Guatemala

We arrived in Guatemala City Sunday at 11:00 a.m. and waited for the thirty students with Margie Sheperds group from Western Albemarle to arrive. Once they arrived, we headed through baggage and outside to a tour bus waiting to drive us up through the mountains to Quatzeltenango and Casa Xelaju, our Spanish school for the next three weeks. The four and a half hour drive was curvy and mountainous with gorgeous views of forested mountians and beautiful valleys. Horses, cattle and pigs were along the steep roads. Pedestrians carrying goods in baskets on their heads or bound in woven slings on their backs with a strap across their foreheads easily walked along the steep roads with small towns few and far between as though they were on a Sunday stroll through the mall. Many of the pedestrians were dressed in traditional Mayan clothing. The skies were brillant blue and clouds puffy, white and close to the moutains through which we traveled. The roads twisted unforgivingly the entire four and a half hour ride and we stopped two or three times for landslides caused by construction crews bulldozing rocks and boulders from the cliffs above directly onto the road in front of us. Apparently they are still cleaning up from a hurricane that caused much damage in the region. Brightly painted school buses called "chicken buses" passed us frequently often with the back door flying open as they swerved in front of us and twice we say men hanging out the back door and casually pulling it closed at high speeds. The chicken buses painted with crazy, loud colors in fantastic murals are like short bursts of laughter and sunshine on our journey. I think they must have twin buses in Jamaica. We finally arrived at a bus terminal in Quetzaltenango. A guard stood on the sidewalk with what looked like a sawed off shotgun on his back. Bienvenidos...hmmm. Gradually our host families pulled up in compact cars holding signs with our names on them. They kissed our cheeks in greeting and loaded our things into their cars and we sped off leaving everyone we knew behind. Landon and his three housemates were piled with their luggage into the BACK of a small pickup and grinned like they were on the Griffin at Busch Gardens as their host backed up, the wrong way, down the one way street, pulled a U turn and sped off down the cobblestone street.