MARCH 5th:

Ali and I had a blast on our road trip down here! The Coq was so clear! The sun was shining. It was soo nice. 
 

 Alex at a Timmy's stop.

Beautiful weather for our roadie.

  

All of our suitcases with donated items.

      
I had the pleasure of meeting her Uncle and Grandpa. I learnt some cool facts about Point Roberts :). We met the Peru Crew from South Kam at the hotel. Most of us got about an hour of sleep!

Ah! It has been quite the day. We woke up this morning at 3:45 AM to drive to the Vancouver airport for our 7:40 AM flight. Here's us at the Vancouver Airport:
 

The flight was not bad at all -- a little bit of turbulence that was scary though. I am currently writing from the George W Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. It is very cloudy and not that warm :(. We will arrive in Guatemala city around 10 PM and drive about forty five minutes to Antigua, where we are staying. The trees in Kamloops better not be blooming without me! 
 

 Miles asleep at the airport:).

   

 Shane and Miles.. So Cute!

   

Riley, Shane and Miles.

 

Grandpa - hope you are doing well :). I definitely did not know that I would be home sick this early. It hasn't even been a full day yet! But yeah, I miss everybody back at home. Mom, Row and Sara have a safe trip to Victoria. Anyways, I'll post some more once I get into Guatemala. I know it's going to be quite the culture shock, but we are all SO excited.
          
------------------------------------------
Hola! We left for Guatemala from Houston at 7:20 PM. (Guatemala is two hours ahead of Kamloops). We met a local on the plane! He taught us some good vocabulary specific to Guatemala. KCS from Kamloops was on the same flight. They are travelling to a city in northern Guatemala. We arrived in Guatemala City at 10 ish.. Instantly, we noticed the CRAZY humidity.. 50% to be exact. I have perma- clammy hands. :) The airport was huge and new! Most of the locals are very friendly and help us with our Espanol. A taxi driver was talking to Zander very quickly and he replied, "No hablo Espanol"..but the man was actually speaking English..:) 

Driving through the city was nuts! There are no seat belts and they don't use blinkers either.. The roads are pretty damaged, windy and very steep. There were lots of speed bumps. The weirdest thing: there were TONS of fast food restaurants (McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell etc). They were everywhere. There were lots of store fronts with signs that I could not pick out any Spanish words at all. They were all kind of run down; it was definitely a less fortunate neighbourhood. Barbed wire fences everywhere.There were lots of stray dogs on the side of the road! The drainage system for the whole city are open trenches along side of the road. 

It was a forty five minute drive until Antigua, where we are staying. The city is surrounded by walls. It's so beautiful. The buildings are all stucco and old. All of the roads are cobble stone! It makes for a bumpy ride. Most of the streets are all one ways.. There are huge wooden, Spanish-style doors and balconies. There are quaint restaurants everywhere. 

 Posada la Merced - our hotel.

Our hotel is SO sweet! The lobby has huge ceilings. The keys have a huge wooden block attached, no key cards here. :) 

   

There is a garden in the middle of the hotel with roses and tropical plants. There is a beautiful courtyard out back with huge plants, benches and stones to walk on. 
      

 Looking out of our room to the entrance to the Lobby.

   

Courtyard view from outside our room.

There are three floors and about thirty six rooms. Our bedroom (Riche and Ali are my roomies) has three beds and a bathroom with only a shower (no bath). There are wooden angel figurines everywhere. The decor is very simple -- we have a desk, dresser, fan, one painting and a lamp. 
 

 

 Half of our room..Two out of three beds.

 

The third floor.

Our room.

 
On each floor there is a huge jug of filtered water that we use to drink, wash faces, brush our teeth etc. The floor tiles are all kind of broken; the hotel has lots of character. Mrs. Simpson's room, as well as Sara's and Lyndsey's have these windows covered by shutters that you can open during the day. Our room's view is the volcano. It's nuts! The walls are paper thin and you can here everything in the halls.. For those of you who don't know, everywhere in Guatemala you cannot flush toilet paper. You have to dipose of it in the garbage. Yuck! It's such a habit; we have to be conscious of what we are doing at all times. At 1:30 AM, Riche and I were brushing our teeth (we have to tag team to help with the filtered water), we heard roosters cock-a-doodle-doo-ing outside of our room!

View from our window!