Hi guys!

So here's my first blog of my Central American trip, woo hoo!

So to start from the beginning. Pretty hellish 3 flights spanning 2 days to get here. But wow, when I arrived in Antigua it was more than worth it. The city is GORGEOUS. No photos I'd seen of the city prior to coming did it justice. Its a beautful old colonial city, once the capital of the country. There are some gorgeous old churches and ruins dotted about, but my favourite part is just walking down the cobbled streets, passing by different shops, restaurants, houses, schools and gardens. From the top of every street you can never tell what it holds. Even from the door. It seems behind every exterior is a secret. Whether it be a lush garden with a water fountain and Guatemalains and Westerners alike sipping coffee, or a treasure trove of books piled high on shelves. Or even a never ending market full of those bright, zany colours you associate with Mexico and Latin America.

Each house and shop is painted an awesome different terracotta colour, with grand wooden doors and unique knockers. There are hardly any signs pretruding into the street, proclaiming the use of the shop, so unlike England and America, that you believe nothing is down there!

Antigua is a great place for students to learn Spanish too. Theres everything here! Even a Swiss restaurant! Theres numerous cafes playing movies, my fav is currently Cafe 2000. Its awesome! 4 movies a day on a MASSIVE screen at the back, and sofa like benches lined behind it. The cafe sells abundant amounts of drinks and foods too. And ofcourse, to increase my Spanish vocab theres big Spanish subtitles for all the English/American movies played :) I have to get used to that though. Last time I went, I got so excited with understanding a sentence of subtitles every so often, that I totally lost the plot of the movie!

So, the main reason Im here - school!! I have four hours of Spanish a day, from 8am to midday. Its one on one and my teachers a lovely, pregnant, expressional Guatemalan lady called Regina.Im picking up words fast and currently have 60 new verbs to learn for tomorrow! As you may have guessed she works me hard!! Also you may have noticed the unreasonable hour we begin class. 8am! That means the set breakfast cooked by most mother is eaten at 7am. Urgh!

This way though, it does leave the rest of the day to go over work (usually while soaking up the atmosphere in a cool quirky cafe in the square), explore more of Antigua, catch a movie or go on a school outing :)

So, my current house. I wont say too much about this right now as Im planning to move to a student house next week. Im moving as all the students in my house are (bar two) above 50 years old. Theyre lovely and the foods pretty good (we get 3 meals a day, except for Sundays, where god help us we have to fend for ourselves!!) and you get an ensuite shower room. But I really wanted to be with more younger people, and have a living room!! So fingers crossed next blog I'll be detailing my lovely new home :)

So, you may be wondering why the picture for this blog is a volcano. Well I climbed THAT volcano yesterday, slept at the (freezing cold) summit and came back down, jelly legged this morning. Antigua has three volcanos surrounding the city. This one (unbeknown to me until half way up the damn thing) seems to be the biggest!

I climbed up with some other students from the school (it arranges lots of trips for weekends and through the week) and a guide, ominously named Shisha. The first and perhaps only Guatemalan hippie I will meet :) So yes, the experience, as Paul put it: BRUTAL, or as Jessica described it at the top: the worst day of my life!! As you can guess, it was a hard day!! The bloody thing just went on and on, steeper and steeper with higher and higher altitude (thus less oxygen in the air). I think Volcan de Agua reaches just under 3,800 meters. To climb/circle around it took around 5 hours of hell. at times I was on the vurge of fainting, collapsing into tears and throwing myself off the edge. But yes finally we conquered the volcano! I have to admit the views were spectacular, we could even see Guatemala city as we climbed. And at the top, to be above the clouds, watching (very far in the distance) one of the other (active) volcanos' lava flow down was awesome. Note however that on top of a volcano its absoluetly freezing. My camera seems to have given up the ghost after this trip, refusing to show even a single photo on the memory card. Im hoping with some warm, cosy tlc it will revive itself. (But this is why there are no photos up yet!)

So yes, the evening on the volcano. Never been so cold. We had a bonfire outside, thankgod. But as another student pointed out, when we read in the trip guide about the bonfire, we weren't assuming it was absolutely necessary to be within a metre of it the whole night! :)

It was good to get to chat to more students at the school, getting to know people and have others to suffer with! I always find in times of adversity, you get to know people really well!

Today climbing down, to begin with was a shocking suprise to me. It was actually enjoyable! I ran, slid, and skipped down the first part. What joy to be going down, instead of up! I likened it to a cool assault course. three hours later I was not so impressed. My legs felt like jelly. My patience completely gone and my back covered in sweat yet again. But eventually we made it!! And the views coming down, albeit very cloudy to begin with were much more appreciated than the day before!! Another experience to add to my list: climbing a (bloody huge!) volcano! :)

So now Im sitting in an internet cafe, looking forward to (hopefully) speaking to Nick soon, perhaps popping into to watch a Spanish subtitled 'Forest Gump' with a cup of tea and at some point, learn my Spanish!!!

Hope everythings good in merry old England and the weathers not too cold (hehe!)

Love and miss you all and watch this space for photos!

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