A Year in Review

If you've read anything that I've posted in the last year, you know that I went to Guatemala. You should know that I spent 11 months there learning Spanish and teaching English, for multiple reasons: Spanish is awesome and I wanted to learn it better, I wanted to teach English to see if I liked it in order to decide if I should go to grad school or not, I wanted a year on my own after school before whatever was next, and traveling is amazing and I had to do it. There were more reasons, but I'd say these were the main ones. Well, that year is over now, I'm home, and I'm looking back on everything that happened.
I remember when I first arrived in Xela I was thinking to myself for the first few days, what am I doing here? How did I ever think this was a good idea??! And I'm stuck here by myself at least until March!!! But as I was leaving I was thinking, What if I never get to come back? How am I already leaving?! Why is it so difficult for Guatemalans to get visas to the states, so the only way I'll ever see my friends again is if I go back?? 
11 months is a long time to live somewhere when somewhere else is still "home." As I left Guatemala I felt like I was leaving home and going home at the same time. It's a weird feeling and I didn't like it. Still don't. If you've been reading my blog then you already know the stories and the crazy adventures. You know the things I'll miss and the things I won't. You pretty much know it all, so I won't bore you with things you already know. The only thing you don't know is where my head and my heart are at right now. Leaving Guatemala was like leaving the place where my life was and not knowing if I'd ever be back. It was like leaving everything I'd grown to know and love and knowing that even if I go back one day, it will never be the same. I was pretty bummed on the plane ride (you can ask my mom if you don't believe me). But then we were getting close to our final descent into Seatac and I found myself getting really excited to be back in the place I've called home my whole life, no matter where I happened to find myself in the world. I got to see my best friend, my boyfriend, and my crazy brother upon arrival at the baggage claim and I was stoked. Also tired....I'm not a fan of daylight savings changing right before I came home so that I had to have a 2 hour difference instead of just 1 (Guatemala doesn't participate in daylight savings, so the time difference between here and there depends on the time of year). I got home and everything seemed the same as when I left (except for 2 toothbrushes in a ziplock (still don't know whose they are!!) and a bucket of dog food in my room): I'm pretty sure the washcloth hanging in the bathroom was from me.....in March!! My conditioner was just as full as when I left, my bed still was as cozy as ever.....oh, I was also missing a lot of clothes (thanks Fenda!). But everything is the same!! Sure, there's a Walmart now and a couple other new things around town, but for the most part it's the same old place. Makes me feel like I never left, like Guatemala was all in my head.
I don't know what I expected. I guess I just thought things would be a little different...maybe like I would be different. Only thing that seems different is that I sometimes think in Spanish and I have to really focus on throwing my toilet paper in the toilet (I've only messed it up once, so I think I'm doing alright!). It's a really weird feeling. A year is a long time, but I feel like it went by in the blink of an eye....but also like it was a lifetime. I don't like it, it's really weird. But don't get me wrong, I'm so glad to be home. I can't wait to see my niece and nephew (I just hope they remember who I am!!!!) and the rest of my family, I can't wait to get back into the swing of things and start feeling like I'm in "real life" again (for some reason Guatemala didn't feel like real life, it felt like something parallel), I can finally go to church again (I went in G-mala, but not as often as I would have liked because of my job) and with people who I know and love, I'm stoked to be able to rock climb again (I did it twice the whole time I was gone, and one of those times shouldn't count).....there are a ton of things I'm excited about as far as being home again. But there's something that my good friend Ivan told me that I'm now seeing he was totally right about: You're going to have 2 homes now. You're going to leave part of yourself in Xela and you're always going to want to be in both places. You'll wake up some mornings thinking that you're in Guatemala and then realize you're not. Yep. That about sums it up.
Would I recommend doing what I did? In a heartbeat! It was the best thing that's ever happened to me. I learned a ton about everything (Spanish, English, myself, responsibility, the world outside of the US, choosing friends wisely....just to name a few) and I wouldn't trade that time for anything. If I could go back and do it all over again I wouldn't change it...except I might've stayed just a little longer (I mean, I had just gotten a new 3-month visa that I kinda feel like I wasted, haha!). I think that everyone should get outside of their comfort zone and do something by themselves before they get too many "real world" responsibilities. But the only thing I would say is to just be sure you know what you're getting yourself into. I mean, going there is so exciting, being there is amazing, but remember that you're going to have to leave one day and it doesn't matter how excited you are to go home, it's always going to suck to leave. I guess that was the only thing (emotionally speaking) that I didn't account for when I planned my trip. But I'm 100% serious when I say that, even with the suckiness of leaving, I wouldn't take it back for anything. It was the best 11 months of my life. Do it. Tell your friends to do it. But do it alone, you learn way more way faster....but be smart. I can see how it would really suck to be in a foreign country alone for a year if you don't make good choices. I made some dumb choices and I just wanted to be at home in my bed with my bestie, not in Guatemala alone in my apartment. But I know that if I'd gone with someone else who spoke English, I never would've learned Spanish as quickly as I did. If I'd gone with a friend, I never would have made as many friends as I did. If I'd gone with a traveling buddy, I never would have learned how to do so much for myself. Do it. And if you're planning on going to Guatemala, hit me up....I might have a tip or 2 to share with you.

