Yes, there’s been a huge gap in the blog, I just can’t seem to find much unique and interesting to write about from the ‘burbs of Washington DC. Nevertheless, it was a great two months of seeing my wonderful family and friends, and the good folks at Weichert Realtors even give me my desk back for a spell so that I could do my damage at attempting to eek my way over the poverty line and into a respectable tax bracket.

But I made another quick escape and here I am again in Guatemala with a new crop of students for three months traipsing through Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Honduras with LEAPNow. I got my incredible co-leader Nate back and instead of the traveling caravan of 14 like last time, this time we are an intimate family of 6, which creates a very different dynamic…so far a great one. I must confess that at times it feels strange and as though I’m being unfaithful to my first stellar crew of students from last semester, but they have since gone on to other things like working with whales in the Canary Islands, working as a dive master in Australia, a few are traveling together in South America, and several are hitting the books at university. I do miss them and remember them often, but my four new students are rock stars in their own right. Armen, standup comedian from LA; snowboard instructor Amanda from Minnesota; Johnny from LA, future Harvard grad whose parents created the Fresh Prince of Bel-air; and artist Jessica from Colorado who used to have her own talk show on NPR. I think it’s safe to say that my students are way smarter and way cooler than I ever was at 18…or perhaps ever will be.

We’ve just wrapped up a four-day orientation at Finca Ixobel in the jungle Peten region of Guatemala. The landscape here is exactly as you would imagine out of tropical storybook fantasies…lush green splendor everywhere. In between orientation sessions about healthy group dynamics and how to avoid spending the majority of the trip on the toilet, we went caving/swimming through an underground river cave (not a life jacket or hard hat to be found as we traversed some pretty dangerous ground…safety precautions don’t so much exist here), went into town and saw a funky local parade and bought ingredients from the market to whip up our own guacamole, and had a movie night watching Borat, a very culturally relevant and enriching film.

Now we’re in the middle of two weeks of Spanish school in a small, tranquilo village on the banks of Lago Peten. I live in what can accurately be described as a large shack with running water…sometimes. My family has a dog named “Espot” (Spanish for “Spot”) and there are the cutest little rabbits that live on the back patio. I inquired in hushed tones (so that the rabbits wouldn’t hear) if the rabbits were pets or for eating, as the later is usually the case with other housebound wildlife like chickens and pigs. Happily, I will not be enjoying rabbit stew for dinner anytime soon. The same cannot be said for the pig with whom Amanda has been sharing a courtyard at her homestay. She woke up this morning to find it hung neatly (as neat as a carcass can be) on hooks around the house in preparation to go to market, having somehow blissfully slept through the massacre that had just ensued outside her bedroom door. She promptly informed her homestay family that she was a vegetarian (not true).

Nate chilaxing on the boat to San Andres

Armen doing a swan dive...

So apparently George W. and Lady Laura were in Guatemala a few days ago. Had no idea until my homestay family told me, to give you an idea of how isolated I am from current events. We watched the highlights on TV that night, the triumphant entry, Bush kissing Mayan babies, carrying boxes of produce in a factory, the Bushes and the Guatemalan President and his wife walking together in awkward silence as neither speaks the others’ language. The people here like to joke that after his visit, all of Guatemala’s problems will be solved.

We just went to a Guatemalan zoo where a lizard fell on me from a tree and attempted to dive down the front of my shirt and a baby leopard projectile peed on me from inside his cage. Bad karma?

On a happier note, I’ve got a decent base tan going on and I couldn’t tell you what day it is to save my life.