Guatemala Recap

Well I'm out of Guatemala now - we left on Saturday morning.  We spent the last week in Antigua and at the Belen convent doing a recap of our last 2 weeks in the field, giving presentations, discussing future changes, doing final Spanish evals, and things like that.  The week was actually kind of boring, but I liked being with my Magdalena family again, and the routine was kind of nice to fall back into.

Regarding my last post, I take back my ranking of the street food woman who sold me tamales.  As delicious as they were, I'm not sure if they were worth the ensuing sickness. (Who knows, they might not have been from her)  Anyway, when I got back to Antigua, I got a massive fever for a day, and then stomach sickness for the next 3.  I actually just about an hour took my last dose of Cipro, so hopefully all bacteria are gone.  

I'm sad to be out of Latin America now - living there was so different day to day, everything was fast paced and lively, yet at the same time, no one really hurried and people are more relaxed than Americans.  Life is just very rich and colorful.  We saw some really amazing places, some incredibly beautiful natural scenes, bustling cities, but also some very poor villages struggling to support themselves.  In every place, though, all the guatemaltecos were very accommodating, welcoming, and friendly to foreigners.  I met some amazing friends and people who had really strong passions for their work.  Everyone - friends and colleagues - really inspired me with their work.  I don't think I can say enough about how awesome my 2 months were - I do know I want to go back to Guatemala sometime in the future for sure. 

I'm in Buenos Aires now for the rest of the year - it's a huge change from Guatemala.  Probably even more so than the jump from Guatemala to New Jersey.  Anyway, I'm going to keep blogging about my Argentine semester, but I'm going to change the picture and title and everything ...just to keep the same name.  Later!