milagro que funcionó el trlog.

i have been trying to blog on my trlog for the last little while, to no avail.stephanie and i are sitting here writing.dear me, i have so much to say, and i don't know where to begin.

let me first say that i danced the merengue with my little brother, amilcar, this afternoon. i danced cumbia with my little doll, aracely. and giovanni danced gangster reggaeton, and i took a picture of him.

my fellow researchers and i watched the sunrise over san pablo and lake atitlan at the mirador in my family's cornfield. i saw a blue and gold millepede.

i wake up to james blunt, coldplay, and reggaeton in the morning. si alguna vez, sentiste algo lindo por mí, perdoname, perdoname.

i went to a town meeting this morning, and a women's cooperative yesterday. the women are beautiful and friendly and fierce about their families.

i mixed a bucket of hot water with a bucket of cold water to shower this morning. i am clean and happy. thank goodness for 2 in 1 head and shoulders.

my family is full of life like my home family. family family family. like feist says, it's cool it's cool to love your family.

i feel so much more secure about my project today. i feel happy, almost to a weird degree. i will be able to visit mothers to be this month, and nicolasa says that babies will be born at the end of this month, and the beginning of the next. sally, do you read my blog? i want to tell you all about this . . .

not much to say, too much to say.

i love my family here. i am overwhelmed and overwhelmingly happy.

ya voy para la comunidad

so, this will be the last time that i write from guatemala as a bum. i am mourning that part of my life, the ease, oh. but now it is time to move on to the bigger a better things. i am getting so worked up excited about it that i better just calm down.

let me just tell what happened last night. or not. you can ask me about it later. lets just say that i was alone, on a doorstep, with a very lonely old man. thank goodness i bought two waters, so i could get away with the excuse that amy needed that water.

in other news, there is no other news. i will meet my future family today, we will go to church in nahuala or chirijol tomorrow, and i will be working like an anthropological dog.

let me just mention this: i finished silent spring. although the book was written quite some time ago, it was highly relevant to me as we sailed over the rio dulce and i watched the flocks of birds, as i kicked ticks off of my chaco'd feet, and saw fields and fields of guatemalan and honduran agriculture. the book opened alot of questions to me, and i'm afraid that dad will have to update me on the situation at modern time.

now i am starting on On Human Nature by EO Wilson, but i might read sally's suggestion of puddinhead wilson first.

fotitos!!

slowly but surely i am putting up pictures. i think the bulk of them will be on facebook. sorry father.

this is the murderous bat of copan! it was like the mascot of the city, as it were. why be anything else when you can be a murcielago asesino?

loading the pictures is really tedious.

beware the murderous bat of copan!

here in a cafe

listening to cheesy jazz, drinking fresh sqeezed orange juice, trying to organize my digital life. ba. como dicen los hondurenyos.

saved my life on the road

i can´t live if livin is without you

so, the last few days have been full of bus rides, taxi rides, mini bus rides, and the madness won´t stop til we´re in our communities. when we left copan, i had a mini heart attack. i had to get mini bypass surgery and i´m only 23.

we bought a ticket to go to guate city for only $10US on minibus. we got 12 km out of copan, where you have to cross back into guate, and i realized that like the supreme rabbitest person in the world, i left my special wallet purse hidden safely under the mattress at the hostel we had been staying at. i was a case, but shed not a tear. when i told the driver i had forgotten it, he told me to hide in the back of the van. this would have elicited a chuckle in a different time-space continuum, and now it does, but at the time, i was just like, not a chance, sir. he talked to the other driver, and with the honduran friendliness, he drove me back the mountainous way and i ran to get the purse, and we drove back. everyone else was done checking out of honduras and into guate, so it was just a minute till we were on the minivan, humming along. i was still a case though.

what saved me were those cool sweet eighties, you know, like phil collins, michael bolton, richard marx, etc. so now i come to you with open arms hoping you´ll say believe what i say . . . so i dont know the words well. but the koren guy knew all the words.

after getting lost in the taxi in guate city, we made it to dos lunas, picked up our crap, left the next day for xela, aka quetzaltenango. the whole bus ride, i felt like crizzle, but i kept telling myself i wasnt sick, and i chewed on life saving orbitz gum. we got stopped like 5 times for construction, i thought i was going to die. amy said i slept through the part where all the men had to leave the bus. that´s ok with me.

