TravellingStrom

Monday – Antigua, Guatemala

Day one of school, and what a steep learning curve!!!

So, my first day of school dawned and I had had a great sleep, being tired helped. Because I was now officially staying 2 doors up at the family of Juan Carlos and Olga, they served up breakfast at 7.30am, a nice omelette and tea with milk, great stuff, it was even Lipton tea 🙂 I met a French chap who was leaving that morning and I was hot bunking, well after a cleanup of course 🙂 After breakfast I met Chris, an American also staying there who had been here for a week but he had been learning Spanish on and off for a fair while, although not formally as he was now.

I went and checked the bike of course for damage after the tip over and except for some different colour dirt in the same spots it was undamaged. By the same spots I mean the right pannier took the brunt, the bar ends and hand guards again of course, the crash bars did their job, no big deal. I have not lost a lever yet (touch wood) but it would not matter as I brought a new one of each with me, just in case 🙂

What I did notice when I checked the bike was the cause of the smoke yesterday afternoon, check out the background in this picture of my bike 😯

I went down the narrow track that I had to ride up last night in the dark, to get a better view, and that volcano is as active as a cheerleader in Cancun during spring break!!!

That impressed the heck out of me I can tell you 🙂 No one else seemed to give two hoots, so it must be normal, but I found out later sometimes it really has a big blow although today’s clear morning sky made for some good photos. Apparently there are three volcanos around where I am staying, two of them active and one dormant, 1 out of three ain’t bad I suppose 🙂 As I found out later when I checked the internet, no SPOT messages got through, so I had to notify an OK by email. Well, this was good until I moved in to my room for the week in a different house as there was no WiFi signal here so that meant a real pita effort to post, check emails etc and do any research for the upcoming months.

I wandered down to the school a bit later just to get oriented as to directions, but also to find an ATM to get them some money as they wanted cash. This was another interesting experience as I found a whole stack of banks at the main town square, but everyone I tried would only allow me to take out a maximum of Q400 (divide by 8.3 = about $50), this was no good as I needed more than that for a week’s board and school and every transaction costs about $3! I eventually found one that would allow me to withdraw what I needed, so I will remember where that one is 🙂 I went and paid the bill and headed back up for some lunch before school, on the way I spotted a couple of old buildings, one a church restored while the other was not in such good condition.

A few other observations are that the tiled roofs need mowing and the chicken buses are very colourful 🙂

Well, let me say school was hard and it was full on, well that was to be expected as I was starting from scratch and was in a 6 hour a day learning mode. Because of my late booking this meant I was on from midday until 4pm with one teacher, once she was worn out it was straight onto the next one until 6pm. This was a frazzling afternoon to say the least and I was happy to head home after and relax.

After a great dinner I spent most of the evening getting some blog work done ready to find some internet somewhere. I should have been studying, but I needed a break! Anyway, the family heads to bed around 9pm so I was not long after that as I was mentally fatigued.

Tomorrow is another day 🙂

Day – 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 41,938 miles and 67,493 km

Salud
TravellingStrom

USACanadaMexico

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