It was quite exciting trying to get 9 people up and showered to leave at 8:30 for church after getting home at 12:00 the night before!! We did have a little bit of help from a big earthquake at 7:30 in the morning!! It was fun to take Brittany, Mitch, and Kaiya to church and have them meet the people that I am always talking about. Brittany got the chance to use the word she's been practicing!! In Relief Society, she was introduced and she responded with "ENCATADA!" or enchanted.
We got to celebrate another Christmas after church when we unpacked the suitcases that Brittany brought. There was sooooo much stuff!! It was wonderful! We got a bunch of books, games, dvds, clothes, candy, etc. Morgan and Cole had a lot of fun trying on all of the new clothes. There was stuff all over the house when our friend, Sully came to visit with her husband. They brought us information on different places in Guatemala and gave us lots of helpful information for our trips.
Monday, April 19, 2010
This morning, we did a little sight seeing around town. We didn't even get to the main road before we made our first photo stop. There is a field surrounded by old arches that cows graze in sometimes. This cow was pretty pitiful looking with its floppy ears!
We stopped by the temple site briefly so the Moffitts could see why we are here in Guatemala. Everybody was working so we didn't stay for long.
I had a huge milestone today! I actually drove to Central Park.....without getting lost and without breaking down crying!! YEAH!! I even talked with the parking lot attendant and didn't get overly flustered! We walked around Central Park for a little while. We stopped at the old church and got some pictures. The creepiest part was the dead guy inside. Apparently they keep some of the dead priests in the church. I personally thought it was disgusting!!
After a little shopping, eating, and walking, we left Central Park (again, I didn't get lost leaving!! What a happy day!) and drove around Xela for a while. It is so fun to have somebody here to share these crazy experiences with. The Moffitts showed such great enthusiasm...rather than disgust or fear!!
(Tecun Uman)
We took the Moffitts to our new favorite restaurant, Albamar, for dinner. Chris was working so I got to order the food for myself and all the kids. I think having Brittany here helps me to have a little more confidence in my Spanish. Maybe it just makes me remember what it was like when we first got here and helps me to realize that I have made some progress. The food was excellent!! Brittany and Mitch tried jacon which is a typical sauce here. It was SOOOO good. That is definitely what I will be getting next time. Monday and Tuesdays are the days off for the marimba players so we didn't get to hear them. We did get to take the covers off the marimbas and check them out a little better. Even without the marimba players, the dinner was wonderful and everybody seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.
When we returned home, Chris informed us that two people died on Volcan Pacaya yesterday. There was an eruption and boulders spit out of the volcano and crushed a person from Venezuela and the guide. Scary!! If we had been 24 hours later, we might have been there!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
On our way to visit the oldest church in Central America, we stopped by an old cemetary. 
Once we found the church, we got to wait around for a while for somebody to get the key. There is a museum for the church but an old lady across the street keeps the key. The key has been handed down through her family and they are the keepers of the key.
At the museum, we learned about the church a little. It was build in 1524 by the Spanish conquistadors. Most of the local Mayans were killed and when they saw the church, they thought they were going to be sacrificed. Arches were build to show the locals that they were going to be baptized, not sacrificed.
We returned some exhausted kids to the house before venturing on to the bus terminal, the grocery store, the market, and to get dinner at Giuseppe's. I was blessed to have Brittany and Mitch stay home with the kids while I went to teach my piano class and play for choir. It is always hard to teach a class in Spanish when I've got my kids nagging at me for attention at the same time!!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Everybody relaxed a little this morning while Mitch was off in search of another old church. I think we are all a little worn out!
We were invited to lunch at Lily's today. She was going to make some typical food for us to try. I was expecting a light snack but we pretty much had to be rolled out of there afterwards because we were so full! Another friend, Blanca, had brought over some corn that had already been cooked so we all went to the mill to have it ground. The machine adds water to the ground up corn to make it into a dough. We then took the dough back to Lily's and made it into tortillas which we cooked on the outdoor fire. She had also made beans, different sauces, guacamole, mole, etc. It was great food and we were all sooooo full!! The kids were still excited to roast marshmallows though!!
This was a little old lady that was herding her sheep outside of Lily's house. She had no teeth and no shoes but she was really nice and let us take her picture.
This is a bicycle shop between our house and Lily's. You got to love the belly hanging over the bars!!