so we are here in xela now and we will be leaving on saturday morning to get closer to our community. i am so excited. as i was near puking on the bus, i saw a woman with a baby nestled on her back with a colorful shawl, and i got so excited. if we just had an adventure, the next three months are going to be an uber adventure.

kinkotik. ba.

i can. you can. two can.

after we went to the ruins we headed to las sepulturas. it is called that because people thought it was a burial site, and then archaeologists realized that it was a living place, and mayans buried their love ones inside their houses, under their beds. interesting. when we got to the site, we just walked in, and this honduran cowboy walked up to us and asked if we spoke spanish. he wanted to give us a tour, so he justed started talking, and we followed him. it was actually a great thing because there are no sign or explanations in las sepulturas. he mentioned several times that the shaman or curandero had seven concubines AND a wife. he used to work on archaeological sites and then lost his job. he was very helpful and he showed us a littler known site. i wish i had taken a picture with him.

when we got into town we had a brief run in with some internet people, which is why the last blog was cut short. i dont really want to explain. then the whole night we had fun and walked around town and listened to a new age flute tooter, a cute little mariachi band, and watched uber hippies go crazy with fire jugglings and dancings and the whatnot. i bought a little stone sapo. it was amys birthday so we got tres leches cake, and i made her blow out her marachino cherry. the whole town was out and about, and it was quite nice. we met some mormons from idaho. they were in a store with us, and i heard one say, no, it probably has coffee or tea, and i was like MORMON. and they were, the end.

let me speak of the miracle of yesterday. we went walking to look for a bus that we could take sunday morning to chiquimula so that we could go to church. the problem with that was that we were going to have to cross the guate border, because we are staying here in copan. so we were going to have to cross twice and pay for those crossings. but we were willing, because we wanted to go to church. well, we walked across town, couldnt find the micros, and then walked back to the square, and found MISIONEROS!! i was so happy. there is a lovely little branch here, and thats exactly where we went this morning. it is thriving and the kids sang to their mothers and it was lovely. this afternoon we accidentally ate meter long burritos, and walked the long hill to Macaw Mountain, a bird park. there were many lovely birds, and i took many lovely pictures, and we had a lovely tour guide and took a lovely tour with some lovely indians. from india. i left some toucans bite my fingers, i fed one watermelon, and a bonded with a green macaw.

now we are back in town and i am talking to my lovely mother to whom i owe much. feliz dia de la madre.

i met THE eighteen rabbit

this is my favorite king of copan, not only because he has the word [rabbit] in his name, but also because he is fairly good looking. im sure you would agree. what good does a nose do anyhow?after i wrote my last blog, i read something that i had written that was published in the daily universe. i sound like a half coherent slang talker. sometimes the truth comes out. it was fun to read it. i hope other people send in their articles.

anyhow, the last night we were in omoa, afternoon really, we took the free kayaks out to sea. they were one person kayaks, and we rode far out into the sea and the sun was on the horizon and it was pure lovely. at a depth too deep to dive but just deep enough to still see, we spotted what looked like seadollars the size of a dinner plate. i also dove in in more shallow water and saw a little sand crab, who was a little delight. we found a little waterway that went up into the coast, and paddles up it just as the sun was setting. there were egrets and other sea birds, and one in particular had its eye on me. the evil eye. it would look at me, make a sound, and then i would look at it, and he would look away, like he wasnt looking at me in the first place. birds. what can you do?so the sunset was beautiful, and by the time we got to shore, the sun was hiding. it was a nice way to end our little omoa stay.

