Adios Antigua!

This is my last day here in Antigua and it´s kinda sad really. Its a nice place, and hopefully I´ll be able to come back, one day.

When I first got to Antigua and the school, I was surprised to see how many people who attended, and how many young people there were. Turns out that all the young ones were in the same group, a group of US college students on a trip with they teacher. They were really nice, so it kinda sucked that they left two days later... After that there really havent been that many people under 50yrs there. There has been some, of course, but not that many. Not that I mind talking to adults, but its just so different with people more or less your own age. You just dont hang out with a 65 year old married couple on a saturday night...

This week there´s been a lot of stuff going on though. On monday a bunch of new people started, and amongst them were this American family with a couple of sons in their twenties, as well as a couple of girls from England and Oregon. Thus we had our own little gang, the five of us. We´ve been walking around town, sightseeing and just chilling. But now everybody (including me) is leaving so no more. I usually hate saying goodbye to people, but during this first month I´ve gotten quite a bit of practice. Well, as we say in Norway (I can´t remember the English saying) "aldri saa galt at det ikke er godt for noe"

During my time here I´ve gotten quite a lot of questions, so I´d thought Id share a couple of the most common ones here;

1 - the whole safety-situation. Many people are conserned with my safety (which I am very gratefull for), because they have heard so many bad things about Guatemala. Guatemala have a lot more crime than Norway, but its not that bad, especially not here in Antigua. This town is dependent on tourism, so the city has taken its precautions. There city is crawling with tourist police as well as normal (armed) police. Not crawling in a bad way, but they have a solid presence, day and night. In addittion there´s a lot of banks and jewellery stores here, and all of them have their own armed guards. The house I live in is protected by a 5cm thick steel reinforced wooden gate locked by locks, two metal bars, a chain and a wooden beam. Better safe than sorry. It´s still possible to get into trouble, but as long as you dont walk home alone at night whilst being super drunk you should be fine. The risk of being swindeled or mugged is always present though.

2: Food. Traditional Guatemalan food is kind of like traditional farmers-food all over the world. There are a lot of stews and soups with vegetables and some meat. Every meal is served with rice and tortillas to make it more filling. The food is spicy, but very, very good. My host mom here, Margarita, is a good cook, and she varies a bit by making international dishes as well. Breakfast is often egg and beans or crepes and fruit salad (they have delicious fruit here), so its a big step forward from the sandwiches back home. Except for the frijoles, the black beans. Im not too fond of them, really.

I could have written much more, but then nobody would want to read the whole thing, so Ill continue with the FAQs later.

To wrap up; Im now done in Antigua, and it has been awesome! I´m still not fluent in Spanish, but I´m much better than before. Same goes for the salsa, wuhuu.

I leave for Copan, Honduras tomorrow morning, and the plan is to stay there for a couple of days before heading for Flores in northern Guatemala.

I have a lot of pictures, but the internet connection here is sooooooooooooooo slow, and I dont have time to upload atm. They will come later.

Adios!