After the world's largest lunch, we got to go home and get ready for dinner. Sully came over and taught us how to make jacon. It is cilantro, lettuce, green tomatoes, etc all blended together then cooked and served over chicken. If anybody knows Brittany and her obsession with smoothies and her vitamix blender, you will understand Laina's comment when she saw the sauce in the blender. She said, "I don't want to drink that smoothie for dinner!"
The dinner again was excellent and it was nice to have Sully's family come to eat with us. They are such an amazing family. They shared lots of great stories with us.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
What a disappointing start to the day. We went to see Lake Atitlan and all the gorgeous volcanoes surrounding it....too bad it was so overcast that we couldn't see anything!! Poor Brittany got to experience some of the more windy roads and the Dramamine just didn't quite do the job!
Then, after the lovely drive, she had to get on a boat. She looked like she was going to die....or somebody else if they got too close to her!
We took a boat across the lake to a little village that we had never been to before. I was pretty disappointed that it was a total tourist trap. I much prefer the authentic small villages where you don't get hounded by ten million people trying to sell you trinkets!!
We were supposed to go to another town but everybody was already tired, hungry, and not feeling well so we opted to head back to where the cars were. We ate at a little restaurant that had the worst food we've had here. The ladies trying to sell stuff wouldn't leave us alone and we finally had to ask the waiter to make them leave!! Mitch did ask these girls if he could take there picture and they agreed for a small fee. Chris told them that Mitch would pay them more if they smiled.
After eating, it was time to split up. Chris took Cole, Alysa, and Laina back to Xela while Brittany, Mitch, Kaiya, Morgan, and myself headed on to a little colonial town called Antigua. It was another main tourist stop in Guatemala. It took us a little while to get there and it was already getting dark. We stopped at some more churches, walked around the main square, stopped at a little store, then decided we had better get to Guatemala City and get some sleep before our big day tomorrow.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Up and at 'em at 4:15 is not usually my favorite thing to do. Today was an exception. We were getting on a plane to go to Tikal. Morgan really wanted to go at the last minute so I opted to take her with us and have some mother/daughter bonding time. Our plane was 1 1/2 hours late but we were still excited to go. We got to fly on a propeller plane and had to walk on the runway to get to it. Morgan thought that was the best thing ever!
Everybody had told us that it was going to be hot but that was an understatement! It was HOT HOT HOT!! From the second we got off the plane, the sweat started pouring. We got a taxi and then found a hotel to stay at.
(Three beds and a fold out couch for about half the cost of a hotel room in Guatemala City!)
(This is the view from our balcony. It overlooked the pool and the lake!)
When we were checking in, Mitch asked the front desk lady if she could help us arrange a tour to the park. All of the other tours left already since our plane was so late. She made some calls and the next thing we know, we've got box lunches ready to take, a van to drive us, and the best tour guide in the world, Julio.
We were staying on the Island of Flores which is about an hour drive from Tikal. On the drive there is a section that is full of wild life and the drivers have to go a lot slower. There were warning signs for snakes, the raccoon type animal, deer, and jaguars!
We had an amazing tour. We were dripping sweat the entire time even though there was some cloud coverage for most of the day! We learned a ton about the area. We learned about the plants, land, wars, animals, languages, history, etc. We saw monkeys, different birds, racoon things, etc. There were giant ceiba trees (the national tree), gum trees, All-spice trees, and about a bazillion others!
These birds are really loud and they make hanging basket nests out of spanish moss.
We were warned not to get too close to the spider monkeys because they like to throw things at people!
This animal (can't remember the name even though we practiced saying it forever!) is a combination of an anteater and a raccoon. You can get really close to them but you have to be careful if you have any food because they will try to get it from you!
The land here is limestone with only a tiny bit of soil on it so all of the plants have their roots spread wide on the surface of the ground to keep them stable.
There are vines all over the place wrapping around trees.
This is the leaf that is made into all-spice to make pumpkin pies. The guide had us smell the leaves and guess what it was. It smelled really good but I just couldn't place the smell. I guess that's what happens when you only smell something once a year!
This is my tarzan shot that I've been waiting for for over a year now!! It was so crazy being in the jungle! We were very glad that it was the dry season and we didn't have to contend with insects!! (Even if it did mean that we sweat more than a normal person does in a lifetime!)
This was Morgans favorite swing.
He explained that it is about a 2 mile hike to the far end of the park and then another 2 miles back. We got really spoiled and a truck picked us up to drive us to the far end of the park. Then we just had to zig zag back to see the different pyramids. We were able to see monkeys from the truck when we weren't trying to prevent ourselves from falling off the sides!
