last week in central america, ohhh seven

so i'm home. it's part awesome and part strange. as would be expected i guess, but this was just such an amazing experience and i'm trying to figure out how to get back down there sometime in the next year or two. now i'm staying at kate and jason's in oakland where we are making crazy good dinners, watching warriors games and drinking beer in the sun. just found out i get to stay at my friend reyhan's studio in the mission for four weeks while she's away too. very exciting.

well, so the last week in xela was incredible. aside from my host mom totally insulting me and then wanting to process about it all week, i celebrated damien's 30th birthday, finished up an interesting volunteer project, snuck in another week of spanish school, went to a killer guatemalan society wedding and somehow made it on the chicken bus to guatemala city the next morning.

here are some strange pictures of these women at a meeting i was at for my volunteer project. i was working with this human rights organization, tedimaya, that works with indigineous communities in the highlands. i was making materials for them about human rights for women in guatemala.


here's britta and damien starting to party for damien's dirty 30



they put candy AND dinosaurs in this pinata!




luis took me to the xela cemetary, which is one of the most gorgeous places in town. out of respect for the dead, it is also prohibited for cops to enter. therefore there are tons of sketchy people lurking around and it's allegedly a pretty dangerous place for tourists.


apparently the cemetary is starting to flood during the rainy season. see the water line?


oh, and all the heads of the statues have totally been stolen throughout the cemetary




so this! well, this is my friend juan pablo, who is friends with my other friend juan pablo who lives in xela. this jp lives in chile and was just in town for his sister's wedding that weekend. he asked me to be his date to his sister's wedding which was the day before i left. so i went! it was absolutely insane. they picked me up in an entourage of bmw suvs at my house, we snapped a picture and headed to a swanky country club outside of xela. the president might as well have been there. it was so crazy, i had no idea this level of wealth existed in guatemala. there were probably 500 people at this wedding, with a live band, people on stilts, a bottle of johnnie walker on every table with tons of other booze, waiters walking around with tequila shots, etc. nuts! needless to say, we got wasted, i danced with his aunts and uncles and then the most embarrassing part happened -- we somehow got picked to do this "flip" in front of everyone. all these jumps we had to do seemed to work out okay, but then the final one where i was flipped over in front of everyone, my dress got caught in my underwear and all 500 people saw my ass for a good few seconds. it was pretty classic. anyways, here's the pictures.


conga line, yo!







his mom totally has fake boobs and a nose job.

so then i got up at 4 in the morning, got on a chicken bus, the chicken bus broke down on the highway, another one came by, hopped on that, made it to the airport in time, took a plane to houston and then another one to san francisco. of course the freeway had blown up the night before so kate and kim picked me up and we took bart back to oakland. i'm a super grease bomb at this point, but it was soo good to see them.


and this is pretty much what the last week has been like. so great!