Guatemala/Spanish Skillz.

Three things:

1. When you meet someone new, and they say, "Me llamo Jose, y a ti?" ... Don't include "y a ti" at the end of their name when you try to get their attention later. They'll think you're an idiot. (This obviously happened to me, and I called a girl named Rut (like Ruth) Rutyati, and she was like... No... y a ti is just to ask you what your name is. I learned this stuff in Eighth grade, why couldn't I remember to segment that from her name? Geeze..)

2. I mentioned this once in the earlier post, but don't forget to close your eyes when riding in a car with someone. If you forget to do that, you might wind up with soiled underpants.

3. When you order water, just order water. Including all that fancy stuff (like adding a lemon) will ultimately get you a halfliter of lemonade. ..."No, the water doesn't look yellow here, Erin. That's lemonade." I think I need to work on my most basic Spanish skillz. Ordering a lemon with my water shouldn't be so difficult.

Primer Manana.

Oh. My. God. I'm sitting in my bedroom in Guatemala City.

This might sound silly, but I have honestly been thinking about what to write in this blog since I got to the airport yesterday morning at 4:30AM. Putting my whole travel experience in a paragraph seems unjust- as it was the first international flight I have ever taken alone and have never really truly had to get through an airport solo.. and if you know anything about me, you know that's a dangerous thing. I'm a space cadet. However, I'll try to sum it up:

Wake up. Goodbye Mom and Ailey. Airport. 4AM. Goodbye, Dad. :( Security check. Find terminal. Wait an hour. Board plane. Window seat.. YES. Smelly, smelly old fake blonde lady to sit next to.. not so much. Butterflies in my stomach. Window seat when you have to pee during a 3 hour flight.. NO. RUN to the nearest Houston bathroom. Converse with shoeshiners to kill time. Board flight to Guatemala. Window seat again.. YES. Nobody sitting next to me.. YES. Movie: PS. I love you.. YES. Southwest chicken airline burritos.. absolutely not. Customs papers, AHH! "We are now beginning our decent into Guatemala City." Oh. My. God. What. Am. I. Doing. Get. Me. Off. Of. This. Plane. Touchdown. Exit ramp. A Guatemalan male staredown as I walked through the terminal to baggage. Yikes. Find bags. Where's Alejandro? Where's AIESEC? Heart beating OUT of my chest. Exit the sliding glass doors. Large crowd of people: but not my welcome committee. Finally, Alejandro. There you are.

This is when I started breathing again. So I feel that normal sentence structure would now suffice. I met Carla, another girl who works at the Academia, and we went to lunch at Pollo Campero (pretty much like a KFC, only with worse service and really good soft serve ice cream). Carla and Alejandro are absolutely awesome, I feel like this experience could not be going any better thus far. Alejnandro showed me around his Condo and my room, everything is ideal- I am so lucky! His mom, Marta, is going to be my saving grace this summer... I already feel like I should call here 'Mama' like Alejo does. Maybe tomorrow.

We played volleyball last night with Marta and a whole bunch of their friends, which was glorious. I had NO idea what they were saying, because I feel like even in English I don't know what the hell I'm doing on a Volleyball court, and switching languages on me just didn't work out to my benfit. But it was still a ton of fun and they were all very nice and joked around with me about my not-so-up-to-par Volleyball skillz.

Oh, I forgot to add this before.. DO NOT DRIVE A CAR IN GUATEMALA CITY. Just, don't do it. Everytime I get into the car with Alejandro I close my eyes until we get there because my shrieks of fear as we turn every corner I'm sure would get exhausting. Marta is a better driver for sure, but Holy COW. Driving here is nothing like the US. And there aren't cops, whom I have been told are corrupt anyway and not to trust them. Hmm.

Last night Alejandro tooks us to a little restaurant/bar: 4 for 1 drinks, ladies night! Needless to say, my Spanish was incredible last night, I guess a few beers later all those nerves disappear. :) I met a few @ers and some of his friends, and everyone was wonderful. I am going to love, love, love, love, love this place. I already do.

No puedo esperar por lo que viene... estoy emocionada! We're off to the Pacific ocean on Sabado, I'll probably make another post after that. This is going to be the best summer of my life.

Last Minute (Mayhem).

Today has been a little bit of a roller coaster, if that would even begin to explain it. Upon rolling out of bed this morning, I had some breakfast and thought about the fact that this would be my second to last bowl of cereal in my house for three months. Now, I love my Raisin Bran- but then I thought about my breakfast on Wednesday morning . This thought of my future Guate breakfast lead me to run through my little checklist of departure day details... plane ticket/itinerary: check, suitcases quasi-packed: check, international insurance: check, passport: what? where's my passport?...

Yeah, um, Houston... we have a problem. Where the hell is my passport? I called my dad; no cigar- he hasn't seen it or moved it in months. This is when that Raisin Bran said to the pit of my stomach, "Well, it was nice knowing you, but we best be going now." In a frenzy that the world has never seen before, I scoured my house. No passport. I combed through every single thing I brought home from Madison- No passport. It looks like I might not be packing my bags tomorrow after all.

To make this problem even worse, tomorrow is Memorial Day. In case you haven't been informed, that marks a federal holiday- and that means nobody home at the "I lost my passport" office. Awesome. Erin- you're not going to Guatemala without that passport. Find it.

Much to my dismay, this passport was not making it's way into my line of sight. A crying/ screaming/praying to every god I have ever heard of in my life tantrum on my kitchen floor later- my passport turned up. It was inside the cardboard case of a bunch of pictures I just got developed. How or why it was there, I will never know. But I found it.

Now- I can prepare for the real thing. Exactly 29 hours from now, I will be waking up and heading to the airport for the journey of a lifetime. Those Guatemalans aren't gonna know what hit 'em. (Or at least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself.) Let's do this.