I am sure our location for this posting comes as a bit of a surprise to many of you - we had not planned to come back to the US until July so we are back just a little bit before schedule! But soon after our last positing from Antigua, Todd's mild sickness worsened. He ended up in the hospital in Guatemala with a serious bacterial infection (a strain of e-coli, most likely) and a parasite. Over the course of a long weekend, Todd lost 25 pounds and was incredibly weak and shaky. Very scary for both of us and not an experience we hope to replicate anytime soon! The Guatemalan doctor prescribed a number of different medications to treat the problems but Todd's health did not begin to improve as quickly as any of us had hoped. After much debate and discussion with our families, we decided to take a break from our travels and return to the US in order for Todd to fully recover. We stopped our language classes and flew home to Tucson this past Friday to stay with Todd's parents. Todd will see more doctors this coming week to ensure that everything is being taken care of and then we will hopefully head off again in another week or two after Todd has put on a little weight and regains his footing a bit. We will be in touch once we are back on the road and will keep you posted on Todd's progress. One of the hardest parts is definitely the fact that we both felt we were being so careful about what food we ate and what water we drank. But because we were living with a host family, much of the food we ate was out of our control. Something tells me we will be even more careful going foward...