Antigua... Day 2

Hey guys, just finished my first full day in Antigua and im having a pretty good time as it happens.

But before i get on to the good stuff I have some complaining to do as usual.

We arrived (me, Liz and Liz's parents) at the airport at about 10:30-11:00, which gave me plenty of time to get my flight at 1:35am. However when we finally found the queue for check in it was about 100m long, not even exaggerating, it went out the door and down the road. Anyway when i finally checked still had plenty of time left to get through to the lounge, more then i thought as it turned out. I decided to leave through security at about 12:30, thinking that it would take about 45 minutes to get through to the lounge. However, after the 10 minutes of security stuff, instead of finding a ten mile walk through corridors that seem to be longer than the actual airport itself, i find myself in the lounge, meaning that i could have waited untill 1:20 and still made the flight. Not only did I have the burden of knowing i missed out on an extra 50 minutes with Liz, but i had also found myself in an an airport lounge, stuffed full of people meaning i had no where to sit and because most of them spoke spanish, thats the language all the announcments came in first. That wasnt a problem for certain announcments such as "now boarding rows 10-15 " which i could understand. But some of the others where more complicated, so every now and then I'd find myself being trampled by a heard of stampeeding Guatemalans without having a clue why.

Anyway, i finally made it onto the plane where i sat and watched the extrely historically acurate cinematique masterpiece that is "10,000 BC" the new version(what a load of bullshit that was). After this I looked out the window as we flew over what i can only assume was Mexico city, I assume this because of its sheer size, we were cruising at 30,000 feet and it was still enourmous, it looked very impressive at night. After taking in the view I did somthing very rare for me on an aircraft which was fall asleep, I say rare... i've never managed it before. Anyway this meant I missed breakfast, making the meal I had with Liz's family was all I had to eat untill about 2:00pm the following day. When we landed it only took a short while to get through customs and i was met by a strange little man in a wooly jumper at the gate. I mention the wooly jumper because it was about 25 degrees (thats centigrade Americans, dont worry sub zero temperatures arn't a problem here), anyway he didn't speak any english although he did say "ok" a hell of a lot, in a funny voice aswell, just imagive what a chol sounds like saying the word "ok" then speed it up and you'll get the idea.
Anway he showed me to the car and we started to drive. He threw me back a folder which had a map of the city in it and a few other bits and bobs, welcome letter etc.
after a 15minute drive we arrived in Antigua, at that point the ride got unpleasent, Antigua only has cobble streets so as much as I wanted to look round, it was all i could do to hold myself in place and not bounce around the cab.
He pulled up to a building and lead me down an alleyway where he rang a doorbell, he put my bag down inside but before I even put the rest of my stuff down with it he said was out of the door and gone. So Im in this house, somwhere in Antigua without a clue whats going on and on my own. Then I see a little head poking round the corner, it was a little kid, I worried that the school had accomadated me in a home stay program which is not what I wanted. Then I noticed a tiny woman stood behind me. "Tu hablas Espanol" luckily i knew enough spanish to reply with "poquito pero es no bien",she then showed me round the house speaking only in spanish, I understtod everything apart from when she explained how to make the shower hot, I later discovered that you can't make the shower hot, only less cold.

Ok i'm going into too much detail,I havnt even got 45 minutes into Guatemala yet.

I set up all my stuff in the room then decided to just chill for a bit because I was tired, I thought I'd wait for some people to get up so that i could meet my housemates for the next 2 weeks... I fell asleep as soon as I laid on the bed... I woke up again around 11am after 2 hours street, no one was around so I went to explore the city. Its actually quite a small town, I can easily walk from one side to the other in about 20 minutes-half an hour. It was really busy though, mainly because its independance day weekend,. I tried to find the school using my map, unfortunatley the map is difficult to follow and I couldnt see it, I decided to look for the supermarket instead, which turned out to be where it said on the map, so dont start blaming my map reading skills.

After getting back from the supermarket I met 2 of my housemates Bertie and Bridget, I ended up leaving again straight away and we went for lunch and they showed me the school. At 6:we went to check out the festivities in the parque central. It was heaving and we only stayed for about half an hour before going for food. I got a beer with my meal and it actually turns out to be very nice, also every place I have been to has loads of vegetarian options so I wont be eating any butchered animal carcas in Antigua, hopfully it will be a similar deal in Livingston.

I hyad my first spanish lesson this morning, it was 4:30 long and my maestra Christina didnt speak any English to me apart from the odd word that I wanted translating. Not only that but I understood most of it so I may be ok at this spanish thing after all.

I just got back from our second trip to see the festivities as its actually indepedance day today. Yesterday there were loads of people running around with torches, as in torches similar to the olympic torch, not battery operated ones. There were also lots of bangs, I assumed that these were fireworks untill I noticed the man launching motars into the air which exploded at the top of there arch, it seemed pretty silly to me, al it was doing was making a load bang, couldnt he have just hit a dustbin lid or somthing for a fraction of the price. Today the same man was there again but the runners were replaced by big bands playing while they marched round, some of them danced aswell, it was wierd to watch all the drummers perfoming quite complicated dance moves whilst playing at the same time.

Unfortunatley all my photos of the event are pretty poor, i cant get close enough to stuff for the flash to be worth using and i dont have a tripod so night photos come out blurred, Ive had to resort to using a very high sensitivity but they come out very grainy, I may purloin Bertie's photos as he has a proper digital SLR camera and claims his can take good night photos... we shall see.

Ok, thats it for now, maybe I'll write again friday or somthing, if theres anything worth saying.

Later