I have not recently bean writing…this is mostly because of the fact that I have access to Internet here 24/7(at home I only have Internet until seven in the evening).
Anyways, a couple of days ago we went to some pretty epic hot springs…there are a bunch of stone pools of different temperature in the middle of a jungle, it leaves quite an impression. Also, there are two pools that have a two meter elevation difference which makes a nice hot waterfall. 😀
Also I rubbed mud on my face!!!
I think I’m going insane. I constantly have a crazy headache from the heat and my neck hurts.
That aside, we had our first day at our Spanish school!!!! Yayyyy….it was kinda boring, but hopefully it’s for the better, after all it would be a pity to sacrifice my countless but priceless brain cells to the heat for nothing. Excuse me while I go dunk my head in ice and eat tubs of ice cream.
Finally, after four hours of riding on a dirt cheap but very, very comfortable bus we have arrived!! Copan is best known for its Mayan ruins…so far I have not seen them-_- …false advertising anyone??
My dad and I were “amused” when our home stay family didn’t pick us up when we arrived. We cursed sinful curses as we trudged up an ancient forty five degree cobblestone hill to our school. We cursed all the way to our school. When we arrived at the school we were greeted by an elderly woman by the name of Cathy…which is weird because the owner of our school in Guatemala had the same name… Cathy promptly apologized and escorted us to out home stay family. I must say that the house we have this year is much nicer then our honestly house last year.
Anyways, my dad and I are gonna go chow on some local food….YUMMMM.
We shall keep you posted!
Exams are almost here. Everywhere around me I see my peers stressing and trying to memorize the events of the French revolution or the replication cycle of cells. What is the point of all this?? Students will memorize all the dates and cycles they need to memorize and some of them will get good grades, but this is just makes kids scared to make mistakes. Making a mistake will mean bad grades, angry parents, a bad university, and ultimately a bad life. Our society is built around correct, this needs to change: as soon as more people start to experiment more discoveries are made and more progress is made.
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Mistakes are what make you learn, they make you think of a solution. Exams make a child scared to make mistakes so they quickly stop experimenting. Children become study robots- they wake up, go to school, try to absorb as much information as possible and then they go home to study.
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There are a few people that still have the mental capacity to study and properly formulate their own original ideas, but most people will simply not be able to keep up with their studies. Children that still manage to keep their imagination mostly become artists. It is a well known fact that art schools have a low acceptance average. Why? Because the students applying to art schools still have an imagination and the capability to experiment, this leaves little time to study which then leads to bad marks.
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The small part of our society that is able to keep up with their studies and experiment are the people that streamline and improve our countries, these are the people that drive the world forward. If we don’t utterly destroy the imagination of most children then more people will experiment, leading to more inventions and more progress.
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The most important thing is thinking of a way to teach children without putting their imagination to sleep. For no reason must we stop teaching children sciences, maths or socials, because if you simply start focusing on creativity every single child will become an artist, which is not necessarily a bad thing… simply not what society needs for progress. In order for progress to be made you need to give children knowledge of the workings of the world and arm them with an imagination.
I wake up to the sound of my dad cackling like hyena, he’s pointing at my sheets and sputtering-“You haave a looosyy goooossyy bladdaaa”. I look down, realize my sheets are wet, jump of my bed with a very manly shreik and rush of to the bathroom to inspect myself, I take care to not get eaten by furious faced cockroaches.
I emerge from the bathroom several minuets later ready to kill. I attack my dad with anger leaping across my face, I try to convince him over and over again it was sweat…but to no anvil…I only succeed in getting myself thrown into river by my rather unamused dad.
I climb out of the river dripping scalding water after a long, deflating fight with the Schwarzenegger of currents. I don’t bother using a towel as I stomp off furiously to breakfast, complaining about my back like an eighty year old Grandpa with no spine. The cockroaches follow, their whiskers twitching in unison the “—- You” song by Celo Green.
After breakfast we hire a lancha to take us to Livingstone. My previous experience with lanchas still fresh in my mind I take extra time to strap myself to the boat. First the lanch driver takes us to the infamous “Island of Birds”. It’s a small ten by ten meter island in the middle of the river that is used as a home for thousands of birds. Every person that has ever tried to venture on the island was soaked by poop rain, it’s constantly raining there. It was quite amazing. While taking photos of the birds flying above our heads, I see, through the cameras lens, a white gooey substance exit a bird and speed towards me. Being as ninja as I am I fling myself to the other side of the boat to avoid an uncomfortable collision, unfortunately I forgot that I strapped myself to the boat. I watch in agony as the substance zooms towards me…SPLAT, my brand new shirt is ruined.
After my unhygienic encounter we continue on our journey…I’m now wearing my dads humongous sweater on my bare skin and sweating like a dead cow in August.
Next we go to a natural hot spring that reeks of rotten eggs. People around me erupt in geysers of stomach smoothies, I almost throw up too but I manage to gulp down some disgusting, silty river water that saves me from even more embarrassment. Clutching on to my stomach I now wish that I had thrown up instead of drunk that goddamn water. I stumble blindly behind our tour guide to some natural sauna, moaning about my stomach. Without realizing that the rest of the group has stopped to look at a lizard I keep on going forward. Suddenly there’s nothing supporting my feet and I cartwheel down a flight of stairs screaming like my sister. I fall straight into the natural sauna. It smells like rotten eggs. I look up and see my dad standing at the top of the stairs. He tells me my dream of becoming a spy will go nowhere because instead of becoming better at life I fail more and more….and more.
