Today I feel like I swallowed a gallon of dust, my eyes and nose burn, my throat feels like I´ve sucked on way too many cigarettes, and I just long for a big clean mountaintop breath and a roll in soft green grass.

But then we tramp down to the parque calvario, the street is full of women in their colorful garb selling lilies and rue, daisies and ferny asparagus. We run our fingers through the asparagus and tell one of the women that our grandmother´s name is Rue. The traveling vendors have set up rows of wares for the upcoming lent celebration - you can get everything from pink colored popcorn to pizza and Guatemala´s version of a funnel cake. The festiva has rides too and as we weave through the web of them we´re certain that Guatemala not only has a direct connection to purchasing the U.S.´s used up schoolbuses, they also deal in ancient fair rides - one´s strung and teetering together in a way that would rouse the likes of those drawn to adventure sports and multiple injury lawyers.

So, today and yesterday we had school off and I can´t impress our need for Friday. Our brains resembled taffy and our sponge ablility was nada. On Saturday morning we pulled ourselves from slumber and walked in moonlight through the streets to meet up with 3 other students to climb Volcan Santa Maria. We rode in the back of an open pickup truck, freezing our rears and ears off and got dropped off at a small town at the base of the volcano. The temp was 5 degrees Celsius, you can do the math. The owners of the Spanish school, Nora and Rolanda led us up the mountainside in early morning twilight. As we climbed you could see down into the lights of Xela; low clouds hovered over the City and with each step we made our escape. No cars, no music, no exploding firecrackers or other gringos, just rocks and earth, trees, farms full of cabbages, onions, stick-woven walls, patches of lilies and foxglove (el corazon de Jesus) known for it´s natural ability to slow the heart down. And another tree called chichicastes that supposedly you can make a salve from to help with burns, and an orange invasive parastic vine, that we have in Carolina as well, that Guatemaltecos use to combat cancer. Up and up we went, with our motley crew being passed by Mayans on their pilgrimage to the summit. Their limbs and legs, deprived of 3 days of food or water, moved effortlessly and with certainty, leaving us in the dust.

The morning made for multiple moments of lost in translation. Since the school owners led the hike, most of the explanations and descriptions were in Spanish. Our first confusion came with the description of the Mayans and a simultaneous discussion about serpent bites. Seems Matthew thought they told us that if any of the women summitting the volcan failed to honor the fast, they´d be brought down off the mountain, have their hand cut off and immediately cauterized in a fire. It seems Rolando was talking more about the snake bite. This made for mucho belly rolling with our leaders.

The next surprise was that we learned that we weren´t hiking to the summit - instead we were walking a third of the way up volcan Santa Maria and around it to view active Volcan Santiaguito. How we learned, however, was when nora yelled, ´´Eruption,´ and we saw a huge billowing cloud rising over the la colina, hill. Now Matthew, inheriting his wanderlust for exploding volcanoes from his father, just nearly fainted and set his mind quickly to determining how long we had before our lungs began to singe, and firey mud, wind and trees came whirling at us. But, hey, no one else seemed to be nervous, and nora said it erupts about every 20 or 30 minutes, so we continued to plod towards the crater. Eventually, we stopped about a half mile from what looked like moonscape, and froze our asses off in the shadow of Santa Maria until her fiesty son gave a hell of a show -- rumbling sounds, steam and likely toxic sulfa and chlorine gas, flying towards the sky like what can one only describe as a mushroom clould like on tv or in your picture books. Needless to say, we were all in awe, and we watched it blow four more times before we scampered off. Somewhere out in the distance, Rolando said, was el mar, the sea, but for all the haze from buring trash and kitchen stoves we never saw it.

Amazing

"CURIASIDADES Y NOVEDADES PRODUCTOS AMERICANOS," says the silly sign on the store next to our Xela home. I´m still too ashamed to look in the window and see what we americans are up to. Heather peeked and told me they are miniature horse figurines.

Anyway, what an amazing couple of days, couple of hours we´ve had. Heather and I, together with a very small group of other students and instructors, just had our rich world rocked in la Stopia, a cluster of neighborhoods made out of corrigated metal, cardboard, bits of cement block, and, at one point, a wall made from various car parts, hoods, roofs, chasis, etc. Our school sponsors a small project -- basically bringing bags of fresh food, vegetables and bread, to four small hovels, where many children live with just a couple of women.

We entered their encampment by crossing a drainage ditch, where dead birds and various bits of Dupont basura, trash, lay scattered about. When I gandered over the side, a kid was picking a cellphone out of the grey water and putting it to his ear. The children are ages, say, two to ten, and they immediately swarmed us all, grabbing our hands and hugging us, and taking us back to an inner courtyard of little pigs, scruffy dogs and, of course, more trash.

Needless to say, our senses were peaking. The food was given out, about ten grocery bags worth, plus lots of individual pieces of bread to roughly 25 children. Let me just say now, these are beautiful kids, healthy looking for the most part, and soon as I figure out how to put pictures on this thing I´ll show you.

Eventually, we went into some of the one-room lean-tos, where there were gapping holes in the walls and creosote on everything from the cocinas, cooking areas in the same room. Inside, Heather and I met Wilson, an 8-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, and his mom, Isabel. Wilson, Isabel told us, is always sick from the cold. He does an impressive impression of a gallo, rooster. He laughed constantly while we were in there, and I did the token tourist thing and took his and my picture. And then showed it to him. He has a nice smile.

