back & nearly done w/one quarter of school

I forgot to post about the traumatic ending the best summer and experience of my life! The night before Nolan & I departed we had our camera containing nearly 1000 photos of my summer in Guate and videos w/my host family stolen. I cried the entire way home to Chicago. I truly wanted to change my ticket and try to stay and investigate it further. I'm truly devastated and have yet to call my host family about it. I wanted to let them know I made it home and to not be expecting photos of us afterall. I do intend to return for 2 weeks before I begin my summer rotations, but two weeks is nothing compared to the 4 months I was there this summer. I miss Guatemala so! I can't wait to return there once I'm a pharmacist so I can do public health work and education there. Also, to adopt a child too! So many things are in store for me and I can't wait to finally be finished with school in less than 2 years!

we're in antigua again!

this time tomorrow we'll be on our way home to Chicago!

i couldn't ask for a better wrap up in Xela. when we got there we stayed at the hotel where my friends chrissy and enrique are staying. i asked the owner if they were there. i saw enrique peaking his head out b/c he heard voices in the courtyard. we were so excited to see each other. they thought we forgot our stuff or weren't coming back or something. yeah right! we left our passports there! we talked to them for a bit then ran around for a bit. then i stopped by and surprised josefina! she said she wasn't sure what day i'd be stopping by, but she was looking forward to it. it's very sad b/c she doesn't have a student right now. they need that income to continue making repairs on their house in case there are more hurricanes. they lost some stuff last year. it was very quite only her and jeremy as everyone else is working during the day. nolan and i visited for about 3 hours. we laughed and talked and had a great visit. i asked her to join us for dinner with chrissy, enrique and their daughter marissa. she said it depended on what time catarino got home. as sometimes he works late and other times he comes home early. i told her we'd go around 730 p.m. i told her we'd stop by again. we both said, OK, we're prolonging our good bye...she said she wasn't sad just yet as she knew she was going to see me again. well, we stopped by at 730 p.m. and she was ready to go and jeremy was wearing winter attire...they bundle up like it's a blizzard outside during the evenings. it was chilly, but not parka weather! lol! anyway, catarino just returned home and they rushed around to get everything ready to go to dinner. chrissy and enrique suggested this steak restaurant. it's the fanciest place in town!!! we walked in and it was just gorgeous! they know the owners and we were greated so warmly. i told josefina and catarino again to please order whatever they wanted and that we're paying. josefina whispered to me that she wants me to order for them as they can't read. i described some of the dishes to them with the help of enrique b/c his spanish is excellent and i don't know anything about steaks. i ordered a chicken dish that was out of sight! nolan got a filet..it was 2 actually! we had enough food to feed 12 ppl and there were only 8 of us! that's including a 7 mo. old and a 2.5 old. we ordered dessert, tiramisu..it was out of sight, and coffee too! i snuck our credit card to the waitress so we could pay the entire bill. it's really the least we could do to say thank you to all of them. they all opened up their hearts and made me feel so welcome and loved when i was away from my family and friends. chrissy and enrique helped me out so much and were always just so wonderful to me. i wanted to buy chrissy and enrique something while we were traveling, but we just didn't have much space in our travel pack.

we took a great photo of all of us together! they are the reason why we went back to xela. i couldn't ask for a better experience!! it was a dream come true to hang out with all of them my last night in xela. we had to squeeze into a pick up truck that only holds 5 ppl...8 ppl in it was very funny! nolan and i sat in the back and it was covered and locked up like a police paddy wagon. we took pics!

matter of fact, we've taken so many pics that i can't wait to share all of them with everyone!

nolan and i went shopping today to pic up some stuff for our neighbors as they are watching our apartment and moving our car when the streets being cleaned as well as something for our dog sitter. we also bought a mayan painting too. it's pretty cool...looking forwad to framing it! i know it's not an original or anything, but i'm happy with it!

it was definitely an emotional good bye last night. norma was home when we dropped off catarino, josefina, and jeremy. she couldn't go to dinner as she had to work until 9 p.m. however, when she saw me she started to cry. ugh, i gave josefina a hug and we both cried...it's so sad to think that maybe, just maybe, i may never return. i want to eventually, but who knows. they are so wonderful. i'm definitely going to keep in touch. josefina told me that for the past 2 weeks that jeremy keeps asking about, "where is nolan and kristy?" he can't say my name so he says, "kitty". it's so cute! i didn't even know that he knew nolan's name as he was only there for 3 days. it really hasn't hit me yet. they told me anytime i want to visit that i'm more than welcome and don't forget to send pics of the wedding! i just can't believe that my summer here is over, but i truely couldn't have asked for a better experience. it's really been a dream come true. it's always been a dream to study abroad and it has been more than fulfilled.