the next morning we started traveling. the plan was to go to copan, as directly as possible, but that wasnt so easily possible. we took a school bus (not used as such at the moment) to puerto cortés, and when we arrived there, we walked five minutes to find a direct micro to san pedro sula. it had air conditioning, was jam packed, and had cheesy eighties hits every step of the way. on the way, we got even more packed in with a bunch of honduran guards with big guns. that was exciting. even more exciting was when we pulled over and everyone was asked to get out to be searched. some women on the micro told us that we could stay on, that they were just searching the men. so i watched them pat everyone down from the window. the we continued on our jolly way to san pedro sula, which seemed like a crazy place, and a very friendly man led us to the bus terminal. we waited on the bus for 15 minutos or so, as vendors yelled at us from every side, in and out of the bus. we bought two bags of water through the window, for very cheap, like 4 lempiras total. the cries of aguasaguasaguas and pollopollopollo and pastelespastelespasteles and papitaspapitaspapitas and directodirectodirecto continued for quite a while, and everytime that we made even the slightest stop, the cries continued. we bought some fried plantain chips that were yummy. that bus ride was long and it was a good thing that we made friends with the bus attendant (not the driver, but the guy who yells and collects the money) because we got off the bus at the wrong place, and he put us back on, laughing. we always are confused about the buses, because si uno no sabe ni donde vas ni donde está, es dificil, sabés? we got off the bus in santa rita de copan, and boarded a bus to copan, finally. we bought more water and some hardtack that could have pegged and taken out a small child, and moved on. we had some great friends join us on the bus. one was an evangelical man with more gold in his mouth than teeth, maybe. maybe not. he was happy to share the palabra, and 18 years ago it changed his life, and why not let it change yours? he was muy suave, and asked for donations, then left. also, a girl with a grandmother and a chicken in a bag boarded. the chicken was nervous, and they had to ask for another bag from the driver. the bags were there in the first place because of the windy roads. and it was windy, and steep. i think we went 40 km at about 10 mph. subiendo, subiendo.

we got to see alot of beautiful countryside, lots of beautiful cows with short horns and floppy ears. honduras seems like a cowboy country. everyone i have talked to has been exceedingly friendly. but i guess those are the types of people you want to talk to.

we are staying in a little hostel, and we ate pizza last night. pizza with shrimp on top? is that typical in honduras? italy?anywhere? this morning we got up and got ready to go by buying a little breakfast and eating it in the plaza. then we headed to copan. it was just a short walk from the city to the ruins. red macaws welcomed us into the park. the sweet thing about copan is that you can see the decorative aspects of mayan culture. there are tons of stelae preserved (at least to some extent) and its so lovely. king 18 rabbit did a lot of building, as well as smoke jaguar and kax pac, the last king of copan. we took a little side trail and i saw a morpho!! que alegria. it was resplendent. we got to see alot of beautiful countryside, lots of beautiful cows with short horns and floppy ears. honduras seems like a cowboy country. everyone i have talked to has been exceedingly friendly. but i guess those are the types of people you want to talk to.we are staying in a little hostel, and we ate pizza last night. pizza with shrimp on top? is that typical in honduras? italy? anywhere?this morning we got up and got ready to go by buying a little breakfast and eating it in the plaza. then we headed to copan. it was just a short walk from the city to the ruins. red macaws welcomed us into the park. the sweet thing about copan is that you can see the decorative aspects of mayan culture. there are tons of stelae preserved (at least to some extent) and its so lovely. king 18 rabbit did a lot of building, as well as smoke jaguar and kax pac, the last king of copan. we took a little side trail and i saw a morpho!! que alegria. it was resplendent.

omoa honduras

it fills me with great sadness that i havent uploaded pictures yet. sherry asked for some and all i can say is, ten paciencia. or, for her, in portuguese it may be, tengy pachiencia. i dont know.

also, i am going to try to format these things into semi-legible writings. it probably wont last long, tough.

