Rockin' and Rollin'

Hola amigos. Well, it is Wednesday afternoon and we are just back from one of our daily afternoon outings to a museum (yesterday it was a very interesting coffee plantation at the foot of the volcano looming above Antigua). There are now only two days of Spanish school to go...thank goodness! We have been busy trying to learn reams of regular and irregular verbs and my head is just about full. Unfortunately, we haven't had much time to ingrain what we are learning and now I have so many different verbs, roots, endings, exceptions, tenses, etc. etc. that I am totally confused. I'm sure when our teacher asks for a sentence I'm saying something like: "I saw to my house when I am here, but yesterday I think that I am eating and not understanding before I laugh or washed myself." In other words I'm pretty mixed up and speaking gibberish most of the time. Reading and writing is not so bad, especially when we can refer to our notes, but our teacher is now speaking more quickly and using differnt tenses which makes it very hard to understand and even harder to respond. He'll say something to me and I'll just sit there with a blank look on my face not knowing if he asked me a question or is telling me something. Luckily Sue, who is much more adept at languages than I, is picking it up much better and seemes to get by. Not surprisingly, our teacher is spending the greater amount of time conversing with Sue.

Oh well, asi es la vida en Antigua!

I just wanted to record a couple of interesting things about life here. One thing we've discovered is the Guatemalans' love for fireworks. We have been treated to serveral impressive displays of fireworks and we hear them going off all the time. It seems that they use fireworks and fire crackers to help celebrate special holy days. And, it appears that there is some or other saint's day just about every day! Each morning around 5:30 or 6:00 we can hear a succession of bang-bang-bangs which can last for several minutes...quite a rude awakening. On the weekend there was a huge fireworks display in a park just a couple of hundred meters from our casa. It lasted about 10 minutes and had major fireworks such as you might see on Canada Day. Where they get the money for these expensive items is anyone's guess as people here are very poor. But the fireworks and religious festivals here are certainly an interesting aspect of the place.

Another unique experience we had the other night was a "tremblo". We have found out first hand that this indeed a land of active volcanos and seismic activity. We were just going to bed Monday night when all of a sudden our beds started to vibrate and shake. We were having a real live earth tremor. It lasted no more than 20 seconds perhaps but it was a definite reminder that earthquakes do occur in this country. As I've mentioned previously, this town is full of ruins from previous major earthquakes and our little tremor made the history of Antigua that much more real. An hour after the first one we had another slight tremor and folks at breakfast this morning said there had been another during the night last night, though we didn't feel that one. We just hope that there isn't a big one ready to happen!

The weather here contiues to be pleasant though definitely on the cool side considering we are well into the tropics. I think Antigua is at about 4000ft, so the climate is very temperate. We usually wear long pants and a jacket in the mornings and evenings and even during the day it doesn't get much above 22 or 24 degrees. Mind you the sun is very intense and it's easy to get burned if you sit out for long, but Antigua seems to be as advertised...eternal spring. And another interesting thing our teacher told us is that they recognize only two seasons here: winter from May to November and summer the rest of the time. These "seasons" correspond, I assume, to the dry (summer) and wet (winter) seasons, though they are reversed to what we normally think of in terms of summer and winter months. Muy interesante!

Well, we are really getting excited about the arrival of Dee and Rose (Sue's sisters) on Friday. We'll be giving them the tour of Antigua and then heading off to Chichichastenango to see the famous Sunday market. Then it is on to Panajachel, Lake Titiklan, Coban and then the incredible Mayan city of Tikal. We'll be entering Belize in about 10 days.

We hope you are doing well wherever you are. Until next time...

Robb and Sue