continuing learning spanish, good times. feeling i´m making continual progress and still have several weeks left. i was forced to enroll in spanish 202 (intermediate spanish II) for the fall semester at sfu because they´re not planning on offering 201 due to budget cuts. the good: i got in a spanish class for the fall so i can continue learning. the bad: i´ve been forced to take business communications and managerial accounting at the same time. it should be interesting to skip 201 because i can see how much i will have truly learned this summer. the only problem with this is i won´t know anyone in the new class since everyone i´ve been taking spanish with before will be a level behind. uros, study hard to skip 201 with me!

went to monterico last weekend.. i was surprised by the quality of the beach. ok so it´s a bit dirty, like the town itself, and we couldn´t find anywhere particularly good to go out.. it was really fun playing in the waves and the riptide though. we took chicken busses there because we didn´t plan too well and by the time we were ready to leave antigua for monterico the last shuttle had been gone for an hour. it was pretty easy to take chicken busses though and cost less, plus we got a little boat ride out of it.. antigua to escuintla to taxisco to la avellana, where we took a short boat ride to monterico.

i was on antibiotics for a couple days because i diagnosed myself with strep throat on friday. they cleared up the throat pretty well but they also seemed to do a fine job of clearing out the pleasant bacteria that was protecting my stomach from some of the horrible food i´ve been consuming.

xela aka quetzaltenango is the plan for this wknd, 2nd biggest city in guat but supposedly fairly safe for its size. next wknd probably guat city on friday then antigua on sat for leah´s arrival. the following weekend we may climb volcan de agua, and then tikal, rio dulce, livingson, belize, possibly honduras.