Friday, September 14, 2012

Hey guys!

Remember that time when I had a blog that I was updating often?! Nope, neither do I.

Well never fear! Here I am, still alive and kicking nearly a month after my last post. In the last few weekends we´ve had quite a bit of excitement. What with a tornado knocking the entire city´s power out, the massive amount of rain we had that broke the pipes and left us without any water for an entire day (and then several more evenings that week), the eruption of the Volcan de Fuego (that´s "fire" for you really gringo peeps) over the past weekend (resulting in the evactuation of about 33,000 people) and the arrest of the mayor of Antigua yesterday morning on corruption charges (including stealing multiple million Quetzales from the government), we´ve had our fair share of both natural and unnatural excitement.

This weekend we are also celebrating Guatemala`s independence from EspaƱa, a celebration the people of Guatemala take far more seriously than we do en los Estados Unidos (if you´re like me, you´re thinking, "Well obviously! Why would people from the US care about Guatemala`s independence?"). Today we participated in a 20 15 14 16(?) km (they kept changing the distance on us) run from a neighboring town that had a couple of double r`s in it (I had to ask the name of the town twelve times and still can´t remember) all the way back to Antigua (while at certain points carrying a torch). Maybe eventually I´ll find a picture of it?

I should also talk a lot about both the retreat the missionaries attended a couple weekends ago and our trip last weekend to Semuc Champey, Lanquin, and Coban, but I´m out of time at the moment... more on that later!