we have our shuttle scheduled for tomorrow and hopefully fly out at 130 pm tomorrow. i'm ready to come home, but i'm very sad too.

it's baby adoption central in our hotel. there are so many women here that are picking their babies or are in limbo with the guate government to get the green light to take their baby home. some women have been here from 6 weeks to 4 months. yikes! they are so precious!

looking forward to speaking to everyone and seeing you soon!

we're in xela again!

everything was good. we stayed at patricia's bed and breakfast again. we played with their dog and ate pollo campero. it was relaxing and just what we needed. we immediately ran in and took over the bathroom as we were so disgusting and showered. plus, they were disgusting dirty hippies staying there too. we wanted the bathroom first. ick! glad there's a pollo campero in chicago.


i'm so happy because my friends are back from a medical mission and we're going out to dinner with them tonight. they are really great ppl. i'm definitely going to keep in touch with them b/c 1. they are great ppl and 2. they have a great organization that does medical missions. they had a pharmacist on this trip this time. sometimes they don't have one. god, i can't wait to be a freaking pharmacist already! i want to volunteer abroad! also, a masters in public health will be super helpful. they told me some crazy stories about their patients.

i dropped our stinky laundry off. i'm definitely going to miss someone doing our laundry every week. well, that's what nolan's for! lol!


i'm going to stop by josefina's house tonight and give her some of my clothes and toiletries. i need to lighten our load as i have so much shit i bought before nolan got here. nolan promised me we can go shopping in antigua tomorrow. we couldn't buy a damn thing while we were on the go.

i can't believe everything worked out so well. i couldn't ask for a better trip. nolan said that it was his best vacation ever.

i hope we get in on time on saturday as i want to pick up my little boys asap on saturday night. i miss them. nolan and i looking forward to watching movies and ordering in on sun and mon. i do have to go school supply shopping at some point though.

i can't wait to see my girlfriends from pharmacy school on tuesday too!

it's going to be weird feeling, but very good feeling to be home. i'm ready! nolan and i conquered guatemala.

i'm going to miss so many things though such as,
my host family, friends, guatemalan food, bread, the people, the beautiful country side, not speaking spanish all of the time, meeting great ppl in every place i visited, learning so much about the different cultures here.

i've developed an addiction to bread here. i definitely will have some withdrawals when i get back. however, it's good because i ate too much of it each day. it's funny b/c i hardly ate bread at home and now i have to eat it every day.

however, i'm not going to miss some things too such as,
not being able to flush t.p., drink tap water, use buses to go everywhere, constantly inhaling pollution, dodging cars, wondering if i'll make it to my destination alive because of the crazy drivers, seeing how poverty stricken this country really is...side note below...., the stray dogs on the streets....nolan and i feed a bunch a long the way...i wish we could've taken some of them home. bernie would have loved them..., and the dirty hippies...ick! not being near my friends and family in the USA.

when nolan and i were traveling we really went to some very rural areas. they were really what i've heard about they were the 70% of ppl that are below poverty and live in these little wooden shacks. you see ppl sitting on the side of the road or walking around. i can't help but thing...where are they going? it's incredibly heart wrenching. my friend chrissy said her friend just adopted a baby from guate. so nolan and i are definitely going to look into that in a few years. i can't wait!

that's about it! i don't think i'll update any more before we fly back unless that's a problem.

love u and miss you!


happy bday again, mom!

where do i begin?

wow! it's been a crazy 3 days since i last wrote...not sure if it's been 2, 3, or 4 days really. time's a blur! we got to coban via a first class bus. it was in the nastiest part of town in Guatemala City i've ever seen. definitely blew tiajuana away. glad i was with nolan. the bus stations are all in Zona 1, which is the worst part of town. why, i don't know...the bathrooms were vile! i don't even know where to begin to describe them. it seems like every toilet seat here doesn't have a seat. not like we'd sit on them anyway. we always travel with our own seat covers and T.P. you have to pay 1Q to use it. they couldn't even flush them, just put water in to wash down the waste. it was so disgusting then you have the dirty T.P. in the trash cans...i am going to be so excited to flush again! i know, i know, you guys are probably so sick about reading about the plumbing here. poor nolan, sometimes i think he's irked that we're roughing it. he's a city boy and all. i just try to go with the flow and there's not much we can do to change it.

