Guatemala

I am a bit late in getting this up, but I have arrived in Guatemala safely and am now in Xela at language school. I go to class from 8 am - 1 pm, taking a "pausa" from 10:30-11. I am liking my teacher. So far a lot of things are coming back to me very rapidly, though as I do review things I had learned in Peru I realize there are substantial pieces I have forgotten. Still, things are moving quickly. Apparently they normally cover 1 tense per week here, and go in depth on all the irregular verbs. We are doing the same but with 3 tenses per week as well as additional grammatical points, general and medical vocabulary to mix things up a bit. The hostel where I am staying is working out alright. Im paying less than $30 per week for a large private room with a desk and a decent view over the city, a huge improvement over spending the same amount per night for a shared room in Nepal. I am a bit concerned that there may be some bed bugs however, I am using the REI permetherin treated sleeping bag liner but I still seem to wind up with a few new bug bites each morning... hopefully not a problem, hah. On the topic of bugs, I went to the pharmacy today and picked up a pack of albendazole for parasites. The same prescription I tried to pick up in the US was not covered at all by insurance, and was going to cost me $1,140. Here I got it for 7 quetzales, just under 1 USD. Xela is a nice enough small town, not terribly scenic but the people all seem to be quite friendly. I get smiles and waves from little shop proprietors as well as shotgun or fully-automatic toting guards in front of the banks and richer businesses, hah. Virtually none of the local people speak anything approaching functional English, so its a great place to practice. My Spanish teacher is so far the teacher who knows the least English out of all the ones I have had so far, we communicate basically entirely in Spanish and I simply google  word if we can't figure out the translation. Its going quite well. I ran into a bit of a problem with my computer over the past few days. The microSD memory card I use for running my programs, storing my documents, pictures, and just about everything else (since the tablet's internl hard drive is almost entirely filled just with the Windows operating system) stopped working. Fortunately it will still let my computer read it, but I cant make any changes to anything on it, no new files, no new pictures, no deleting files, no changing my documents, etc. After some extensive trial and error I have basically decided it is shot, and moved my critical files over to the card I had in my camera (half the size but still bigger than anything I can buy here), and Ill try to pick up a cheap card for my camera before doing anything exciting. This weekend I am planning to go on a day trek up the volcano Santa Maria. Apparently we leave at 4:30 am in order to get up to the viewpoint by sunrise...

With regards to my plans while here, I am finishing this week of school and staying for one more here in Xela. Next Friday afternoon or Saturday morning I bus to Guatemala City to meet up with Tito, and join him for 2 weeks of rural medical clinics. Three different volunteer teams will be coming down during that time, and he is hopeful we can visit Tikal during that time. Afterwards I had initially thought to return to Xela, but now I am thinking I may go spend a week at Lake Atitlan for more language school. After that I would like to go to one of the local places I have been told is a must visit, Semuc Champey, which is a bit of a journey so may take a few days.

That's about all for now.

Homeward Bound

I'm at the Kathmandu airport now and way able to gain access to the executive lounge here - it is head and shoulders nicer than any place I have been in the past weeks, hah.

Its a four hour flight to Guangzhou with a two hour layover to clear customs. Then a flight to Beijing with a 5 hour layover, then an 11 hour flight  to Seattle, a 4 hour layover there then a quick jump to Wenatchee.  Very excited to be heading home.

Chitwan National Park

Thade pati

The trek is going well. Today we reached the apex of our trip. I hiked back a bit to a spot I noticed had signal to check my messages. After lunch we are going to try a day hike to see if we can reach the summit here. Its a bit chilly up here (~3,600 meters) but my gear is keeping me plenty warm. I can't get a picture online now, but I've been getting some good ones.

Trek

We finished our first day of trekking and are in Chisipani now, tomorrow is supposed to have even more altitude change.

Nepal Update

Hello everyone, things are going well here. We have been in Dhulikhel visiting the health sciences school and hospital here, which is an extension of Kathmandu University. There have been some fairly interesting interactions, including PBL with the residents here, going on rounds in the hospital, and having some lectures on tropical medicine. Tomorrow we are travelling by Jeep to one of their outreach clinics. Monday we will head back to Kathmandu, and we leave for our trek in Helendu I believe on Wednesday.

I had some computer problems, after some of the group had problems with a virus I decided to run a thorough scan and followed the recommendations for what to remove, but then my computer wouldnt start anymore. Luckily I was able to get it reset and back up and running without any real problems. Also, I was finally able to unlock my phone and get a sim card from one of the local networks into it, so now hopefully I will be able to get online and possibly skype more reliably.

Nepal Pictures

Here are some pictures I have taken from around Kathmandu