Then we took all the kids up to a dry, grass playing field, and helped them with their homework. I had Ruth and Danny. You may have noticed that many Guatemaltecos have very Gringo names. I don´t know the story on this yet, as my Spanish still sounds much like a radio dial changing channels every second. Anyway, Ruth, who is six, had an assignment to draw pictures of palabras, words, that begin with A. I only know six words in Spanish that begin with the letter A, and it took an hour to think of them.

Eventually, the kids stopped caring about the tarea, homework, and everybody started playing games. We did some ring around the rosey, jump rope, and of course, futbol. I was no match for these kids and was immediately relegated to the goalie postion. I couldn´t understand how they said it in Spanish, they just smiled and pushed me between two would-be goal posts. Rocks.
In the end, they all hugged us. It was fantastic, and Heather and I are still smiling at each other even though we are exhausted.

In other Xela news: the city trash workers went on strike this week, and believe me, this is a disaster. There is trash everywhere in Xela already, I can only imagine what happens now. Also, it seems that it is a Gauatemalen tradition to light off a brick of firecrackers, outside the door of any home where someone has a birthday or something to celebrate, between four and five in the morning. Apparently, we were the victims of infilade fire yesterday morning, because I don´t think anyone in our home had a birthday. And finally in the news, I had finally had my first bowel movement after five days, the last two of which were miserable, and Heather, I believe, is still shit-spray.

On Saturday, we plan to hike around the dormant cone of Volcan de Santa Maria, and already around the square, people are setting up booths for Carnival next week. Again, amazing.

As Antigua is to Santa Fe, Xela is to the Meadowlands-come-Back Bay of Boston. A dirty, smoggy centerfuge of animals, people, dustbowls and machines amongst tight colonial streets, that I´m growing to love.

The walk to school is pleasant enough, as sort of frogger experience: hurdle crippled dogs, elude the jousting bicycles, weave through the cars that don´t care to see you, and still take time to notice the women balancing firewood and baked goods on their heads. But there´s no time to act numb, as they are serious about learning, ugh, at the language school.

The instructors are decent enough, though at times it seems like our non existent Spanish is better than their English. No matter, after just two five hour classes I already know more than two years of high school and another college gave me. Perhaps we are paying more attention, or rather, we are showing up for class and wanton for communication with more than gringos.

The east coast flair doesn´t hold up in Xela, pronounced shay la, when it comes to the climate. Northern California all the way. Mornings smoke the breath from you and the day scalds your scalp, by 5 though we´re sporting our wool hats and crawling under piles of covers for slumber. It´s the dry season now, so dry in fact our eyelids hurt to close.
Our Guatemalan family is awesome, more than we ever expected and at this point, we´d be happy living here for the next year. We have our own room, bathroom and the insistent love of an ancient Rotweiller named Dolly. Malda cooks us up three massive Guatemalan meals a day, we don't cook or clean, and if she sees us studying after lunch she orders us to take a siesta- perfecto!

450 pounds of luggage

hi, everyone, we made it all safe and sound, and we didn't even lose our luggage or most of our minds. you grammarians should start getting use to irregular punctuation from us because we already can't figure out these keyboards and the hazy screen is making me want for bifocals. ah, just the beginning of frustration.

so far, guatemala, or guate, is treating us very well. the sky is blue and the volcanos are huge. we are staying in antigua, this amazing collection of colonial buildings, cobblestone streets and gardens and ornate churches previously felled by earthquakes. Today we went to Convent Cappachino and in the interior basement was a circluar room for chanting. Matthew crooned out a quirky home tune and the sound just moved all around you, reverberating up, circling you and escaping out into the free open air. And to think this was built in the 1500s

the bus ride, or chicken bus as they are called, into Antigua was an exciting adventure, and so far we've only been greviously overcharged by the taxi from the airport. what can you do when you are standing there with 450 pounds of stuff.

We´'re here until Sunday and then we will attempt to grab a bus to Xela where we will be studying Spanish. One thing travel does to you in a land of foreign sounds is humble and stumble you right away. We're doing ok and Antigua is completely manageable, but can't wait to start conversing beyond a single noun and verb combination.

So far it's not as cold as we thought it would be, but at night we did grab out wool hats. The day kissed us with a sweet sunburn today and we're headed out now for a mojito and a cuba libre. The town is quite hopping at night. Hopefully, I won't need to use my earplugs for a sweet slumber.

Hasta luego!
Matthew and Heather

Amtrak to Guatemala via Florida?

We are jobless, that's about the best thing I can say about this week. Who needs the grind of working for the man when you can grind yourself to death, trying to get those quintesential things of American life in order, like a job, mortgage, healthcare spending accounts, 1040 A's, and battling Bank of America to get access to your own money.

It doesn't matter now, for tonight, when we climb aboard the cozy confines of the Silver Star, leaving Raliegh and bound for Tampa, we are officially under way on this adventure. Smash a champagne bottle on the bow. Everybody wants to know how excited we are about going to live in another culture, and so far, all we can say is we are excited about getting out of this place. It's time sit on the beach in Venice, Florida, for four days, and count antifungal creams, mosquito nets and figure out what the exchange rate from dollars to quetzals is.

We fly to Guatemala City in 5 days. We have klonopin. We are on autopilot.