Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Happy New Year to all of you! As usual, my plans didn't quite turn out as I thought or had hoped they would. My teacher was unable to go to Chichicastenango today, but that's okay - we had our last lesson here at the school which consisted of conversation about the civil war in Guatemala and education - in particular special education - and problems in our countries. It was really interesting. And we also dabbled into the future and conditional tenses. Very exciting. In less than three weeks - I started out only speaking in the present tense, and went on to learn the preterite, imperfect, future and conditional. No idea what any of that means in English. Yeah teacher! But, I feel like I accomplished a lot. Let's not think about the fact that I can converse with my teacher because she speaks slowly and only in words that I know, and that when I walk out on the street and try to understand people, I am utterly confused. My goal (for now) is to be able to better communicate with my students' parents, and I think I will be able to do that now. Anything is better than before!

So, New Years was fun. I started out at the school's bonfire/wine and cheese party, and ended up dancing the night (morning) away at one of the crazy discotecas, despite what was previously stated. This is a picture of a few of us at the school's party. Josue, the guy next to me, is from here and works at the school's travel agency. He is a really cool guy. He also teaches salsa and dragged me to another lesson yesterday. Not a pretty site. He kept telling me to feel the rhythm in my hips. For those of you who know me well enough, you know there is no rhythm in these hips. I don't care what Shakira says. And for those of you who really know me well, I know what you are thinking, and no, Josue is not my new boyfriend. The other two in the picture are the youngins of the group - Eyal and Anna. Australian Anna is only 18 and is in her gap year. The gap year that none of us Americans ever take has been the topic of discussion many times over the past couple weeks.

So, after hanging out for a million fireworks after midnight(I'll spare you all the videos I took of that), I ventured out to the disco. I just spent about a half hour trying to upload a video I took there, but it's not working, so those of you who may be interested can come over and see all my cheesy videos in person some time. Anywhoo...after a few hours of the discoteca, I was out for a good portion of Tuesday. I woke up in time to catch a bit of the Rose Bowl on TV at McDonalds (my holiday hangout) - to feel some sort of connection to home. Other than that, it was a day of studying. Yesterday, after my salsa lesson, the power went out across the entire country for about 3 or so hours. Apparently, a tree fell on some power lines some 4 or 5 hours away from here and that did it. So, we were all kinda stuck inside for the night. Tonight, we'll be watching a movie about the Guatemalan civil war and then afterwards there are a couple of foreigners here that will be playing guitar at my favorite little cafe, El Cuartito. It should be a nice send off. I ended up getting a shuttle for tomorrow morning to Antigua, which gives me just 3 or 4 hours to hang out there before my next shuttle to the airport for my 8 pm flight. I've heard Antigua is very touristy, and not too much time is needed there, so I think a few hours should suffice. I have heard it is very pretty, though - and supposedly has pretty fresh air, so my nose is looking forward to that. And knowing me, I'll take another 75 pictures there tomorrow to add to my 250 or so I have so far.

So, that about does it for me from Guatemala. I feel really blessed that I was able to explore New Orleans and Guatemala in 2007. Now, I need to start planning what's to come in 2008. I am not against having travel companions - so let me know if any of you have any ideas!