Ugh! We arrived at a hotel, but it turned out it was a hostel...we just can't stay in hostels. We've gotta sleep in hotels. I know, I slept outside right? Well, this place had dead flies all over the bed, dirty, dingy, no lock on the door, vile stench, dimly lit, the flaws are endlesss. We snuck out of there and got a room at the finest hotel in town! $34 USD per night! It was actually very beautiful. There was an incredible bake shop nearby. There was some church retreat going on that we sat outside in the courtyard and watched. The shitty hostel was $26 per night. Wow! What a difference $8 made!

we went on the most amazing trip of our lives monday! we visited Semuc Champey, Lanquin, tubing, and Kan ba caves. I can't even express how much it was worth going 10 hrs. out of our way to visit paradise. The area is VERY rural and has this lagoon and river tucked away in a jungle. We hiked for about 30 grueling minutes and then we saw a look out point of the lagoons. It blew Jamaica way. The lagoons formed above a river so there are two seperate bodies of water. The lagoon water is blue and the river water is brown. The river flows underneath and into the caves. We walked and listened to the wild life around us. Our guide was awesome and I translated for Nolan and this other girl who was with us. She was from Isreal and so sweet. I can't even describe how beautiful it was...I can't wait to post pics! We swam around for about 1 hr. Nolan's swimming lessons are paying off! He did a great job! We sat at the lagoon and ate lunch and admired the beauty. I talked to the Jewish girl a lot and swam with her as Nolan was leery to go into the deeper parts. Boy, did he not know what we were in store for next. The guide said we were going to go check out the caves next! We read about them in the book and it sounded cool. It sounded like the ones I've visited in Tennessee with my mom. Boy, was I wrong! The guide said we were going swimming in the caves with candle light. How in the hell am I going to hold a candle and swim under ground? What the hell was Nolan going to do? Nolan said that he wasn't going to do it. I explained that he's not a great swimmer. The guide quickly had a solution for that. He got an intertube for Nolan! He said the only thing that's missing is a rubber ducky on the front of it! God, I wish I had a camera, but we couldn't take it down there because we had to swim! I of course left our flashlight in some hotel, it was water proof and we could have used that instead of a candle. It was wild! the water was freezing, bats were chirping and flying above, and he we are entring this cave and ducking from bats and stalagtites, those rock formations above us. It was incredible difficult to doggy paddle and hold my candle above me. Poor Nolan could barely move in his inertube he was stagnant. He could barely use the candle b/c the guide was afraid he'd burn his intertube and drown. He took it away from him. It was so freaking scary, but so exciting! We could hear a waterfall. We had to swing underneat a waterfall to get across this area, climb up and down ladders, squeeze through areas where the stalagtites were. I felt like Indiana Jones! We had to dump the candles at one point and our guide used a head light. We walked through the caves and were covered in bumps, scrapes, and bruises when we got out of there. My beautiful $85 bathing suit was ruined! However, I'd do it over in a heart beat. It was amazing! Wild! However, when we had to turn back there was a point where Nolan didn't have his innertube and I panicked! I started screaming at the guide that he can't swim! Nolan all of a sudden took a flying leap towards me! I was about to die! The guide told me to calm down and he would take care of him. Nolan said he was worried about me and wanted to get over there, but I told him that he's crazy b/c he can't swim that great yet. YIKES! Now we can laugh about it...as we're cracking up right now. It was exhilerating!

Nolan said he had enough fun so I went tubing with the girl from Israel. We went with two other guys. We had to interlock our legs and I touched these guys feet. Ick! When I looked down it was covered in toe fungus! I nearly screamed. I let go of him and it was just me and the girl from Israel. The guide, came over after a while and latched on to me. Thank god, that other guys feet were NASTY! I used hand sanitizer all day and was freaking out after thinking I'd get nail fungus. So far I'm OK.

We took a shuttle from Coban to Flores on Tuesday. We almost missed the shuttle b/c Nolan decided at the last minute to go to the ATM. I had to ask the guy to come back for us. What a mess! I nearly had a heart attack. We're on such a tight schedule. Every person in the bus, NOT US, smelled sooo badly. It was body odor central. Crazy Europeans! LOL! It was so hot and no one wanted to roll the windows down. We're in the freaking jungle, people! Its hot, humid, sticky, and 95 plus degrees. It's like Florida in the northern part of Guatemala. I felt nauseaus the entire time.

