It has been a while since I last updated and I’ve been all over the place since. Unfortunately a death in the family brought me back to the U.S. Even though it was a terrible reason to have to return the states it was a great surprise to be able to spend Christmas with the family. On Saturday the 17th Sean and Beth (with the help of my other siblings) bought me a ticket to return back to the states on the following Monday. Keeping with the Christmas mood, we decided to make it a surprise and didn’t tell my parents. Unluckily, Mom and Dad were not too impressed with my trumpet playing outside of their bedroom door when I arrived home at 2:30a.m., in my defense it has been years since I have practiced. The announcement of my homecoming was met with a shrill yell coming from my dad’s side of the bed, “WILL YOU JUST GOT TO BED!!” After a couple more toots on the ol’ horn we decided it would be best to reveal myself before we gave dad a heart attack. A couple hugs later and everybody was back down in the kitchen to celebrate my homecoming with a nice cheap bottle of bubbly.
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| Mom and I, after waking her up at 2:30a.m. |
After trying to get over the fact that I probably wouldn’t see most of my family and friends for a little over two years, I was thrilled to be able to return after only 5 months. It was great to see all my nieces and nephews before they doubled in size and didn’t recognize me, although Christopher was convinced that I was still “in the jungle with the dinosaurs” and that both me and Sean were “Uncle Sean”. I was lucky to be able to see a lot of my cousins, aunt and uncles and all of my siblings, parents and some good friends. Chris, Pat, Myles and I spent a day in the city, soaking up as much of America as I could, we all proudly wore “I <3 NY” T- shirts.
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| Pat, Me, Borat, Myles and Chris. |
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| Me, Kiera, Pat, Sean, Xavi, Emma, Tim, Tina Brian. |
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| Me, Ira and Tim. |
My time home flew by and I was back in Guatemala before I was ready. It took me about 24 hours to get back to my site after landing, mostly because I had to stay in the city for a night. I got back to my site and was feeling pretty lonely and depressed after spending so much time with everyone at home. I was quickly greeted with my host siblings Denealson 5 and Brian 9 who asked me if they could have my used toothbrush. It was good to see them but didn’t help much with the loneliness. I had plans to visit with friends for New Years, but couldn’t wait. I called them and we planned to meet up a day early, which meant I would only be staying in site for about 12 hours before taking off again to meet up with friends. The one night I had in site met me with a pretty nice earthquake. The biggest one I’ve felt down here, or ever for that matter. There was no structural damage that I know of to my house, but it did sound like there was a Mack Truck doing donuts around my bed. I was out of here by 7:30 in the morning.
I met up with 6 other PC volunteers and 4 of their visiting friends at Lake Atitlan for New Years. The lake is unreal. It only took about 3.5 hours to reach the lake which is in the mountains of western Guatemala and is surrounded by 3 enormous volcanoes, which make for a beautiful view. New Years was great, lots of fireworks being set off by everyone in town right in the middle of the street (which at times was pretty scary). This seemingly tropical atmosphere was a great change for most of us who are located in high mountain towns and needed a break from the freezing nights and piles of blankets we need to sleep.
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| Lake Atitlan |
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| Kayaking with Christine and Adriana. |
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| Friends and I watching the sunset. |
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| Sunset behind the volcano |
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| Adorable. |
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| Adorable. |
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| Adorable. |
Today was my second day being back and since I was feeling so lonely and bored I thought going for a run might cheer me up a bit. Running in the mountains is not easy and the whole ‘cheering me up’ thing wasn’t working too well. But on my way back to my place I was stopped by 3 kids who grabbed me and wanted to play soccer. The soccer game gave me a laugh and made me feel better. Later in the night Brian and Denealson were in my room and I gave them Hershey kisses that my mom so kindly mailed to me. Denealson wasn’t sure if he wanted to eat it since it looked like “Popocito” (a little poop) in his hand. He then ran upstairs to show his parents. (He did eat it and loved it. He comes back about every ten minutes to ask for another one). Well I’ve got lots of work to do so I better get going. I’ll try to update more frequently in the future…
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| Brian and Denilson with their popocito |
