But for now, I will keep you busy with one of my interesting emails! My last week of Spanish classes went pretty well. Sara and I got to stay together the last two weeks. First a week in San José together, and after that a week in San Andrés together. They even let us stay at the same families, which was pretty nice! The week in San Andrés was different, but fun. I was just getting used to my teacher Adérito, and not I had a lady teacher. But she was very nice as well. I did realize that four weeks is bastante! There is so much information that you need to store in your head, grammar, grammar and grammar! Finally now we have the time to practise and use it all.

Last Friday we wanted to go to our new house in Flores to put some of our stuff there and to see if we could arrange something about furniture and stuff. The offer of this one Dutch guy was too expensive, it would be cheaper to buy everything, and then in the end sell it again. So that was our new plan.

Normally, when you do not need one of those micro-busses to go to Flores, they are passing by all the time. But that day, we had ´mala suerte´ or simply bad luck! We waited for an hour and a half in the heat, when a bus finally showed up! Geez! And the amount of people they put in these things! There is normally room for about 12 people, but NO, they put like 18 people in there! But we made it to Flores, which was the important thing!

The next  saturday morning we decided to clean the house, since it was pretty dirty! There were spiders, cobwebs,  spiders, dust, cobwebs,  dust, spiders etc. We cleaned all morning! And it was soo incredibly hot, that we closed the windows and cleaned in our bra´s! Don´t tell anyone though! :-)

Finally we were almost ready. We only needed to mop the livingroom, and than we were finished. Suddenly, totally out of the blue, there is was......a HUGE tarantula!!!! It was seriously HUGE! As big as a hand, and I am not even exagerating, and I don´t mean a baby hand!!! It was SOOO gross and SOOO scary!!! Sara and I just started screaming and running around the house totally in panic! It was soo not even funny! We did realize to grab our shirts before running out on the street screaming!

In our little street there were some constructors working to build some new building. We just kept screaming ´AYUDA AUYDA!!!´ (HELP HELP!!). Luckily there were two men brave enough to enter our house and remove that huge animal!!! Oh man, it was sooo scary! I don´t think I´ve ever been that scared in my life!! We just wanted to get out of the house, so we grabbed our stuff and went to our hotel. Took a shower and needed to chill a bit! What a scary thing!

That night we had our first housewarming party! We invited all the teachers and students from the Bio-Itza school. All together there were about 15 people, and it was incredibly fun! Sara and I bought all the beer, other alcohol, and other drinks, and they were all impressed that we did that!!

We also bought some furniture that day, just some plastic table with 6 chairs. We also made seats out of blocks and towels! It was okay! We had also bought some christmaslights for decorations. It was a fun night! We dansed the marengue (or we TRIED to dance the marengue) and the salsa and everyone was enjoying themselves. It was a great succes, in the end they didn´t even want to leave anymore!

The next morning we had a trip to some archeological site called Ceibal. We were going with Kathleen, this lady from Canada, Jo, a girl from England, and of course the chicas  holandesas! We were supposed to be picked up at 7 in front of some bank, but of course the bus was late. But it was 8 and still no bus, 8:30 and still no bus....would they have forgotten us??? I went back to the house to search for the phonenumber of Adérito to see what was going on. The trip was organized by Bio-Itzá, that´s why. Just when I dialed the number, the bus showed up! It was 10 past 9!! And the busdriver even asked:

Are you guys  ready??? Yeah, of course we are ready!!! But we went, and that was the important thing!

It was a pretty amazing trip once again. The last hour we had to take a boat to the site. It was a beautiful river, and yeah, we saw crocodiles!! It was pretty cool, because we came pretty close!! My first experience with a crocodile!

Arriving at the site was amazing as well. The jungle was huge and incredible! We definitely needed bugrepellent, because we were being eaten alive out there! Ceibal only had one tempel that was excavated, but it had tons of beautiful steleas with mayan drawings. It was beautiful! And of course the howler monkeys were present. We saw them, but especially heard them load and clear! Just amazing the sound they make! Honestly, if you wouldn´t know it was a monkey, you would think it was some dinosaur or something!

After walking around in the jungle for a while, the trip went back to our home sweet home, Flores, again!

Yesterday, Sara and I bought some beds, and a refrigerator, so last night was our first night in our house!!!! This afternoon we will go to the market to buy a stove and some food so we can cook ourselves! How exciting!

Well, this was another story from my life here in Guatemala! I am enjoying it to the fullest! Miss you guys though!

Ciao,

Marjolein