We made it to Flores took a crazy shuttle from there to Tikal. I really don't have time to explain the entire thing, but I can when we get back. It was a saga! We walked around Tikal last night and then took a sunrise tour this a.m. It was incredible listening to the wild life and especially the monkeys howling. We swam in a pool at our disgusting hotel and had dragon flies dancing above our heads, toucans chirping in the trees, spider monkeys swinging from tree limbs, and the howler monkeys screeching. i felt like i was in animal planet. the hotel only has electricity 3 hrs. a day from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. when they serve dinner. we slept in pools of sweat the entire night. mom, nolan said it reminds him of when he lived with you! i was afraid to use the bathroom and we had to take a gas latern to illuminate the pathway. nolan accompanied me every time. there was lizards, frogs, and other insects i've never seen before. i decided i wouldn't go alone after i was corned in the bathroom by a frog. it was cute, but i was so afraid it would jump on me. every move i made it inched toward me. it was awful! i ran out of there and never went back to the bathroom alone. god, the room was soooo musty! it was shared bathrooms too. i felt like i was in the dorms from college again.

we took the sunrise tour of tikal without a flashlight. nolan almost fell countless times over the gigantic roots of the gigantic trees in the jungle. i nearly twisted my ankle! we walked up stairs to sit on top of a 210 feet tall myan temple @ 5 a.m. in the dark. we waited above to watch the sunrise and listened to the howler monkeys go crazy. unfortunately, we don't have pics of the howler monkeys, but it was incredible. nolan took a video of the sounds of them calling to each other. it was the most amazing experience. we were sitting above the jungle canopy of trees. it was freaking wild! you could see every star in the sky. it was the clearest night i'd seen in a long time. however, the clouds started rolling in as the sun rose. at least it didn't rain, but it's so foggy in guatemala in the a.m.

we're now going to take a cab and keep our fingers crossed so that we can get on the plane to guatemala city without our passports. i hope so! i'm looking foward to taking a shower...i'm so sticky, smelly, and icky! then we're heading back to xela to hang out with josefina and some friends then going to antigua then flying out. i 'm excited to come home.

i want to pinch myself and can't believe that we endured these adventures. it was awesome! i'm so glad nolan did it with me. he's not too outdoorsy, but i think after nearly 10 yrs. i can break him in.

mom, happy early bday! i'll call you tomorrow!!! i love u!

oh! bernie is doing well. our dog sitter said he's made a lot of new friends in her neighborhood, dogs and ppl, plus he plays a lot with her dog. her ex boyfriend gave him a nickname. einstein is doing well too. he's handling the 2 doggies OK. i can't wait to see them!

Sorry for all the typos once again! My english is so bad right now! Crazy, it's only been 4 months.

we´re leaving antigua tomorrow

hey everyone,

we finalized our plans for our adventure this week. yikes! i wish we would´ve started out adventuresome and ended with our relaxing time here. oh well...i´m pooped anyway because you have to take so many buses and walk everywhere. it´s really exhausting taking all the chicken buses, tuk tukes, micro buses, etc. to places.

yesterday, we hiked up Picaya, the active volcanoe about 1 and a half hours outside of Antigua. It was incredible. my legs got really sun burnt. i forgot to put sun block on them. we got pics and video of the lava moving down the volcano...at times we were only 2 feet away from it and the heat was very unbearable. some idiot threw his plastic bottle into a river of lava. what a loser! we all booed him! our tour guide went sliding down the volcano to get closer to the lava. it was scary.

we´ve eaten at some very great restaurants here! we checked out a macadamian nut farm today and just finalized our plans. it took a while booking with travel agents. a great guatemalan family gave us a ride back from the farm in their SUV. it´s the 2nd time someone has given me a lift here. the ppl are so amazing and nice here. i´ll remember that forever. i spoke to them in spanish while they replied in english. it was great! we used the fire place in our bedroom and drank some guatemalan, GALLO, beers too! this hotel is incredibly beautiful. it´s all down hill from here. i´m really nervous about our adventures across the country now. i´m so glad nolan is here with me.

we´re going to try to go to Coban tomorrow it´s 6 hrs by bus...not chicken, but not 1st class. somewhere in btw. we want to try to visit Semuc Champey, it´s a natural limestone lagoon, about 3 hrs away from Coban on Monday and a Coffee Farm. THe later may be impossible because Semuc is so far away. Plus, I heard the roads to those places are really shitty. We´re going to head up to Tikal, the Mayan Ruins, on Tuesday via some kind of bus and then check out a sunrise tour of the ruins on Weds...as long as the weather fairs well. Keep your fingers crossed for us and that we can fly back from Tikal because we don´t have our passports with us and we´ve gotten mixed responses whether the airline will let us on board with a photocopy of our passport. We bought the tickets anyway and will just fight the charges with our credit card company back home if we can´t board. However, I don´t want to take a 10 hr. bus trip back to Guatemala City. I´d rather take the 45 minute flight. Then we´re going to stay in Guate. for one night, head back to Xela, spend time with Josefina and go back to Antigua and then fly out on Saturday.


