're climbing to see an active volcano, one of the top 10 most dangerous in the world. Don't worry though, mom, we're not actually climbing the active volcano, we're climbing a less active one a couple kilometers away. Apparently there's a nice view point. They say don't bring any important documents, and bring your camera, even though it might get stolen. Very reassuring.

Well beside dreams of being trapped in basements with dogs surrounding me, I take trips back home everynight, so you're all still very close to me.

Introduction to Guatemala

You couldn´t imagine my relief to see Victor standing outside holding up the professional 'dos lunas' sign. I say professional because it was an actual print out on a nice white piece of plastic and a handle so he could hold it up above the crowd of taxi drivers and other hotel pickup services. I don't know why I was expecting him to be standing there wearing all black with a ripped out piece of notebook paper with '2 lunas' written on it with black marker. I approached him, weary to give him any information first, and he immediately said 'Amy(I can't find the question mark key), i am beector'. perfecto.

I was a little nervous on the plane, i can't lie. I decided that it'd be a good idea to reread the consular information about Guatemala that I found and printed from the government website a few weeks ago. I skimmed through it before, thinking 'oh, I'm sure this is all very rare, no problems'. Yet on the plane, at night, flying into Guatemala city and not completely trusting the pick·up service, I felt a little differently about the information. i was reading sentences like 'the number of violent crimes reported by foreigners has increased in recent years... incidents include, but are not limited to, assault, theft, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, rape and murder' Not limited to, what else is there? (shift and dash makes a question mark) I kept reading 'Criminals generally operate in groups of 4 or more and are considerably confrontational and violent. There are five to six murders a day in Guatemala city and surrounding areas' It was at this point where I really started to question what I had gotten myself into. And it goes on 'The police force is young, inexperienced, and under·funded, and the judicial system is weak, overcrowded and inefficient. Criminals, armed with an impressive array of weapons, know that there is little chance they will be caught and punished for their crimes.' I was a little scared, to say the least. Yet, I held back the tears saying to myself, 'Amy, you're going to be a doctor, you can't cry in public.'
So I went to the bathroom.

But all was well. Victor was there and the hotel had free deep rock water, high speed internet and hot showers. What more could you ask for? The following day I took a first class bus to Quetzaltenango. It's supposed to be a four hour ride, although with some minor traffic and construction projects, the trip took just over six hours. But the scenery was great and the road side culture was quite impressive.

A woman, from the school I'll be going to, picked me up from the bus station and drove me to my homestay, located just across the street from the school. I have my own room located outside of the actual house. It's big enough to do yoga in (as soon as I can find a yoga mat, for the carpet doesn't look like it's been vacuumed in quite some time). The bed is big, which I was really excited about until I knocked the wind out of myself when I laid down on it. It's hard as a rock, and the pillows are armchair cushions in pillow cases. But really I can't complain because the supermercado sells soft pillows for about two dollars. The room has two decorations: a poster of the rocky mountains (a little ironic) and a three paneled mirror. The mirror is actually quite humorous. The middle panel is the mirror and the side two panels are illustrations of young blond girls. The one on the left is wearing a straw hat and holding two baby pigs; one dressed in a picnic table pattern dress and the other wearing overalls and a cowboy hat. The other girl, in the right panel, is washing a cockerspaniel in an old fashioned bathtub. I would love to find one of these for my room at home.

My homestay mother has two children; a sixteen year old girl and a 28 year old boy (Gabriel). About half an hour after I arrived, in the midst of unpacking, Gabriel knocks on my door and asks if I want to go with him and some other students to the xela futbol game. I speak too soon and jump all over the opportunity. I've never seen a professional futbol game. So not only did I watch the game, I sat in the rain for three hours before the game started in order to 'get good seats'. I brought my snow coat, figuring that it was water proof. But quite to my surprise, no it's not. By the start of the game, water was coming through my hood and dripping (as in water droplets) down the side of my face. I had on these great new pants that I bought from REI, which apparently have great capillary action because not only was the rear of the pants wet, but the entire backside was drenched, from tailbone to ankles. How exhilaratinging. Speaking of exhilarating, the fans were quite a spectacle. There were about fifteen boys with large drums who played the entire game. Before the game there were people throwing around bags full of newspaper scraps which were thrown as confetti as the team came out onto the field. Imagine pieces wet newspaper stuck to umbrellas, coats and dark black, greasy hair. Everytime the team scored firecrackers were thrown onto the field from the stands. Oh and I almost forgot the cheer. The drummers would drum and the fans would sing. I asked Gabriel what they were saying and it was something along the lines of 'we didn't come to see the keeper, because he's not really a keeper he's a bitch from the whorehouse'. He follows with 'it's a rhyme'. Xela (quetzaltenango´s nickname) won, 2 to 0.

Well I'm off to buy that pillow and some scotch tape so I can tape some of my pictures from home to the walls. School starts tomorrow at 8.

Amy leaves for Guatemala in the morning. Last night Amy and I reviewed her itinerary for the next 6 months in Latin America (Guatemala - Brazil - Equator and Peru). She collated little notebooks of information (including numbered attachments) for Don and me - so we won't worry. I was impressed. She's spent a lot of time researching and planning this trip. Her medical records and several months of medicine will accompany her. Rclare, a good friend, says not to worry - it will be the "adventure of a lifetime" and she'll be fine - and I am excited for her too, but I'm a creative genius with an overactive imagination who has always been able to take the "art of worry" to the next level, like most mom's do. Amy's a realist. She expects to have some things stolen and get an occasional bout of diarrhea. I'm worried that someone will cut off her feet to get those new hiking boots - or strangle her and rip off her arms to get that new backpack - or worse - that those Ladd bands will act up when she's on a tiny canoe on a river in the Amazon Jungle among tapirs, toucans, wild cats, monkeys, capybaras and boa constrictors - in the middle of that 16th day of her 823 mile Gecko "grassroots adventure" from Quito, Equator to Lima, Peru - and the only "doctor" around is a local shaman who claims to traverse the axis mundi and uses the knowledge from the spirit world and magical forces to treat her. http://www.geckosadventures.com/latin_america/trip_notes.asp?trip=2216

But I suppose I should "just chill" - She's very smart and has worked through many of those scenarios - plus recently attended the Krav Maga Academy of Warrior Spirit - and studied instinctive face-to-face combat techniques taught by the warrior spirits. Her body is a weapon - and she's traveling with mace. I can only hope.

Never a dull hair day,
Amy's mom