Ingles con Señor Simon

Buenas! Todas aqui esta muy bien!


Yes i am in Xela (Quetzaltenango)! This brilliant city in Southern Guatemala. Its not as 'tourist pretty' (or touristy) as Antigua, but because it much more genuine it's a really cool place to experience real Guatemala and learn spanish tambien.
I've been here over a week now and I don't ever want to leave. Im staying with a local family (Miriam, Maria, Anejandra, Beatrice, Gabrielle & Estuardo), who are the most friendly and funny people ive encountered for many a day. and have my own room, which ive 'simonized' with pictures and stuff on the walls. It feels like I properly live here now. Brilliant. The school is really good; its 1 on 1 for 5 hours a day. Yo pienso que mi espanol es mucho mas bueno ahora. Theres activities everyday which are great. Last week we went to a local primary school and taught english to young kids. My class was apparently very calm compared to the rest (maybe this is a sign..)...it was rediculously fun teaching to these kids. They were so eager to learn!! At the end they surrounded us and bombarded us with questions; One kid asked (in espanol): "Senor Simon, what is frijol in english?", "Bean.." I say, "Like Mr Bean?", "Yes! Exactly" I say, "Senor Frijol Senor Frijol!!". Funny times.

We also went to this place called Zunil - a small indigenous village just outside of Xela. I wasnt expecting much but it was insane. We went into what looked like a house, but inside, surrounded by flowers and people praying, was a lifesize figure of a white man dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, sunglasses, a lit cigarette, scarves and rubber gloves. This is San Simon.


The mayans here regard him as holy. Extremely weird. Upstairs was a room full of smoke and fire. All along one wall was a firepit with massive flames. People were praying while tossing on seeds (for good harvests) and alcohol. One family was being protected by having a egg rubbed over them (weirdly the father was also on his mobile at the same time- seems to be that globalisation has caught up here). There was a real human skeleton behind bars at one end, dressed like the grim reaper. People were lighting cigars of the fire and then puffing non stop while praying. Hard to see and breath so we left. Incredible (and also extremely weird) to be in a place of such intense religious practises.


So you might of heard that that volcano i climbed and toasted marshmallows on last week (Pacaya) has erupted. So far three people are dead, more missing and more than 2000 people evacuated. Its covered the whole of guatemala city with ash (7cm in areas) and the airports closed. When i heard this i couldnt believe it...last week I was toasting marshmallows on it innocently! and now its erupting violently. crazy. Ever since I arrived here last weekend its been raining. It got worse and worse and a few days ago it was raining non stop. Eventually we heard why. There was a tropical storm/hurricane heading our way. It passed over guatemala city and up the country but the main centre managed to miss here. The flooding was intense though, the streets were literally like rivers and lots of people lost their houses. The clubs were full of ankle deep water (which made dancing even more fun). The newspapers have 'Emergencia" written everwhere. Theres been alot of destruction of houses and villages, and theres mudslides and guatemala city has massive holes in the ground... Incredible to be in this crazy country! Depite all this however, people were still dacing salsa in the supermarket.

I spend alot of time here with friends from the school, eating choco-bananas, climbing the surrounding hills, slouching in cafes with amazing guatemalan coffee, oh yeah and dancing salsa. Im learning salsa at the moment with classes everyday; its brilliantly fun and means that when you go out later you can actually join in with everyone else. Its very different to bars/clubs in england, everyone dances salsa, and no matter where you go salsa is always played. Its also much easier to grab a partner and dance because everyone dances the same dance! (also i think being a 'crazy-looking' gringo helps) Everyone just has a great time.
Theres one other student staying in my house, Simon the Swiss man, who is possibly the coolest person ive ever met in several long years. We're thinking of buying a cheap car and driving to Nicaragua (theres a hilariously small chance this will actually happen...but the thoughts cool!)


Today we have a cooking class which should be interesting considering i cant even cook english food (although i do make a darn good lemon drizzle cake). We were supposed to be climbing Volcán Santa Maria tomorrow, but because of Pacaya all volcanoes in Guatemala are restricted for climbing for 2 weeks encase they erupt.

Not sure when im going to leave here (know knows maybe not for 3 months...) but i want to go to Lago de Atitlan next for some paragliding fun.

¡Pero tengo que ir porque hoy es viernes y hay muchos fiestas (y tengo que bailar salsa ahora)
Hablar mas tarde


Simon x