View Full Album

VOLCANO ERUPTION! Yes we are all safe and sound after the eruption. On thursday night I thought I heard it raining so I went out on the porch and a Guatemalan said no it's not raining. Well I thought this guy was losing it because it sounded like rain or sleet and it was 70 degrees so it definitly was not sleet. So I put my flip-flops on and went out in the grass and he was right it wasn't raining but it was black sand. It didn't take us long to realize what was going on and were confused because we live 16 miles as the crow flies from the Volcano. The black sand was exactly that black sand, when I picked up a handful and rubbed it around my hands didn't get black. On friday morning we got up to check out the damage. After taking some pictures I decided to start cleaning up here at school. Soon another american started to help . In the pictures the one with the guy shoveling off the red patio is at school were we are curently staying and the picture with the red car in the carport is at our house. After we got done cleaning up the patio and parking area we packed up and headed for our house via the long way to get a closer look at the damage. The other pictures are from the bottom of the hill at Los Humitos and for those of you who don't know where this is it's a road we use fairly often with work teams. They got up to 2 inches of this stuff but it wasn't just sand , they also got fine stone and up to 1 inch stones.The sand and stones stop coming down thursday night and then it started to rain & rain & rain.... Almost everywere the rain was pretty clean but at Los Humitos they got a pretty heavy mud rain as you can see in the pictures. As far as I know only 1 person died from rocks hitting him.Well this is saturday night and it is still raining. We are getting a tropical storm right now that is supposed to dump 12-30 inches of rain. All in all it's pretty interesting right now because the last time this volcano erupted with this much force was 12 years ago even though it erupts pretty often. Oh yea did I forget to mention we had hiked up Pacaya about three weeks ago.

My daughter is finally reaching out and teaching others how to play Parcheesi!

This is what happens when you lose self control on a nice sunny day. I usually sit on the porch to to my homework and I look out over the courtyard watching these little Hummingbirds so I took a little break from home work and took some pictures here at school.

 

Nicole tiene nueve meses ahora [is nine months old today].

The imagination of a child…..

Here are some pictures of our cozy [ a.k.a. little ] apartment. We have this beautiful courtyard view from our porch. The rest of the building you see is used as a hotel. So sometimes late at night or early mourning [4 am] we hear groups of people yelling and laughing and having a high old time. But for the most part it’s pretty peaceful. On the photos looking towards the apartment, on the left is another building where the school is. So we have to walk about 40 ft to the stairs and then up one level and we are at school. Like a typical Guatemalan place it is surrounded by a wall and gate and they have a guard. So Christina can run around outside and we don’t have to worry. All the workers here know her pretty good by now and always talk to her [in Spanish of course]. For those of you who were wondering how school is, just think back to 1st grade when you were learning how English works. Well that’s how it is but in a language you don’t know! We are learning our verbs [ I am, you are, they are, we are, so on and so forth]. I guess all in all everything is going good so far but man I thought language in school was bad now I’m trying to learn Spanish with a teacher that hardly knows any English! The rainy season started and now it will rain about every afternoon/night for 4 or 5 months. O yea we live at the school so that I can go from 8:30 to 12 and Louise can go from 1 to 4 so we don’t have to stick our hijas with anyone and also traffic is horrible in the mourning and afternoon. What normally takes 25 min. on Sunday or at lunchtime takes 1 hour and 15 min. in the mourning and the afternoon during the week.

Easter in Guatemala. These alfombras are made out of colored sawdust and flowers. It’s a catholic thing, the nicer the alfombras the more devout they are. After they are finished creating these alfombras, they have parades [that are very slow] and they walk on top of the alfombras through the whole village. The people in the parades carry floats that depict Jesus carrying the cross or being crucified. Easter is held as having more importance then Christmas.