Via Byway, My Way.

A fine Saturday, took a hike up to the lookout point above the city atop a hill about an hour’s walk away from the school with 3 other students.  At the top they have these slides made out of concrete that go down a hill a good hundred feet to a little clearing.  You can sit on your ass and make holes in your pants with all the friction and heat that you generate, or you do as the locals do and ride down on little plastic soda pop bottles…hard to explain, I have pics but will have to upload them when I get my replacement usb device.  Also took out my frisbee for the first time to toss it around, it is very hard in Xela to find any kind of clearing or space in which to throw a frisbee around, so this was indeed a great morning for a little exercise.

 Of course our 3 hour excursion made us all hungry, so we went out for real PIZZA and I almost ate a whole pie, soo ecstatic!  I have come to the decision that my time studying Spanish is like being on the game show survivor.  I’ll lose some weight with the limited food rations I get at home, but when I win the Rewards Challenge, then I’m going to town!  I even ordered a soda pop to go with the pizza, it was like heaven!  So I’m still quite full as I write this, and I will relish this feeling because tomorrow I’m heading 3 hours on a chicken bus to the BIG market in Chichistenango and I know I’ll be starving again…but just another Survivor test (in my mind).  I think it will be good to lose some weight, or so I’ve managed to convince myself.

Almost time for “dinner”, so I’ll leave you with this.  Kathy, working for the past 8 years for Habitat for Humanity in Georgia, gave us this account this afternoon at our pizza lunch.  In Africa, guess what animal kills more people than any other?  Perhaps a logical choice is a crocodile.  Maybe a beast like the rhino or a lion?  Nope.  Actually, it’s the hippo.  She took a “hippo cruise” during a visit in South Africa, and please make note.  When doing a hippo cruise, TAKE THE BIGGEST BOAT.  Don’t go cheap and go with a local on a wooden boat raft.  Umm, no.  And when you hear a sound in the water like “the wicked witch of the east cackeling (according to Kathy, that’s how it sounds like)”, LOOK OUT!  It means the hippo is about to charge something.  And on this particular day, it happened to be the little wooden raft thingy that some tourists decided to use.  The hippo charged the flimsy toothpick and flipped it over.  Fortunately her boat was nearby to rescue those in the water, no casualties fortunately. 

And one more thing.  Hippos will kill you, but they won’t eat you.  They’re vegeterians.  Kathy said that if she were to die from an animal, at least have the audacity to eat her!  What a poor way to die, to get killed by a hippo and just rot away at the bottom of the river…

One of the greatest joys I get from traveling is all the tales and stories I hear from my fellow vagabonders.  Since I can’t post pics for the next few weeks (and my previous posts with pics are still being worked on by the blog administrators), I’ll just have to entertain you with tales from other people since mine are pretty much about learning spanish (yawn) and my daily variety (or lack thereof) of food (boring).  It is amazing to learn about how many people have quit their jobs to either volunteer, learn spanish, or just travel.  And after hearing about some cut backs at my old job, I am pretty satisfied with my decision to do what I’m doing and am inspired by others through which what the world offers if one just steps out of the comfort zone to experience a different way of living.  Not so different from our own if you think about it, but just enough to notice subtle and marked differences.  Okay, I’m talking in circles now, must be the shock from all the food in my stomach.  3 weeks down and 15 more to go, now I feel like I don’t have enough time to do and see all that I want while I’m down here.  Okay, I’m over my interent limit, Ciao! 

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 18th, 2006 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.