santa catarina

wednesday, what began as a cloudy-soon to be ruined by rain and pneumonia kind of day metamorped into a beautiful, sunny, pooly educational funfest. we loaded up in a chicken bus around 9am {i'll get some photos soon of those bad boys} and headed for santa catarina de sumpin or rather. and i know i should pay more attention to detail, but i really didn't want to force anyone to write the name of the place all the way out. it is a beautiful area situated in the mountains, with lush vegetation everywhere and a veritable shantytown archipelago in the surrounding valley below. we studied our daily lessons near the pool for about 2 hours and by about 10:30, tons of local kids were littering the pool and slide and frolicking like tadpoles in a glass of sunny d. {i imagine the acid would precipitate more frolicking} anyway, i had to show these lameOs how it's done and hit the pool first with what must be one of the top 5 best cannonballs i've ever made. people are still trying to dry off from that one. i played 'throw the ball around in the pool' with a whole bunch of kiddos for about 30 minutes. i think i was mvp because i was the only one that could get the ball in the deep end. everyone else from the school just lounged around and started sippin mega cola cuba libres, and i soon did likewise. {i included a pic of the teachers pouring a partial cola into a mostly full cola because i loved the frugality of it and the fact that they truly cherished every drop of that cola} we barbecued carne asada. i helped chop a lot of veggies for the fresh salad, and i just soaked up tons of great conversational spanish that really only comes out when you get together a whole bunch of half to fully drunk guatamaltecos. my friend andrew threw the owner of the school into the pool only to find out that he couldn't swim. that caused a minor and temporary panic but moreover a stir of laughter that led me to realize these people not only cherish cola, but brushes with death too. lot's o' fun! a few of us were getting ancy to return to antigua so we just chartered a guy with a pickup to drive us and we stood in the back of an '87 nissan single cab that negotiated a windy, hilly, cobblestone riddled backroad route at a constant 35mph. hey! that felt a lot faster than it sounds. summary: study, natural pool, barbecue, cubas, gallos, near drowning, sun, fun, cola.