Yaaaaawn! This past week has been day after day of excitement (maybe I am exaggerating a little bit but it still has been fun) and now I am utterly exhausted.

The week started off with a very fun hike up a volcano: Volcan Pacaya. We had arranged a private tour with one of the many travel agencies here for us and our Norwegian neighbors (only the dad and the oldest son came because the younger boy was not old enough to go). The very comfertable bus arrived at the apartment at 8:00am and from there we had an hour drive to the volcano. We got to the parking lot and immediately a whole crowd of little boys trying to rent us sticks came and squished us into a bundle. We got out of that and started to hike. It took about an hour to get up to the cooled lava field and then it was another fifteen minutes to actually get to where we could see lava. Unfortunately our guide was too nice and got us to a place where we could get up close to the lava from below. I say too nice because it is actually a better view but if you are trying to take a picture it doesn't work so great because one you are below and you have to be careful of rocks falling and two it is way way to hot! Kels burned her legs when she was trying to take a video (don't worry it was just a warning burn and is fine now). In fact i had such a hard time getting a picture that I didn't ever manage to get one where you could see the lava very well so the following picture sadly is not mine. I did manage to get a cute picture of Kelsey, the guide, and I. After we got out of the lava field our guide took us to a grassy place where we could eat lunch (turns out where we ate was a right next and kind of in the middle of a whole bunch of corn fields). That is pretty much our whole adventure on the volcano!

This week we also finished the Contru Casa house! The only super exciting day was yesterday (Friday) when the family threw a party for us. At about 11:00am a group of workers who had also finished their house came over with a cake and a huge bottle of Pepsi. That was only the beginning of the party. First we had a group picture, then the volunteers (us) had to fill out evaluation sheets for Contru Casa (the kids at the house were very interested in our writing abilities and we had a huge crowd around us when we were writing), after we finished we had Pepsi and the cake (the cake was not your general Safeway cake it was amazingly good! It was almost like Tres Leches because it was so moist but not quite). The workers that we were not working with left after that. The family came up to us and said that they were making us lunch, so we stayed for lunch. At first we really didn't want to stay because all of us were very tired. But when the food came out it look so good that we forget about not wanting to stay. Lunch was Pepian: a Guatemalan recipe of chicken in a sauce that is very hard to explain but is very good, homemade rice, homemade tortillas, and a hibiscus juice! After lunch all seven of us (the workers came too) went to the bus stop and came to Antigua. We got home (without the workers of course) and just conched out. That was our day!

Today nothing special has happened, only our usual outing to the supermarket and maybe a little strolling on the art street. Tomorrow we are going to get up super early to go to a travel agency and board a bus to Panajachel to do some shopping and then spend a few nights on Lake Atitlan in Casa del Mundo. I will probably bring my computer so you can hear of my adventures up there but right now I really need to go pack! Wait one more thing on our way back from the supermarket today we ran into the lady that gives Ivan our Norwegian neighbor cooking classes and she said that next Wednesday will send her friend over to our apartment to talk about me and Kels taking cooking classes! YUMMY!

Larissa