Cooking, Reserva Natural Atitlan, and MONKEYS!

I realized that back home I hardly ever did a lot of cooking from scratch. I did a lot of reheating and adding packaged things together to make a meal. Well here in Guatemala you have to make everything from scratch, so I've been cooking a lot since coming here. Today I made chicken and veggie soup. I decided to document it to share mainly because I wanted my mom to know I made soup from scratch. :) Go ahead and laugh at me.

 I chopped all this up (minus the chicken which went in whole) and cooked it for about an hour. Then I picked the chicken off the bone and added the tomatoes and it was done. Super easy, but still it was the first time I had made soup from scratch.

After lunch I went to Spanish school. Gladys and I had a lesson for an hour then at 2:00 we walked to the Nature Reserve that is half way between Pana and San Jorge (where we went to the cave yesterday). It took about 30 minutes to get to the Reserve from town. Walking through the Reserve was beautiful. You can choose different paths to walk down which each leads to another amazing location. Know that if it didn't take about 8 minutes to upload each picture on here you would have so many more to look through. About every 20 feet we walked over bridges like this one (which were always moving and squeaking way more that I would like). I found the entire place beautiful and it is at the top of the list for places I need to take people to when they come to visit.

 Amazing waterfall about half way through the walk. I took several pictures of it, but most came out a little blurry because I was standing on one of those bridges that kept moving.

 Is it a common known fact that coffee grows on trees? Maybe it was just that I've never really thought about it before, but I had no idea. While we were walking through the Reserve we kept seeing people picking these berries to harvest. I learned that they pick the berries then pull out the seeds inside to dry.

I then noticed a lot of seeds on the ground and was told that this is how they dry them out. They leave them outside on the ground under the sun and wait for them to turn brown. Again maybe this isn't fascinating to anyone else, but I had no idea this was how you make coffee.

 Now get excited because it's time for MONKEYS!!!!!!!!!!!! When we first went down the path to the monkeys we didn't see any. I had bought some bananas to feed the monkeys and was extremely upset that I wasn't going to get to see them (I mean coffee and waterfalls are cool, but come on they are no monkeys). However, when we were walking back through there were so many around. They were swinging from the trees and came closer when we tossed bananas to them. I took about 20 pictures of different ones, but this one was my favorite. I watched him/her swing all over the place (just like Tarzan) and when we were about to leave it came about 10 feet from us and just hung from this tree perfectly still. It was like it wanted to get it's picture taken.

 Here was another monkey that ate most of the bananas I threw to the monkeys. I laughed so hard everytime it ate a piece because it looked exactly like a human eating a banana. He/She would pick up the banana, dust it off since it had landed on the ground, peel it, then sit cross legged while eating it and looking around. It was incredibly cute and hilarious to watch.

Again I am so blessed to have Gladys as a teacher/friend. The other students and their teachers didn't even walk together and hardly ever talked. Gladys and I stuck together and hiked through the whole Reserve laughing and telling jokes. I am also blessed that she is teaching me so much about Guatemala and the culture here. She often pulls me aside and explains to me what is going on around us. Such an amazing start to a friendship.

 I have no idea what the name of this flower is in English, but in Spanish it is called ave de paraiso. They are in bloom everywhere here and are so beautiful. I think after work tomorrow I may walk to the market and buy some for the house.

 Lastly, be impressed I walked through these swing thingys (yes I do think that is the technical name) and didn't break a leg or fall onto the rocks below.

Tomorrow I am going up to Salud y Paz and I am so excited! We are having a party in the morning for the school kids, so the mission team that is here this week can meet the kids. It will be the first time I meet them also and I can't wait. I have been getting impatient for the school year to start because I feel like right now I am just playing tourist and I didn't come here to just be on a vacation. I know that may sound weird because don't get me wrong I am loving doing all these activities, but I am eager to start being at the school everyday. Hopefully I can take better pictures of the clinic and school tomorrow to share.