A number of updates
Sorry about the lack of my updates. I´ve been sending out e'mails but have forgotten to put them up on my lj. Here they are, from least recent to most recent:
6/30:
So I´m now in Santo Domingo. I´ve been here since monday. Over the last 5 days we´ve been doing lots of shopping and hanging out, but mostly just lounging around our hotel room (which was air conditioned and had tv.....fun.)
as of yesterday at about 1 i´m now alopne in santo domingo. maya, from chicago, left on wednesday early in the morning and dianne and kud, from boston, left yesterday afternoon. since then ive been bumming around el conde, the pedestrian street and commercial center of santo domingo. ive been reading lots and sleeping. today i watched the argentina vs. germany world cup game for alittle while, and am planning on watching the ukraine vs. italy game in a few hours.
tomorrow i leave at 5 a.m. to catch an 8 a.m. flight to miami where ill meet up with lesley and then we´ll fly together to guatemala. our first week in guatemala we´re doing a langauge study program where we stay with a host family (though i believe they are much more wealthy than the host families in amigos de las americas) and receive one-on-one spanish teaching for 5 hours a day. shoudl be fun.
hope all is well
jason
7/5:
Hey all,
my last few days in teh dominican republic were quite boring as i was by mysef without anyone to talk to. i ended up jsut watching a lot of world cup soccer and drinking a lot of water.
my flights to get to guatemala ended being a bit stressful as my flight from santo domingo to miami was delayed so i missed my flight to guatemala while lseley, my friend that im traveling with through central america, still got that flight. so she got into guatemala city in the afternoon and made her way here to quetzaltenango on the four hour bus ride and stayed here for the night in a hostal while i got into guatemala city late at night and stayed at a hotel there. the next day i made my awy out here to xela. once i got here, though, i had no idea where lesley was or what to do. so i obviously headed to an internet cafe to entertain myself, and by luck lesley walked into teh same internet cafe about 20 minutse afterwards. that evening we sat in front of a huge and pretty building eating bread.
so lesley and i are now doing a language program here for the week. every week day we have 5 hours of one on one language study adn then we stay with a middle class family here. the classes have been somewaht boring as i dont have anything to learn gramatically anymore, jsut working on my fluency and so forth so my classes jsut turn into discussion after discussion with my teacher on divisive issues like homosexuality, the existence of god, abortion, death penalty, etc. we also discuss world affairs a lot. the family im staying with is an older woman and her two brotehrs. there is also random a 40 yaer old anthropologist from virginia living in my house who is studying maya dances. its ni eto be living with a family, but its not nearly teh same as amigos as i dont feel much of a connection to them. i just sorta eat and sleep there.
the other students at teh school are really cool. for some reason, prety much all of them are german. the coolset person we´ve met so far is rachel, who is from england but lived in germany for a while. she just finished law school she decided to take a year off before starting work and has been traveling for the last year through all of latin america. shes pretty awesome.
so thats about it. were mostly just hanging out, speaking spanish, and awtchign world cup games. were going to an indian restaurant in this town tonight and im more excited than i could ever tell you.
hope all is well
jason
7/13:
Hey,
So here´s an update of what I´ve been doing for the last week or so.
Our last few days in Xela were awesome. We attempted to hike up this volcano one afternoon with other students from our language school, but Lesley wasn´t feeling well so we hung out in one spot for a while which was quickly completely enveloped in clouds. It was awesome and very relaxing (not to mention cold).
After we left Xela Monday morning, we headed to San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is this GORGEOUS lake here in Guatemala that is surrounded by mountains and volcanos. It´s about the size of Lake Tahoe I would say. The town we stayed in was a huge hippy town. All the restaurants had names like "nirvana" and served lots of tofu and the like. Our time there was absolutely awesome. We ate tons of delicious and healthy food, kayak´d in the lake (which was an interesting and wet experience), and watched movies (every restaurant there shows free movies every night).
Yesterday afternoon we left San Pedro La Laguna (which is only accessible by boat, crossing the lake) and headed to Guatemala City where we caught an overnight bus to Flores, the town where people stay to head to Tikal, some of the most amazing ruins in the world. The bus ride, which was 9 hours plus a 1 and a half hour stint where the highway was being worked on so we had to sit outside the bus in the middle of the night, was hell. I couldn´t sleep at all and was extremely comfortable. At least that´s over now.
So now we´re in flores. It´s a town on an island in the middle of the lake in very northern Guatemala. Tomorrow we´re going to be going to Tikal to check out the ruins all day.
Our plans after that were to head back down to Guatemala City and then head to Honduras, but today we decided to take a detour through Belize. So on Saturday we´re going to take a bus up to Belize (only a few hours away) and stay in some beach town for a few days before taking a few boats over to Honduras and then contuining our trip as it was. It should be an interesting change of pace from Latin America (as in Belize they speak english and the culture is much much different).
When I´m in Belize, I probably wont get on the internet if only because it´s AMAZINGLY expensive (Belize is a fairly touristy country, and in turn, fairly expensive). So the next time you´ll be hearing from me will probably be in about a week when I´m in Honduras.
