Hola Honduras!

We made it to Honduras via the coastal route. It's been a grand adventure and this post will not do it justice but I'll post our general whereabouts and where we've been. From Xela, we took a bus at 4:00 in the morning bound for the SE corner of Guatemala, where the land is jungle and the air is humid. We stayed 2 nights in the town of Rio Dulce and spent one of those nights with some new friends in a private house on the river. The house was owned by a very accomodating family from L.A. who we met at the local waterfall/hot spring.....Thanks again! Next we took a river boat down the Rio Dulce to the Carribean town of Livingston (a spectacular 1.5 hour ride). There the Garifuna people and culture (Google it) warmly greeted us into their world. It was quite the experience and such a change from the rest of Guatemala.....we loved it! We visited another crazy waterfall called the Seven Altars which we reached after an afternoon hike along the beach. The standard cliff jumping occurred at each of the pools and Chris and I found

Adios Xela

We will be leaving Xela at 4:00 in the morning so hopefully our blogs will become frequent and exciting once again. Cristóbal joined us in Guatemala on the 10th and Mark will blog about their journey to Xela soon I´m sure. They have some great photos.



Meanwhile, goodbye to our teachers and new friends. Cristóbal took two days of intensive one-on-one Spanish classes with Oscar and learned an amazing amount. In fact, he says

Bienvenidos a Christopher!

Christopher arrived about a week and a half ago and during this time he has adapted incredibly fast (he hops on and off Chicken Buses like a pro) and has experienced so much including collaborating with me on this blog.

I picked Chris up on Friday the 10th, and we stayed in a compound of houses heavily guarded by guys with automatic rifles, etc. Guatemala City isn't known to be the safest place in the world so I opted for safety over being sorry.

In the morning we took a shuttle to Antigua which is a beautiful city but very different from the rest of the country. Antigua is dreamy and fairytale like. I wanted to start Chris' trip here because it is a good "soft landing" for Guatemala. In the shuttle, the driver spoke almost perfect English, and I told Chris this would be the last person he would meet in Guatemala who would speak English. Chris just now reminded me that

We´re still in Xela

We are still enjoying life in Xela. Normally, this is the daily schedule:

7-7:15 am: We get up and get ready.
7:30 am: Breakfast--fruit, coffee, and sometimes bread.
8:00 am to 1:00 pm: Mark walks Michelle to her Spanish school Eureka and then heads to the library or other fine place to study until lunch.
1:30ish pm: Lunch. We also use this time to catch up with each other.
2:00 to 6:00 pm: Mark heads to private tutoring while Michelle studies.
6:00 to 7:00 pm: Errands.
7:00 pm: Dinner and catch up.
8:00 to 11:00 pm: Study some more.

This pretty much sums up the daily grind for the past six weeks or so. Between school and studying we spend