Some of my super awesome friends: Patty, Gio, Lesly, Ricardo, Ivan, Mario, and Josue

Lanquín, Semuc Champey, and Cobán....and back to Xela I go

From Rio Dulce we took a shuttle to a little town called Lanquín. It's the town closest to Semuc Champey, some beautiful natural pools with limestone bridges. The road from Rio Dulce to Lanquín is short, but terrible, mountainous, not really paved, and narrow (which means when there's a car coming the other way someone has to pull over to let the other pass), thus it took some 5 hours to get there. It was raining a lot. We went to the hostel office to check in (I actually made a reservation here, but only because I called the day before to make sure they had space and they just made me a reservation) and the girl in front of us was trying to negotiate the room price for her and her friends using very English-y Spanglish....like really really really! "Um, I came here dos weeks ago and paid one hundred quetzales for dos noches." I thought about helping with the translation, but I was tired and kind of entertained. Well it got to our turn and we were checked in and showed to our dorm (since it's not tourist season they're offering the second night free in the dorms), and it turns out we were the only 2 in the dorm. So we basically had a private dorm for the price of half a night....at this point pretty much all our stuff was wet/moist so we hung our stuff up all over the dorm. Unfortunately more people arrived the next day and we had to move all our stuff.
Well we wanted to do the Semuc tour the day after we arrived, but like I said, it was raining a lot. Really hard. All morning. So they cancelled the tour for that day for safety reasons and Erin and I just had time to walk around the little town for a bit. Unfortunately this also set us back a day in our travel plans, but we figured we'd done really well sticking with it so far and in reality we had a couple days' leeway. So we relaxed, used the sauna (normally Q.10pp, but free that day because they cancelled the tour), explored Lanquín, and enjoyed an Italian buffet for dinner.
The next day the rain was pretty much done and we got to go on our tour. But because there wasn't a tour the day before, we had about twice the number of people than normal. The first part of the tour is a cave tour: everyone gets a candle and we start walking about waist-deep in water into a cave. As we traveled deeper into the cave, there were some stronger currents and eventually a waterfall that we had to climb up via ladder....we couldn't really see anything so we were basically climbing a ladder with our eyes closed. It was awesome!! After the cave we went inner-tubing down a little stretch of the river, some people jumped off a bridge into the river, and then we headed to Semuc Champey.

Erin saved some kid's b-day party by
teaching them how to make balloon animals.

At Semuc we started out by climbing up to the viewpoint. When we got there Erin realized why every photo of Semuc Champey looks like it was taken from an airplane....in the same place, from the same angle. But it was so beautiful! Then we got to climb down and go swimming. Our guide took us to a mini-cave...but when he said mini he wasn't kidding!! Carol Heath would have loved it! You swim under a rock and come up in a little space underneath, then you keep going for a couple meters, sometimes having to duck under some low-hanging rocks, then to get out the guide told us to go under the water and just go straight, that we'd make it out. It was further than you'd think. I ducked under and went straight, always feeling with my hand for when I'd make it back to open-air....but the rock above me kept going. Finally I made it out! Every single person thought the same, it was fun to see their faces when they popped out saying Oh my gosh! I thought I'd never make it out! 