See you all soon,
Jason
6/30:
So I´m now in Santo Domingo. I´ve been here since monday. Over the last 5 days we´ve been doing lots of shopping and hanging out, but mostly just lounging around our hotel room (which was air conditioned and had tv.....fun.)
as of yesterday at about 1 i´m now alopne in santo domingo. maya, from chicago, left on wednesday early in the morning and dianne and kud, from boston, left yesterday afternoon. since then ive been bumming around el conde, the pedestrian street and commercial center of santo domingo. ive been reading lots and sleeping. today i watched the argentina vs. germany world cup game for alittle while, and am planning on watching the ukraine vs. italy game in a few hours.
tomorrow i leave at 5 a.m. to catch an 8 a.m. flight to miami where ill meet up with lesley and then we´ll fly together to guatemala. our first week in guatemala we´re doing a langauge study program where we stay with a host family (though i believe they are much more wealthy than the host families in amigos de las americas) and receive one-on-one spanish teaching for 5 hours a day. shoudl be fun.
hope all is well
jason
7/5:
Hey all,
my last few days in teh dominican republic were quite boring as i was by mysef without anyone to talk to. i ended up jsut watching a lot of world cup soccer and drinking a lot of water.
my flights to get to guatemala ended being a bit stressful as my flight from santo domingo to miami was delayed so i missed my flight to guatemala while lseley, my friend that im traveling with through central america, still got that flight. so she got into guatemala city in the afternoon and made her way here to quetzaltenango on the four hour bus ride and stayed here for the night in a hostal while i got into guatemala city late at night and stayed at a hotel there. the next day i made my awy out here to xela. once i got here, though, i had no idea where lesley was or what to do. so i obviously headed to an internet cafe to entertain myself, and by luck lesley walked into teh same internet cafe about 20 minutse afterwards. that evening we sat in front of a huge and pretty building eating bread.
so lesley and i are now doing a language program here for the week. every week day we have 5 hours of one on one language study adn then we stay with a middle class family here. the classes have been somewaht boring as i dont have anything to learn gramatically anymore, jsut working on my fluency and so forth so my classes jsut turn into discussion after discussion with my teacher on divisive issues like homosexuality, the existence of god, abortion, death penalty, etc. we also discuss world affairs a lot. the family im staying with is an older woman and her two brotehrs. there is also random a 40 yaer old anthropologist from virginia living in my house who is studying maya dances. its ni eto be living with a family, but its not nearly teh same as amigos as i dont feel much of a connection to them. i just sorta eat and sleep there.
the other students at teh school are really cool. for some reason, prety much all of them are german. the coolset person we´ve met so far is rachel, who is from england but lived in germany for a while. she just finished law school she decided to take a year off before starting work and has been traveling for the last year through all of latin america. shes pretty awesome.
so thats about it. were mostly just hanging out, speaking spanish, and awtchign world cup games. were going to an indian restaurant in this town tonight and im more excited than i could ever tell you.
hope all is well
jason
7/13:
Hey,
So here´s an update of what I´ve been doing for the last week or so.
Our last few days in Xela were awesome. We attempted to hike up this volcano one afternoon with other students from our language school, but Lesley wasn´t feeling well so we hung out in one spot for a while which was quickly completely enveloped in clouds. It was awesome and very relaxing (not to mention cold).
After we left Xela Monday morning, we headed to San Pedro La Laguna on Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is this GORGEOUS lake here in Guatemala that is surrounded by mountains and volcanos. It´s about the size of Lake Tahoe I would say. The town we stayed in was a huge hippy town. All the restaurants had names like "nirvana" and served lots of tofu and the like. Our time there was absolutely awesome. We ate tons of delicious and healthy food, kayak´d in the lake (which was an interesting and wet experience), and watched movies (every restaurant there shows free movies every night).
Yesterday afternoon we left San Pedro La Laguna (which is only accessible by boat, crossing the lake) and headed to Guatemala City where we caught an overnight bus to Flores, the town where people stay to head to Tikal, some of the most amazing ruins in the world. The bus ride, which was 9 hours plus a 1 and a half hour stint where the highway was being worked on so we had to sit outside the bus in the middle of the night, was hell. I couldn´t sleep at all and was extremely comfortable. At least that´s over now.
So now we´re in flores. It´s a town on an island in the middle of the lake in very northern Guatemala. Tomorrow we´re going to be going to Tikal to check out the ruins all day.
Our plans after that were to head back down to Guatemala City and then head to Honduras, but today we decided to take a detour through Belize. So on Saturday we´re going to take a bus up to Belize (only a few hours away) and stay in some beach town for a few days before taking a few boats over to Honduras and then contuining our trip as it was. It should be an interesting change of pace from Latin America (as in Belize they speak english and the culture is much much different).
When I´m in Belize, I probably wont get on the internet if only because it´s AMAZINGLY expensive (Belize is a fairly touristy country, and in turn, fairly expensive). So the next time you´ll be hearing from me will probably be in about a week when I´m in Honduras.
See you all soon,
Jason