Happy New Years!

So the name of my blog no longer applies, as we are now in Guatemala. Pretend the address is Julie's South American adventures, but I'm not going to change it. I wouldn't want to mess up such a huge fan base......

This new adventure started out at 2:30am Dec 31st when we woke up to go to the airport. We had a hellofa time trying to get on our flight. Allan had booked the tickets online but the ticket number they gave us didn't match anything in the system. So we were sent back and forth between companies and no one seemed to be able to do anything for us. Hours went by and we eventually missed our flight. Luckily some nice people at Air Canada took pity on us and helped us out and got us on another flight a few hours later. We had a quick stopover in Miami and then to Guatemala City.

When we arrived it was really eerie. The ENTIRE city was shut down for New Years. I mean this is a city of 4.5 million people and we saw about 3 cars and zero people on the way to our hostel. It was a ghost town. Luckily we had already booked a hostel or we would have been wandering around this city with all of our stuff and no where to go. Ecuador was always the most dangerous on Sunday's when everything was closed, so I was a little apprehensive.

We quickly grabbed some food and went to the bank before it got dark and set up shop in our room for the night. Our exciting New Years Eve was spent watching CSI Miami and eating take out fried chicken. There is no one I would rather spend New Years with than Horatio Cane. Oops, I mean Allan. We both passed out before 7:30, it was a long day! I did wake up at 11:58 as everyone started setting off firecrackers in the street, which sounded more like gunshots. It was almost deafening. I don't know where all of these people came from to light them all off as we didn't see anyone beforehand.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn because we had gone to bed so early. We walked around and tried to find somewhere to eat, but everything was still closed. Luckily there was a market set up in the main square so we had some arroz con pollo- chicken and rice. We ended up hanging around the square for the most of the day as there were actually some people there and things going on. We stopped in at a church and listened to some of the mass. Only then to be harassed by a man outside when we wouldn't accept his "Jesus is our savior" pamphlet. He told us that we were ignorant and would go to hell. We tried to pretend we didn't speak Spanish but he still went on for quite some time. His friend had perched himself on some stairs and was scream-preaching to the crowd around him. He started bad mouthing Americans and Westerners, so we decided to get out of there.

We also saw a guy eating fire, some kids smashing bottles and throwing them at each other- us sitting only a few feet away, and many, many people relieving themselves anywhere they chose to. Oh, to be back in South America.

This morning we hoped on a bus to Antigua, which was about 1.5 hours away. It was the same as one of our elementary school buses but more brightly rainbow painted. As with Ecuador, there was a man hanging outside of the door yelling our destination and the driver would slow down just enough for people to hop on and off at their leisure. Other than passengers we also had people selling "authentic Japanese peanuts", "the new and upcoming cookies with vitamins and minerals", mints, juices in bags, and anything else you can possibly think of people selling on a bus. Actually more than you could possibly think of. The bus got rammed-pack full of people so in my seat it was me, my 2 backpacks and 2 women. It was cozy. When we were driving around the mountain curves at ridiculous speeds we were all hanging on for dear life trying not to fly out into the aisles.

In Antigua we have signed up for Spanish lessons for a few days. A bit of a refresher course for me, I forget so much since Ecuador. And Allan is going to learn. We are doing a homestay for 4 days, for more of a Guatemala experience. The host mom is super super nice and cute. And she loves me already because her nieces name is Julie.

As this new adventure continues I promise I'll keep on posting. Hopefully more regularly than last time!