I emailed my professor over the summer who teaches the Medical Spanish Class and we´re going to meet on Sept. 11 during one of my breaks. I think I´ll be able to test in there now. LOL! If not, I don´t know what to say about my spanish....I´m also going to look for a job too. I hope my Spanish will give me an edge to get a retail pharmacy tech job. Although, I know my spanish is far from perfect.

We´re going to go relax by the pool now! It´s amazing, surounded by flowers, trees, and a waterfall. Nolan just commented on how bad my english is and is correcting me on all my errors with spelling and grammar. Geez!

Keep your fingers crossed that we get to our destinations safely! I don´t think we´ll get there in a timely fashion, but I hope that we can visit all that we want too. We´ve taken a lot of amazing pics.

Oh! One funny note, when we were at the Nature Reserve at the Lake we were chased down by some decendents of racoons. They have long pointy noses and they are redish colored. I halled ass out of that area of the jungle! I´ll have to find the name of them and post a pic of it. We were too scared to snap a pic of them!

We love and miss everyone! I can´t wait to get home! It´s incredible to think I havne´t been home for nearly 4 months.

We're in Antigua

Hey! We had a fabulous time at Lake Atitlan. We really didn't want to leave, but we need to explore other parts of Guatemala too. We went to a nature reserve yesterday and walked over a crickety suspension bridge it was pretty wild. We also walked up on a couple that was doing it too! Gross! There was a beautiful butterfly garden and the waterfall was amazing, but walking across the bridge to the waterfall was very scary. It took about 3 plus hours to walk around it. We also explored some towns around the lake, ate great food, hung out in the hammocks. We met some really great people and drank some really good chilean wines. We woke up yesterday and today to watch the sunrise at the lake. We walked out to our balcony and took a bunch of photos. Also, last night there was a thunderstorm so we took some pics of the lightening above the volcanoes.

We're going to hike up an active volcano tomorrow. We may cut our trip short in Antigua for one day if our hotel will let us as we really want to tour a coffee farm and check out the rainforest. I've seen pics of Picuaya, the active volcano, and it looks amazing! We leave at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Going to explore Antigua a bit today now.

We're at the Lake

Hey Everyone,

We went to Fuentes Georginas, walked around Xela and did the market thing, and went to Chichicastenenago. I didn't buy much at the Markets because NOlan said that I bought too much already. I tried to get a Mayan Calendar...it's a weaving and the ladies wouldn't budge. I wanted it...I should've just bought it. Nolan said, "No more jewelry...I only bought 3 pieces!" It was sad saying good bye to my family, but I left my stuff in Xela with some friends so we're going to go back and I promised them I'd stop by. Of course, they said their door is always open. I left on Sunday, b/c I thought my family would receive a new student, but they didn't. I did stop by to get the laundry I left there, I used the pila, the wash basin, to wash some stuff on Saturday night. How exhausting! Nolan took a few pics of me. They found the rat! I didn't dare look at it, but you could start to smell it. It died behind the stove and it was decomposing and worms were feeding off of it. Ick! Nolan looked at it. Had I known my family wouldn't of had a student we would have stayed w/them then at a hotel. Josefina wouldn't let me pay for Nolan staying there with us. I don't know why...I'm going to try to give her the $ one last time at the end of the month.

We're relaxing at the lake and have been town hopping by boat. It really should be the 8th wonder of the world. Our hotel is paradise! It's incredible. We're going to go in the hot tub tonight or tomorrow. We're going to try to get more ppl in it to subsidize the cost, but either way we're going to go because it'll be an experience being in a hot tub and surrounded by volcanoes. We walked to a neighboring down through the jungle...it was beautiful and not too difficult. We couldn't find the waterfall. It's sad that no matter how beautiful and lush it is here that there is garbage EVERYWHERE! the dogs look better fed here then anywhere else i've visited. I guess the hippies feed them...so many hippies by the lake and Xela too for that matter. i know our pics will pale in comparison to how beautiful it is here. Here's where we are

http://www.atitlan.com/

our hotel
http://www.lacasadelmundo.com/