Finally after the sauna we go to Livingstone. We are greeted by a black man that claims his name is Aston Martin….Yeah right. Anyway there’s absolutely nothing to do in Livingstone besides eat bloody chicken and try not to be eaten by the Alligators that have claimed their home in the central fountain. I thought it would be fun to poke them with a stick. Half a second later I got half my hair chopped off by a cute baby gator still in diapers. One good thing came out of Livingstone…I got a very badly needed haircut for free!
After eating our bloody chicken in Livingstone we went to the “Seven Sacred Pools”. We are led to the bottom of the sacred pools by a guide that wishes us luck and leaves. We set off up the smooth rocks with water pouring over our feet. Half way up the fourth pool I have a violent sneezing fit, shocked my dad turns toward my direction rapidly. He manages to elbow me in the solar plexus and propel me into the pool below. Before I surely plunge to my death I let out a strangled pledge that I will get my dad. I emerge from the water the second time today and I’m already hatching a plan. The cockroaches follow me composing a song with their whiskers.
Finally we reach the top of the seventh pool. My dad has his back exposed to me and is taking pictures of the pools below. Snickering I tense my body and give him a nice boot in the arse.
My dad gets out of the pool and charges of to the lancha. On the lancha I shake his hand and tell him it was a game well played, he lifts his nose up high and tells me it’s not over. I don’t believe him.
At the hotel my dad mockingly refuses to buy me dinner and orders himself a huge steak, with an extra big serving of fries. Defeated I go back to our stifling room and faint from the heat.
For all you people out there that are obsessed with French check out this blog:
http://americalatina.bakaar.net/
Its a fellow students blog in our Spanish school….it’s got some amazing photos of central America….and all the posts are in French 😮
I’ve been wondering why cockroaches are called cockroaches…..seems rather inappropriate…
….anyway I’m working on a post that should be up by 2pm….Guatemalan time…..I’m leaving it up yo you to figure out the time difference….cya soon
We went to this cool place called “Cafe Barista” and they have these cool hand made bamboo things around the cup( I don’t remember what there called…if you know please tell me).
I can imagine the hunched over indigenous grannies with babies strapped to their back selling the anti-hot bands for two cents a dozen… 
Alrighty then see you later….I’ve been lazy today so il put two posts tomorrow….live long ‘n prosper?
So my friends going to Switzerland with his family for a year and he’s going to be blogging about it…..so check it out……ya…and make sure to tell him to send me chocolate.
http://ayearinswitzerland.weebly.com/
Oh and a post from the weekend should be up later this evening or tomorrow evening.
I wake up and do the whole morning ritual of brushing my teeth, taking a shower and getting dressed. While brushing my teeth my dad tells me that in three days I’m going to get very sick and die two days after that. Laughing I tell him I’m not gullible. He tells me that I forgot to use filtered water to brush my teeth and now I’m going to get Typhoid. #@$&!. My dad tut-tuts my language, says it’s been nice knowing each other and prances down to breakfast.
Panicking I look around and realize that my dad took our filtered water. Swearing, I keep on searching, finally I find the solution to my problem…Sanitizer. I open my mouth wide, squeeze my eyes together, tense my throat so I don’t swallow any sanitizer and…squirt. It burnssss. I jump around the room howling like an elephant giving birth. I dot care if I die of typhoid any more so I open the water tap to the max and rinse my mouth for ten minuets.
I shuffle into the dining room head bowed in embarrassment. My dads face sports a surprised expression…he starts laughing. Sputtering he tells me that we actually got a vaccine for typhoid, shocked, I sit down at the table, my ego is completely destroyed.
After a long counseling session with my dad I decide to go to school. At the school I drink lots of coffee to drown my sorrows as my teacher looks at me like I’m the leader of the of the KKK. I learned nothing today.
After my very anti-educational class of Spanish, today, my dad and I run of to quickly consume, in a very timely fashion, crepes.
My dad looks at his watch, let’s out a yelp, says that we are late for the bus, straps our luggage to his back and we skitter off.
By our bus we meet the French couple we are traveling with, my dad grunts a salute to them, he can’t speak because of the luggage on his back. I tell me dad to stop lolygaging, snap my fingers towards the trunk of our bus and tell him to “deposit” our bags.
We get on our bus and our insane looking bus driver apologizes that the air-conditioning is broken and tells us we are in for a “hell bent ride”. He sure was right.
Six hours later an innocent bystander would have seen four very disoriented, pasty tourists with articles of clothing being worn on the wrong body parts, leap out of a bus before it even stopped. The tourists then continued to forcefully take ice from a bartender, grind it down into their gizzards by the pound and rub the ice over the face while sighing phrases of content in random languages.
Wanting to escape prying looks of locals we (the tourists) run of to our hotel in the jungle(Btw we are in the Caribbean, Rio Dulce). We are guided by a very concerned hotel secretary to our rooms. By the time we arrive at our swaying cabin on the lake the secretary has come to the conclusion that we have asthma, I guess she doesn’t like people with asthma because she told us to beware of the gigantic cannibalistic cockroaches and took the fan in our room because she said-“it’s getting stuffy in my office with only two fans”….evil.
I walk into my room and see three huge cockroaches prowling around my bed, their whiskers twitching, every other minuet they lift their arses in unison and poop perfectly round balls. Shuddering I bribe my dad to let me sleep in his bed. I climb into the bed, zip tie the mosquito net to the bed using thirty zip ties….only then do I realize I need to go to the washroom. Laughing my dad un-zip ties me and I tiptoe to the washroom, take a piss and re-zip tie my bed.
I dreamt that my ear was being munched off by cockroaches, there was an angel flying above me but it was to busy dancing a waltz with God to help me.
Hectic Trip, Great Fun 