Erin got a job really quickly

The next morning we headed for Cobán. Erin didn't feel so great. Actually, she felt terrible. We got to Cobán and walked around town, went to the mall, bought some Subway, and then went back to our hostel. We pretty much just watched television and tried to figure out how to get to Antigua the next day and if we'd have time to do a coffee plantation tour...one with a zip-line portion. We found out that we'd have just enough time to do the tour and get back in time for our shuttle to Antigua. Sweet! Well Erin didn't seem to want to wake up the next morning and I thought it'd be a lot better to let her sleep and potentially get better than to try and go to a coffee plantation and rush to make it for our shuttle while it was raining really hard (apparently the rainy season isn't over yet). Turned out well because the guy who was going to drive us was sick too and he really wanted to go back to bed. Poor guy. Every day during our two weeks together Erin got up by 6:30 at the latest, on this day she had to force herself to get up at like 10:20 just to get her stuff ready for us to jump on the shuttle. We got on the shuttle and she passed out again. Yikes! Thankfully she eventually woke up and wanted to eat something and drink some coffee (when she doesn't want coffee in the morning, you know something's very wrong). We finally made it to Antigua only to find out that Eder, Carolina, and Sammy were all sick too. Double yikes! But Erin woke up the next morning around 6 again, so she must've been getting better (hopefully she's all better now....or at least still getting better). She took me into town and we got some coffee at Refuge Cafe (it's also where we caught our shuttle from Antigua to Flores, so we began and ended there). After that she took me to the bus. Wow, those two weeks sure flew by!
I was so excited to get back to my apartment. The only laundry I did during our trip was in sinks with shampoo or expired laundry soap, and most of the places we went were really humid, so pretty much all of my clothes were damp for many days. Everything smelled terrible! But my awesome friend Ivan had brought me a clean towel and I took a shower right when I got home and put on cleans clothes that I hadn't brought with me. Oh my gosh, it was great! I smelled good again, I didn't feel damp for the first time in days, and I finally got to use conditioner! After that I got to start the loooooooooong process of uploading my photos....I'm not kidding, it took over 24 hours to upload 315 photos. I think the internet here isn't that great for uploading, or else the Picasa uploader is terrible! But now it's done, I'm back home and my mom is here to visit for my last few days in Guatemala. Those two weeks traveling with Erin were the perfect way to bring my time in Guatemala to an end. It was a great adventure that I won't soon forget.

Izabal or bust

From Mango Creek-Independence we took a bus to Punta Gorda and from there, a boat to Livingston. We were going to go to Rio Dulce that same day and stay 2 nights there, but our boat from PG left about an hour late, thus we missed the last boat to Rio Dulce. No biggie, we stayed in a nice place in Livingston and took a boat the next morning. 

When our boat landed in Livingston it was madness of everyone trying to get us to follow them to some hostel or another, but first we had to go to immigration. While in the immigration office, we decided where we were going to stay and then jetted for that place, but we were still followed by a couple guys trying to get a commission from our stay. Thankfully the guy working at the hostel asked me if they'd brought us, I said no, they followed us. In the whirlwind of guys trying to get us to go with them, someone asked us where we were from. Erin said near Seattle. He said, "Oh, Seattle, WA....or Seattle, WA DC?".............ummmmmm, what?! I was really impressed that he knew the state, and then he killed it. Haha! 
Our night in Livingston was the first night of our trip I felt cold. It was weird! The city was pretty cool, it was like a halfway point between Guatemala and Belize....it was a little strange and interesting. Otherwise I didn't see a whole lot to do in Livingston, Belize was better for just hanging out on the beach I think.

The Kangaroo had a cold jacuzzi

Well on our boat ride from Livingston to Rio Dulce, the owner (I guess) of our hostel called the boat driver to talk to me. She said I didn't pay for the room. She said that the record said I'd paid for the food and boat tickets, but not for the room. I definitely paid. I explained to her that I paid the room in USD (it was actually cheaper than paying in Quetzales!) and the rest in Quetzales. Apparently the guy who I paid didn't write that down, wasn't at the hostel anymore, and his phone wasn't on. She apologized and told us to have a good trip. But what could they have even done if I really hadn't paid?! I was on a boat on my way to another city and my only information that they had was my name and country of residence. I think they need some administrative help.
We got to Rio Dulce, did a lap of the Castle San Felipe in the boat and headed to the main dock to get picked up by our hostel. The Kangaroo Hostel is owned by an Aussie and you can only get there by boat...which means their restaurant is your only food option. Good thing it wasn't crazy crazy expensive. While at the Kangaroo we found an Aussie crossword book and felt so overwhelmed. It goes to like 400 something!! And a lot of the clues were very Aussie specific so we had no clue! But it was cool. We also made a new friend, Ross, here for 6 weeks surveying all of the public hospitals in Guatemala. He says we should try our hardest to avoid having to go to one as a patient. But he was a cool guy and had his own driver and offered to drive us to the hot waterfall and the canyon (we were only going to barely have time to go to the waterfall if we went by bus, in order to make our shuttle for Lanquin). The hot waterfall is, apparently, the only one in the world like it. It's hot water cascading into cold water and it feels really weird to be sitting in cold water with hot water falling on your head. But it was amazing....also hard to find. I guess we passed it and ended up at the canyon first. We decided it was a good thing though because the canyon was cool, but not that cool; the waterfall was way better! So it was good because we did the canyon and then we took our time at the waterfall instead of rushing from the waterfall to make it to a so-so canyon. So we have a new friend now, and now I know who to ask if I have any ears, nose, or throat problems (it's cool being friends with doctors).

Ross getting bombarded to buy "banana bread"