First weekend in Antigua

Tim found us a couch surfing host for Saturday night between leaving Earth Lodge and moving in with our host family on Sunday. His name was Hector, and he grew up in Texas but moved to Antigua six years ago. He plays for an American football team, of which the there are a few in the country, surprisingly. We went out with him and a couple of his teammates to one of the bars that sponsors their team.

On Sunday we managed to figure out the bus to see his team, los Rhinos, play los Dragones, which was by far the most interesting sportball game I've ever watched, mostly because there were children and dogs running on and off the field the entire time, and several Guatemelan WAGs (wives and girlfriends for fans of the British show) were cheering "Let's go Rhinos" in accented English. Also, one of the players was a mid-50ish gringo who was taking things *very* seriously - yelling expletives, stalking the sidelines with headphones on before the game - and generally trying to intimidate his Guatemalan teammates into doing the same. #glorydays 

(P.S. For those of you trying to crack the case on Facebook, Tim wrote the first post with some light editing by me, but he hasn't figured out how to post from his own Blogger account yet, so he posts from mine. ;-))

Timmy asks for directions in Spanish for the first time!

It would be easy for me to do most of the talking while we're traveling, but I want Tim to have the full immersion experience I had when learning Spanish abroad, including the challenges of asking for directions, ordering food, hailing cabs, etc., when you don't feel completely confident. We practiced how he would ask about the bus stop we were looking for, then I did a tres-dos-uno countdown a là all the times I'm afraid to ski a steep run/cliff jump/some other extreme sport and Tim makes me do it on the count of three. He did a great job. The girls giggled, and the boys glared at him for trying to move in on their ladies.

Hobbitenango

For all you Lord of the Rings fans (and I'm assuming some of you Harry Potter/Game of Thrones fans fall into the same category), I present you Guatemala's version of Hobbiton, Hobbitenango. They're using a lot of sustainable building techniques and employing many of the local villagers. We made the very steep ride up with two buds from Earth Lodge: Blanche from N-Zed and Anna from Estonia. 

More pics of our accommodations at Earth Lodge

Honeymoon treehouse

To begin our trip we are taking a small honeymoon at an ecolodge/avocado farm where we've been spending our days eating delicious food, reading and relaxing in hammocks, and taking night photos from the porch of our treehouse. In addition to dozens of butterflies and the chirping of birds, there is a constant chorus of barking dogs. All day, all night, dogs can be heard talking to one another. There are even dogs living at the ecolodge. I never thought there was a place on earth with more dogs than Bozeman, Montana, but we've found it here in Guatemala.

We've also found it very beautiful. Two towering volcanoes loom over the city of Antigua. One is dormant, the other active. We even saw it erupting last night, which apparently it does quite frequently. Jenn and I are also lying dormant for a few days here at the Earth Lodge which overlooks the city. We will start our homestay with a Guatemalan family on Sunday and I will begin Spanish immersion school. At that point Jenn will stop talking in English, so that I can learn to speak Spanish more quickly. I told her to get out any complex emotions or thoughts now before we are limited to speaking in simple sentences about the time, weather, and basic needs. This is going to be fun!