Our first stop was pyramid 4. It is equivalent to a 20 story building and we had to walk all the way up the stairs!! We made several stops along the way so that we didn't pass out. Once we got to the top, it was amazing. We couldn't see anything except for the top of the trees and a few pyramids sticking up through the canopy. It was so peaceful even though there were a bunch of other people up there. We sat on the steps of the pyramid and ate our box lunch and listened to stories from our guide about people who have fallen off the sides and died! There were no railings at all!! Our guide was so knowledgeable that he even knew that there were 5 shots taken from where we ate our lunch for the original Star Wars movie. So, if anybody needs an excuse to rewatch Star Wars, you can look for some of these views!
Following temple 4, we ventured on to several other pyramids before ending up at the grand plaza where the Jaguar Temple and many other sites are located.
The stories that we heard and all that we learned today was amazing. It was definitely a wonderful experience that I hope to share with others!!
The pyramids have to be cleaned off every month because the vegetation starts to grow over everything so fast!
After the tour of Tikal, we were to exhausted so we went back to the hotel and crashed. The girls got a sudden second wind and decided to go swimming forever. We ordered pizza, watched t.v., and read the rest of the day. I think everybody was asleep by about 8:30!! What a day!
This is Morgan's journal entry from her day in Tikal:
My Trip to Tikal
Three days ago I was flying to Tikal, a national wild reserved national park in Peten, Guatemala. Peten is the biggest state in all of Guatemala. Most of Peten is covered by thick rainforest. We began our trip by waking up at four o’clock in the morning on Friday April 23, 2010 in Guatemala City, Guatemala. My uncle set the alarm so we all woke up just as the alarm did. All of us except my aunt.
We got to the airport at around five o’clock in the morning. I was so tired waiting in line to check our bags. But once we checked our bags I was wide awake and very excited. I love going on plane rides. Our flight was delayed by an hour because of the fog. We get that a lot here in Guatemala. Especially in the morning. I could not wait to get on the plane. I was too excited. Finally we got on the plane. For the first time in my life, I was walking outside where the planes are. I don’t know what it’s called.
On the plane I tried to sleep but I couldn’t. The flight only took about an hour. But it sure didn’t seem like it. For a snack we got a soda and two cookies that were shaped like donuts. The plane ride was really great.
When we got to Santa Elena, the place where the airport was, we took a bus to Flores. Flores is the island we stayed at. It is in the middle lake Peten. At the front desk of our hotel my uncle asked them to get us the best guide they could get. I thought that we were going to get a guide that on a scale from one to ten you would give him a five. But I was wrong. We gave him a ten! He taught us about all of the plants there were. He took us to almost all of the pyramids/temples. There were nine and we saw five of them. My two favorite were temples one and four. Temple four is 20 stories tall and is the biggest temple in the park. The first Star Wars movie was filmed from the top the fourth temple. Temple one is located in the Gran Plaza of the ancient city. It is called Temple of the Great Jaguar. When I hear that name it gives me a strong feeling.
We also saw lots of animals and plants. The guide (His name is Julio.) showed us a leaf that had a strong smell and we later found out that it was allspice. My cousin and I got to swing on some vines too. It was fun. We saw this weird animal that gave me the heebie-jeebies. Julio told us that it was a mix of an anteater and a raccoon. We also saw wild turkeys, spider monkeys, leafcutter ants, toucans, a bird with a purple neck and a rainbow body, and two lizards!
When we got back to the hotel my cousin and I were so hot we were about to turn to ashes. So we jumped into our swimsuits and ran to the pool. That is where I think we spent the most time. But our trip was very fun.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
The girls were up early to go swimming by 8:00. It was extremely hot again.
The island is really small and we found out that it is a man made island that the Mayans created. We couldn't find a bakery that was open so instead, we had ice cream for breakfast! We then visited a few souvenir shops and got a couple things to take home for the rest of the family.
We had lunch at a cute little restaurant on the lake right next to our hotel. The girls went swimming again while we waited for our food. They couldn't resist one last chance in the pool before we had to head back to the airport!
The flight back was quick and relaxing. Chris picked us up and had tickets for us to go see 'How To Train a Dragon'...in Spanish! It added to the experience of being in Guatemala! It was so sad that it was our last night together.
While Morgan and I were gone, the other kids had a blast with daddy....no dishes....eating out....bowling....etc. They didn't even seem to care that they didn't get to go with us. Cole is hoping to get a turn to go to Tikal when Grandma and Grandpa Whitney come to visit.
Bawling my eyes out right now because we weren't there, and now I am stuck here for the next while... We really miss you guys.
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