ok, so the last time i wrote,we were in lvingston. that was a cute little town. you know, when drunk men are dancing to bob marley, you know andrea would love it. it is only accesable by water, and that made it pretty, i think, because not a whole lot of junk was lying about, visible to the untrained eye. we basically just hung out there and took in the city. we sat at the beach, but didnt get in, because it wasnt especially alluring. i think we started a trend because suddenly there were 20 other people, all taking in the sea breeze. later we went out to eat, and i was really feeling my sunburnt-thanks-to-rio-dulce-tour knees and legs.i also havent had an appetite since provo, which is weird, because the food is so good. i had eaten fish earlier in the day, and it was yummy. but that night all i had was a coco frio and some flan. healthy? probably not. we walked the main street a couple times and saw and heard some men playing the drums. we stopped and listened. livingston has garifuna people, who are caribbeans. one lady wanted to braid my hair. the last thing i wanted was someone putting their hands in my hairs, though it probably would have tamed this mess. anyway, the next morning we hopped on a boat to puerto barrios, and when we got there, we hopped on a micro to corinto, in honduras, and then after we passed through the border with el chino ruben, and exchanged some quetzales for lempiras, we hopped on a bus to omoa, where we are presently. i wasnt feeling to hot at that point, and i wasnt too happy about the situation, but after a drink of two bags of water, i was much better. we are staying in a place called rolys place. he seems like he is kind of sick of people and their stupid questions, and its funny. there are free bikes, so we biked to a sweet fortress. it explained the whole cristobal colon thing, and talked about pirates. speaking of pirates, we wont be going to the waterfalls round here, because !!robbery!! armed!! with gun and machete!! according to the sign that roly made. we played at the beach after that and made friends with a little boy named garito who was the cutest little thing. he was happy to play with the little hermit crab we found, and i used my snorkel and mask to find little shells to put in his dump truck slash aquarium. so cute. he wanted to use my mask, but i told him it would be too big. but he kept trying to prove that he was a big boy, by swimming in water too deep for him. his little brother was cute and a little bit scared until we got to shallower water. he started dancing. his name was tutui. blue little eyes, so cute. finally, gardito proved his bigness and i let him use the mask and snorkel. the first time he went under water, he went ALL THE WAY UNDER. i pulled him up, he was laughing, and i tried to explain that the point of the snorkel was to stay on the water surface. he sort of got the hang of it. we left by telling him mucho gusto, and walked out of the water. at the edge of the water, we found a big snail slurking around in the water. it was big, and didnt seem to care when i tapped it with my foot. the sun was setting bright orange on the bay, and i was liking the place. we got a bite to eat, and the fanta was delectable. this morning we biked around to explore, i found some little shells, and i shook the hand of a bra salesman. i think i will go now. tomorrow we will be in copan. i love you all. hasta luegito.

el alto sol me quemó pt II

ok, here i am again. i feel the need to write this down so i dont forget. we woke up on sunday morning, and we wanted to find a church, but we couldnt find a branch in poptún. we knew there was one there, but we didnt know where it was located. it was funny because later in the day i found a book of mormon in the book exchange that had the elders phone number in it. if we had only found it sooner!! we hung out and relaxed the whole morning. played cards, talked to people. we havent met too many americans. i think i started to have a slight english accent. we signed up to go on a walk to a cave. the man that was our guide was named narciso, chicho for short. he was a good guy, and the cave was neat. we bushwacked through the jungle, got ticks crawling all over our feet, and made it to the cave. inside, we were greeted by bats and the freakiest cave spider your eyes have never seen. it was hanging from the stelagtite like, what do you want, it was big. chicho played the stelagtites like a marimba. i asked him if he had ever slept in the cave. he looked at me like i was dumb. of course it was a dumb question. there are very few reasons to sleep in a wet cave with murcielagos and cave spiders breathing down your neck. the formations were beautiful, and i was glad we took the walk. when we got back we were more freaked out about the ticks that were climbing all over us, and i killed a bunch of them. chicho laughed, but he also tried to remove them from his clothing. we were so dang hot at that point that we went swimming in the natural pool there. it was green. mmmm. i snorkeled a little bit, we mostly just cooled off in there, reverently, you know, because it was sunday. that night nothing special happened, and sleeping was much more pleasant because i was clean and i got the rhythm of the mosquito net down. oh, i forgot, the first night, we were walking along in the dark and i shined my light and . . . there was a guard! we screamed, then laughed, and he said buenas noches. it was funny. monday morning we woke up, ate breakfast, and talked to a british guy who is doing scuba training in honduras. he was friendly and may have convinced us to go to honduras rather than belize. we went into poptún on a tuk tuk, said a fond goodbye to finca ixobel, and hopped on a dilapidated fuente del norte bus. it was pretty full when we got on, and i sat next to a man named luis. he was going to visit family in morales. he is a guard at tikal and told me all sorts of interesting things about the place, like how the sun aligns just right on may 1st and october 21st, i think, and it lights up a lovely pink color. it was the first time that i got to have a good conversation with a guatemalan rather than a european, and i was glad to have such a friend. when we got to rio dulce, i said goodbye to my friend, and we were stressed out a bit by the city. it was loca. some guy helped us get on a boat, and we zoomed across the water into a little tributary that has a hostel that some swiss guys run. the egrets at the entrance were unreal. they werent smiling, but they werent evil. beautiful. the place was a little tropical hide a way, and it was lovely, except for the evil deer flies. these literal suckers were a menace. but we slept fine, and it was tranquil. we jumped on a lancha right at our hotel in the morning, and went on the rio dulce tour to livingston. it was beautiful. we saw a million birds, stopped at a hotspring, and drank a coco frio. then we got here. livingston is lovely, calm, and there will be music tonight! and we ate ice cream! and i am sunburnt! and i need a shower! i am glad you cant see me right now! this trip has been beautiful so far and the excitement of sololá is making me insane. and there will be reefs in honduras! i love you all, hasta luego!

