Good Decisions

Dear Moms and Dad,

Today at Spanish School in San Pedro La Laguna we learned a lot of new things, including the correct phrase to say when we stub our toe, or get our wallet stolen, or fall off the side of a mountain in a Chicken Bus. We also started dreaming in Spanish, specifically about the woman who walks through the streets of San Pedro yelling, ¨Pan de banano!¨ (Banana bread!), repeatedly as she desperately tries to sell her goods in the low tourist season. Most importantly, we have learned to make rational decisions. For example, we had planned on visiting our dear friend Molly in the town of Totonicapan this weekend, but we decided against it after we saw on the news that a hurricane named Matthew is coming straight towards us, and after everyone we know in San Pedro told us that traveling this weekend would be a death sentence.

We made lots of new friends, including our friend Juan, who has a solution to everything, as long as his insight can be exchanged for quetzales. And our bar owner friend Ben, who manages to cope with the low tourist season by pretending that his bar is completely full when, in reality, we´re the only people there (besides the guy from Detroit, of course). And our friends Blake and Santos, who give us advice on how to open a restaurant in Guatemala and where we can go to learn how to make those delicious chocolates that come in the shape of hot dogs. We made the good decision of not making friends with TOO many stray dogs that will give us rabies, but we did make friends with a kitten named Lupe who thinks she´s a dog.

Tonight, I would like to tell you that we made the good decision of studying our Spanish the whole day, but I´m afraid that we actually just waded in the lake, drank hot chocolate with ginger, read for pleasure in the afternoon, and ate at a delicious restaurant during happy hour. I hope you´re not too disappointed. Everyone makes mistakes, right?

Love and kisses,
Laura and Andrew