Beautiful Saturday...

So the team from New Hampshire and Maine that I talked about in my last post came to Pana for the weekend. On Friday night it poured down rain for the first time since I've been here. I've been told that Guatemala has a rainy season that starts in April and lasts until early Fall, but it is rare for it to pour this time of the year. However, I was also told that Guatemalans call February 'Loco Febrero' which means crazy February because the weather is often weird. 

Anyways, thankfully Saturday was a beautiful day to be in Pana and I spent the whole day with the team. After breakfast we went to the Nature Reserve (I had previously gone with Spanish School) and did the zip line. Let's just say I absolutely LOVED the first maybe 30 seconds of every zip line (7 in total) where you are flying through the air, kicking the tops of trees with your feet, and looking over the beautiful lake and volcanoes. However, I also have to say that I absolutely HATED WITH PASSION the last 5 seconds of every zip line where you have to stop yourself (by gripping the line with one gloved hand while the other one is holding on for dear life) unless you crash into the dude waving the stop flag. I got better the more I did it, but twice it hurt how hard I landed. Also just so you know when you crash into the rope/guy that stops you it is about 2 feet in front of a boulder that you think you are about to run into going on average (according to their signs) 45 feet per second. I obviously have a love/hate relationship with zip lines. We did take hilarious pictures of us in all of our gear (which is so comfortable), but not on my camera so when the girls upload them to facebook I'll post some on here to share... get excited.

Next up we walked around town a little and shopped in the market then we went on a boat ride to a village across the lake. I had be wanting to go out on the lake and was very excited when I heard that was our plan for the afternoon. Our boat was the one on the left side.

I sat backwards in the back of the boat and absolutely loved the view. I got to both look out over the lake at all the different villages and volcanoes and also watch the boat driver who was rocking out and singing to himself whatever he was listening to on his discman.

My back row buddies... Carrie and Maggie. Have I mentioned how glad I was that these 2 were on this team?

Other side of the back row... Archy and I were talking about how he watched a lot of TV in English when he was trying to learn it. He told me that I needed to start watching DVDs one scene at a time. First in English then in Spanish then back in English again if I couldn't understand the Spanish. We'll see if it helps.

View of Santa Catalina Palopo (village to the left on Pana) from the boat. It reminded me of a boat ride I took in Cinque Terre in Italy. The village along the lake looks about the same.

We docked at San Antonio Palopo (same village I went to a few weeks ago with Spanish School) and walked around town a little.

This village is known for their pottery and their weavings. We stopped into one little shop and saw this girl weaving a table runner. It takes so long to make one.

Archy pretending to weave.

The ladies in the store convinced Maggie to try on a traditional Mayan outfit. I told her she should buy it, but instead we all just bought scarves.

After we finished in the little shop I sat outside on the road to wait for the team and the second I sat down a lady came up to me and started putting something in my hair. I kept telling her no and that I wasn't going to buy anything, but she spent about 5 minutes tying this long blue strip into my hair. When she was done I felt so bad that I went ahead and bought it from her. I wish I had taken a picture of the back of my hair, so you could see how she weaved it.

Carrie being mad that the lady didn't attack her head with a ribbon. :)

Picture with the team after the boat ride.

We went to dinner at Restaurant Pinguinos. It is right on the main street in Pana and served yummy Guatemalan food. It was a fun restaurant to eat dinner at.

Check out the cute flowers in our carrot soup.

During the meal they would play a Guatemalan instrument (can't remember the name of it) that reminded me of the instrument that the guys used to play at Guadalajara. (Great description I know).

After dinner the girls had a few last minute gifts they wanted to buy in the market, so we walked around for awhile. I really wanted them to buy this hat (who would wear this???), but they couldn't figure out how they would get it home.

Back at the hotel we jumped on the trampoline for a few minutes (I enjoyed pretending I was still in high school with them) then sat there looking at the stars/funny looking clouds for about an hour and talking about life. I can't figure out if I really love working with teams down here and want to do that more, or if I just loved this week with this team so much because it had 3 youth on it and I just really miss the youth from the church back home. Who knows. Maybe I will figure it out during the next team. I went to breakfast at their hotel this morning and was really sad when they left. The girls kept giving me hugs and telling me they were going to miss me. Working at the church back home I am used to constant love and joy and laughter and I have been missing that these past few weeks here. It was a blessing to have them here and to feel that again.

Lastly, as always here is another complaint about bugs. Have I mentioned that I HATE bug bites?? I looked at my legs last night before falling asleep and decided they were picture worthy, so enjoy. The team this week kept asking me about my legs and I constantly catch people looking at all my bites. I really hope everyone understands that they are stupid bug bites and not some horrible disease. I also have a plea for you. I need home remedies to keep spiders away from my bed and also to make my bites stop itching. Remember that I live in a town with few things that you can find in the states (I can't even find clear nail polish to put on the bites anywhere here). If you have any advice let me know!

I am going to go watch the Super Bowl in town at either Solomon's Porch (the church I went to a couple of weekends ago) or at The Palapa (where I watched the Texans game). Happy Super Bowl day.