el sol está alto part I

these notes are probably so annoying to read, especially because they are full of typos and weird punctuation due to my using en english keyboard set to spanish here in livingston. thats where we are now, it is on the atlantic coast. but let me run through where i have been so far. the last time i wrote the blog i was in flores. we jumped on a tuk-tuk and drove to santa elena. it was my personal dream to ride a tuk tuk, and it was lovely. they are like little 3 wheelers that have a canopy over thema dn they are little. very cute, amy would have a hey dey. when we got to santa elena, the men were more than happy to put us on a microbus to finca ixobel. luckily, that was where we wanted to go. they are a little forceful and i thank heavens that i speak spanish. anyway, we were the first ones on and it was nice. then we drove through the middle of town and the thing got packed. i was sweating like a pig as we moved down the street that was barely wide enough for us. we parked in a tight spot and waited for other people so that we could fill the thing to the very brim. it was uncomfrotable. little girls with buckets of mangoes came to the window, trying to sell them. boys with icy buckets of aguas came around, sulkily moving away when we told them we didnt want any. the ride to the finca was long, and the scenery was beautiful. sometimes i just like to ride and look out the window. we arrived at poptun, where most people got off, if they hadn{t gotten off already. finca ixobel was just outside of town and it was a dream. the juxtaposition of the craziness we had experienced in town and the quiet and bird sounding finca was nice. we picked a house on stilts with no electricity to sleep in because it was cheap. the finca is big and spread out. i saw the sweetest lizard running on its back legs! it was neat, then i saw a male that had a big head fin, and it ran around, and these made me happy. the food was good there, and it was serve yourself basically, and you just wrote down everything you used. at night we were pretty freaked out because we were in the middle of nowhere, and i just had a flashlight. as we were walking back to our treehouse, i shined my light on the most beautiful little tarantula. it had a reddish abdomen and bluish legs, head, and thorax. it climbed back into its hole and i counted myself lucky for having seen it. that night i slept beneath mosquito netting for the first time, though i think the slit in the side kept me from feeling the full relief of the netting. i got some bites. we keep joking about malaria, but it wouldnt be fun to have it, no doubt. this is part one, because i need to go.

other worldy

this is montezuma oropendula. for future reference.

