Update

We just came back to Guatemala City last night at midnight. The majority of the Guatemalans returned on Saturday but a few of us went with the group here up to Tikal, which was very cool to see. Its quite spread out in a humid joungle, with big stone pyramids all over the place. Very cool to walk through. It started absolutely pouring rain when we got back to the hotel to shower and load up to leave, and so loading the pickup with equipment under the tarps was quite interesting, hah.

The trip to the villages near Puerto Barrios was great. We visited two different villages, the first one was about 1.5 - 2 hours by pickup into the jungle, and the second was a half hour closer. it was interesting to see the difference, the first village we went to was a relatively new clinic location, they have only been going there for a year or so and the people were much more reserved. The other village has been site for about 10 years and the people there were much more eager and seemed happier to see us. It was incredibly humid as well as quite hot, basically as soon as the pickups stopped moving and I got out of the back I would start sweating and not stop until we left, often drenching through my scrubs entirely. Virtually everyone had parasites or amoebiasis. The group that came from the US was a bunch of high schoolers that had just graduated, maybe 17 of them or so, so when I first met them all I was a bit worried about how things would go but they turned out to be great and worked quite hard without any complaining.

Now I am hoping to arrange to go up to Semuc Champey this week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday, nd stay for a few days. Trying to get that all figured out now but it looks like it should be really fun. I think the other interns here are hoping to join me, which should be good.

Panajachel

Here's some pictures of what the daily heavy rains can do to the streets here.

We finished our last clinic day today, and will head back to Guatemala City tomorrow, before heading back out on Monday.

Cerro de Oro

On the way over to our site for the second day. Yesterday was just a warm-up apparently, today the work really begins.

Kodiak Pictures

Highlights from my trip to Kodiak:

Kodiak Pictures

Guatemala City

I made it to Guatemala City today. Bryan from La Mision met me at the bus station and now I am back at the house. Tito's family has moved to a new house in a nice neighborhood here. Tomorrow the group from Nashville arrives,  and we leave for Panajachel on lake Atitlan on Sunday. Coincidentally, Mike's friend Ben Ross's younger sister Jill from Whitworth is here working with La Mision too.

I changed my ticket to come back 6 days earlier to have a bit more time at home. After the 2 weeks here with La Mision I think I will go to Semuc Champey for a few days then either finish up in at Lake Atitlan or Antigua.

Things are looking kid, will post any updates here.

Nepal Pictures

Here is a link to an online album with the edited, highlight photos from my trip to Nepal:

Nepal 2014 Highlights

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.