First Weekend Away (and 1 month into our Semester!)

Throughout our semester we have a lot of free weekends but also weekends where we spend time outside of Antigua with our professor and group of students (which is only 7 kids, and I love having such a small group!) This weekend we went to Guatemala City! We were all super excited to get away from Antigua for a little while, even though we love the town and call it home now. We couldn't wait to experience something new!

On Friday after an awesome, chill day of class full of games and fun conversations, we all piled into a van with our professor Paul and his assistant Libby and we headed to Guatemala City! It's about 45 minutes away from Antigua, depending on how fast you drive.

Our first stop was the National Palace. Among other things, it is famous to our professor for never being open on the days when he wants to take his students through. He said that usually, they plan to go on a tour at one of their set times, but then the tour gets cancelled for one reason or another. We arrived being skeptical, but were told there was a tour of the Palace at 2pm, so we went to McDonald's for a quick lunch. We also had time to walk through the market, and wow was it huge! It just kept going! If I hadn't been with my friends, I would have probably been lost forever.

At 2pm we showed up to the National Palace, and were told that the building was closed due to some government function. Ha. We laughed and left, heading to our hotel. We arrived at the Best Western where we would be spending our weekend. We were probably a ridiculous amount of excited to be in a hotel when we arrived. The place was super nice and upon arriving we discovered that every 2 people got their own room, and we each got our own queen-sized bed! Now, Cindy (my host mom)'s house is really nice and we love it there, but it's definitely a different living situation than we are used to. We felt so pampered in the hotel, and I think that's really good that we did. I realized that I'm really used to vacations and hotels back home--not that we always go on trips, but I have stayed in plenty of hotels before, and I realize now that I take them for granted, when a lot of people do not get the luxury of staying in a hotel. But living in such a different world here, and realizing this is what most of the world is actually like, is really important to understand, and I wish I did get more excited to go to hotels, and not take them for granted so much.

We relaxed in our rooms for a bit and then at 6pm went to dinner at San Martin, this really nice restaurant that we've actually been to in Antigua as well. I got a Balsamic Pizza, and it was super good!! It's always fun to eat out as a group because we go to nicer restaurants and its just always a fun change of scenery. After dinner we walked to this really nice bookstore and Paul also bought us gelato! It was a really fun night. When we got back to our hotel, we met in a conference room to talk about our semester so far. Because we rented the room, food was also provided so people kept bringing us food even though we were stuffed! We then met in Libby's room to watch this documentary called Living on One Dollar (its on Netflix, check it out!) about these two boys who go to Guatemala to live in poverty like so many people in this country do. It was so interesting and a really good movie to watch!

Saturday morning we got up and ate breakfast in the hotel. One of my favorite things is hotels that provide breakfast--it just makes me so happy, so it was a good way to wake up. After this we went back to the National Palace to check on tours again. There was a tour at 10am, but it was only 9:30am so we decided to wait at the palace instead of leaving. While we waited, Leslie and I went across the street to this big park that was basically just a big expanse of cement with a big fountain in the middle. There were a lot of people walking around and a man selling bird seed. There were pigeons everywhere, and after chasing them around for a while I decided that I wanted to catch one. The man selling birdseed was really nice and gave me a lot without making me pay for it (I think because my pigeon-catching attempts were so pathetic and he wanted me to catch one) but I just could not do it! At one point this guy came over with his daughter and just snatched one up from the ground and so I got to pet it but I was really frustrated that they would not stay still enough for me to catch one! I attempted many times but never succeeded, but there were people around that were very encouraging and I felt like I bonded a bit with these strangers as they supported my attempts. At 10am we were told that the person who sells tickets for the tours was not around today, so we did not get to tour the Palace. Instead, we went to this park that had this 3D map of Guatemala. You could walk around it and see all the mountains and volcano's and bodies of water and it was very neat!

At noon we headed to the zoo in Guatemala City! We ate at Pollo Campero for lunch and then headed in to see the animals. It was really neat because the zoo was set up in a way that showed there was an obvious attempt to make the exhibits look as natural as possible, so it felt more like we were in the wild than in the zoo's in the U.S. We saw a lot of normal exhibits, like lions and tigers, and then some exhibits with animals only found in central america. It was very cool! At one point we went into this big 'bird cage' that had a bunch of trees in it where birds just flew around and you could look at them up close, and randomly two lemurs hopped out from the trees and just walked around the exhibit with the other guests! One girl was able to sit next to one and pet it. It was very wild!

After the zoo we headed back to the hotel to relax. At 4:50pm, we went to Oakland mall, this surprisingly enormous and very glamorous mall in the city, for dinner. The mall had at least 5 stories and was such a shocking change from the rest of the city. We ate in this really cool restaurant that had a huge aquarium in it. We sat right by it so throughout our meal we got to watch sharks and a huge eel swim around us! At 6:30pm, we headed to the VIP theater in the mall to watch Deep Water Horizon, the new movie about the BP oil spill. The theater was set up with really nice arm chairs that reclined. When we sat down, waiters came to take our orders from the menus they provided! I ended up ordering chocolate cake and a cappuccino, and just as the movie was starting they brought it out to me, and I got to enjoy the movie with dessert and coffee. It was awesome! And the movie was great, I totally recommend it. When I heard about the oil spill when it happened, all I heard was about all the fish that died and how terrible the company was for allowing so much oil to get into our water. What I didn't know was how many people lost their lives because of this accident, and this movie told the story so well, and it's a story I think more people should know about! After the movie we headed back and went to bed.

Sunday morning we woke up, ate breakfast, and said goodbye to our hotel. We then drove 45 minutes to Casa de Dios, this huge megachurch that holds about 20,000 people! We got headsets when we got in so we could hear the translator, but after the amazing worship part of the service, when the translator began speaking, I knew there was no way I could sit through a service listening to her. She was very behind and missed a lot of what the pastor said! So instead I enjoyed listening to the pastor speak in Spanish and got to practice my listening skills. The service was 3 hours long! But it was really fun. After church we went to a restaurant that I cannot remember the name of and I ate some really good enchiladas.

We got back home around 3pm and napped and then did homework. That night we watched the cringe-worthy debate and then headed to bed, ready for week 5 of Spanish class!!

-Kara

P.s. Surprise! I dyed my hair blonde too!

Getting gelato in Guatemala City

The zoo!

Those who know me know I LOVED this exhibit

The National Palace. Still not sure about the inside, but its pretty on the outside!

Balsamic Pizza

Map of Guatemala

The mall! And a white Scarlett Johansson

The restaurant (That whole yellow thing is the eel!)

Casa de Dios