guatemala city-flores-tikal

This is going to be a shakedown of the last three days in Guatemala. I hope. Amy and I arrived at about 8 pm Guate time, which I think is the same as Utah time. I´m not sure about this, you should check. We were picked up by a man named Victor who was holding a DOS LUNAS sign. He drove us to Dos Lunas, and we basically went to bed. It was a little surreal to realize that I was actually in Guatemala, because the flight was so short. Max 6 hours from Utah to Guatemala City. That morning we decided to buy tickets to go to Flores, which is a toursit town close to the Tikal Ruins. We got on a red bus, and rode forever and ever, and then realized that we did the whole run of the bus. It was actually a lovely thing because we got to see alot of Guate City. We then rode the bus back to the bus depot, bought our tickets, and wandered around for a while. We went to the main plaza and looked at the vendors things, and let me just say, Guate city is unlike any city I have been to. It is a mad house. So I was glad to see things from the bus. It´s a very lively city, but I think any more time there and I would have been insane. It´s loud, you know, like a city. I am taller than everyone. My castellano is working just fine for me. Amy has made fun of me every time that i say something with the portenyo shh, so I have tried to have a better accent. I´m afraid though that the argentina won´t get out of me. Call it pride, call it what you will. The Guatemalan lilt can be a little hard to understand. I think it´s more relaxed spanish. I´m no linguist. You tell me. Anyway, after the insane day at the city we went back to Dos Lunas and put our stuff in the closet. So Amy and I only have a small backpack each right now. It´s nice to travel like hippies. We got on a Linea Dorada bus at 9 pm and headed to Flores. The bus ride was about 9 hours long, including a 2 hour ¨layover¨ in Poptún, but I slept through that. Just so you know, the movie for the night was American Ninja 2 and I tell you i have never seen something more compelling. Action, ninja skills, and great acting combined to put me asleep about 5 minutes after it started. I recommend it over Tylenol PM. And, so you know, the plane movie was The Painted Veil, which I had never heard of, and it was a lovely film. I recommend that one. Moving on. We got to Flores yesterday morning at about 7 in the morning, and we promptly boarded a micro to got to Tikal. It was a long ride and I nodded off before we got to the entrance of Tikal. We got reservations and wandered into the park. It was hot and muggy and it felt good to sweat Guate city out of my system. The first animal we saw was the darndest thing. The call of this bird is wild, and I recommend googling it. I recorded it, so you can hear it later. It´s called Montezuma Oropendula. Amazing. It lit´rally entranced me. And then we saw the spider monkeys, climbing through the tall ceiba, cedar, and other trees. They were evil and cute, and they didn´t venture to come near us. I took some terrible pictures. The ruins are inexpressibly awesome. My imagination was going a bit wild as we climbed in and around and atop the temples and complexes. We took a lot of time exploring. It was surreal to climb the trails through the jungle and then have a temple pop up right before you. We went back to the hotel during the hottest part of the day to swim. We stayed at Tikal Inn, and it was lujo. But not too lujo, I mean, we could afford it. We took a nature trail and saw some parrots, you know, hanging in the hood. Then, today, we went back and we were confounded again. The first day we had looked at little ruins mainly, and then today we stumbled upon the big mothers. We climbed temples that towered over the jungle, on rickety wooden ladders, and I got nervous a few times indeed. The view was astounding and I thought alot about the people who lived there. Most of the intricate artwork had eroded, and I thought that if I was thinking it was lovely now, it must have been a diamond back in the day when everything was ornate and decorated. We also saw a toucan. The one with the bluish beak. I would talk more about the ruins, but I can´t really express it, so I will load up some pictures someday. So the days were lovely and full and sweaty, unorthodoxly sweaty, and now I am sweating away in Flores. We were driven back, through Santa Elena, to get money. At the ATM there was a guard with a semi automatic gun, just hanging out while the money changers changed the money. We got some money, then moved on to Flores, where we are now. We are staying at a place called Mirador del Lago, the lago being Petén de Itzá. We are right on the lake. It´s pretty, but I don´t think I will venture to swim in it. Unless I get terribly desperate. We are just staying here for the night and then it will be back down to Poptún to stay at Finca Ixobel, which everyone has been recommending from day 1. The plan is then to go to Río Dulce, take a river tour to Livingstón, and then take a ferry to Belize. We will see about that. But I won´t write anymore about the future, because who knows. I take some comfort in knowing that I won´t be living in tropical rainforest the whole time. Amy says the highlands are more gentle on the sweatglands. I hope you all are doing well. I forgot to mention that I saw an elaterid, and it was lovely. It clicked at me. Also, I look like a hippy. Sorry to loved ones. The thing is, I can´t control my hair, when it is this humid and windy AT THE SAME TIME. And my chacos are soaking in the soul sole of the country on which i walk. also, i have drunk alot of water. alot of water. alot of water. salvavidas. que rica el agua pura. ok. i think i am going to end this. i will update more in the future, but let´s not talk about it now.