el desastro
I LOST MY JACKET WITH THE RED DEVIL HORNS ON IT. i am not ashamed to say i nearly cried and felt really sad & sorry for myself for a whole day. That jacket was my ticket to success over here.. my conversation starter or perhaps the conversation starter for latino boys who i didn't really want to talk to which wasn't so cool but still, anyhow it was one of my favourite things and now it's gone forever :((((((( i left it somewhere in my mad sleep deprived dash yesterday around shops trying to sort out shit with STA Travel and change ticket dates (they have been fucking me around hardcore) and i reckon someone must have nicked it :( i bought a really cool camo jacket at the market and got a kickass discount but it's not the same. NOT THE SAME :(
Anyway, I've been in Antigua for a week now. It's really cute and all, cobbled streets, colonial buildings etc., and surrounded by four volcanoes, one of which is active. Amazing views, blah blah blah. For those of you who have been to Hoi An (namely Lucas) it's just like that only for some reason everyone drives. It's stupid coz you can get from one end of the town to the other in 30 mins tops but people insist on driving down the street to the market. It offends my environmentalist sensabilities :P
The first night here I was lonely and having a bit of a Mexico comedown but then I moved to this hostel called El Gato Negro and met these four girls from London who are some of the craziest partiers I have ever met, some of the coolest people I have ever met also, and so I was going out every night of the week with them or these other two guys from england or israelis or dutch and the guys who run the hostel. We became minor celebrities in town for our ridiculous staying power and now we are amigos with the owners of two bars, a restaurant, a Cuban drummer in a salsa band and numerous locals and Antipodeans who live here for some reason. Everything closes in Antigua at 1 am which is really annoying, there is an illegal after party on every night but its normally really shit, like in the back of someone's garden and half the time it gets closed down because of the police anyway, so we usually took the party back to our hostel which was bad for our relations with some of the hostel workers but coz we're girls we got away with it. The last two nights here were really random but some of the most fun I have had over here.. hanging out drinking delicious Chilean red wine in a closed restaurant listening to David Bowie and good ol' 70s rock and creating an Austin Powers montage with leftover food and talking with a Peruvian philosophy student, a restaurant owner from Denmark named Jasper, the cool as fuck Guatemalteco owner of a bar called La Sala and THE most inappropriate man I have ever met in my life. I couldn't have imagined anyone more exuberantly inappropriate and exhibitionist than Adrian but I think I have to hand over the title of Inapproprion to Mike (if that is within my rights to do so), a 60 year old Londoner who started stripping in the restaurant we were all hanging out in last night and gave me the opportunity of viewing the worst moon i have ever seen. Everything that came out of his mouth involved talking about ass juice or other bodily functions or insulting the people around him. I guess it's people like that who liven up your travelling experiences however, and he was totally harmless. Apparently I have also become the fake Australian, everyone i have met here is convinced I am lying about my nationality because my accent is too european and actually I come from a town just outside of Copenhagen where apparently they have really good mulled wine. I even had to pull out my passport as evidence. I have received three really good compliments since i got to Antigua as well.. one was that I am like a jade ring encrusted with diamonds found in a secluded corner of a second hand shop, brush away the dust and there it is. I am retelling that solely for the fact it says more about the girl who said that to me than it does about me. The second was "you're dangerous, stop looking at me". haha :) the third was "¿Adonde aprendiste ser tan bonita?" very corny but hey i liked it.
The other weird thing that has happened to me is that one of the girls from London AND my Spanish teacher both have the same birthday as me! Also Julio, the owner of the best bar in Antigua has the same birthday as Noddy. I like parallels. Sadly the girls from London were right at the end of their trip so 2 of them left yesterday morning and 2 at 4 am last night, but at least I will have partners in crime for when I get back to London which is awesome and possibly I can get a bar job too. It just sucks slightly that all the people I have met and got along with really well were all taking different routes to me, hopefully once I get down to Peru I can find people going the same way as me for a while. Although I am seriously seriously thinking of trying to work somewhere over here in a bar for a while just so i can get the experience for when I go to Spain or the UK. You still end up spending more money than you earn if you get a job here because the wages are like 20 cents an hour, but I think it might be fun.
I am also into my second week of Spanish classes. The first week has been awesome, really really fun and i am enjoying learning the language better and being able to communicate properly with locals and even comprehend conversations they are having between themselves occasionally. My teacher is really lovely and we spend a lot of my 5 hours a day of lessons just chatting in spanish about politics or social situations in different countries or relationships or religion or whatever comes up. I'm still quite slow at speaking and there are a lot of times she needs to explain vocab or grammar to me but at least i can get my point across which is cool. I also like meeting locals who don't speak much english because it forces me to use my Spanish with them instead of just lapsing back into English. Apparently Guatemalans talk a lot slower than South Americans though so I´m fukked when I get there.
Yesterday I moved into a homestay which is where I will be for the next week which is interesting, living with a Guatemalteco family and a couple of other students taking language classes. The idea is that you will be speaking Spanish for most of the day while with the family. There is a curfew of midnight which i broke last night on my first night and feel quite bad about because I also missed breakfast and lunch but I anticipate for the rest of the week since the english girls have left and i'll be staying with the family this week should be really quiet which is probably a good thing as it will give me a chance to do my homework and chill out a bit. Then again I am going out tonight to meet some people.... FOMO strikes again. I haven't really done anything cultural or touristy since I got to Guatemala so tomorrow I might try to climb one of the volcanoes nearby.
That's really all I've got to say for now other than HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUNCAN!!!! :) for the 25th... of course I am a day behind in America so there. xxxooo to everyone.