... And then there was one

     Last Thursday Kenan left Guatemala, giving me the dubious honor of being possibly the only non-monk gringo left in Esquipulas.  He must have been jonesing for some flag football and meals not centered around black beans and rice, because after making the decision to leave, he wasted no time in booking his flight as soon as possible.  While his timing was good (I had to return to Esquipulas on Saturday) the week leading up to our trip to Guatemala City was a bit rushed with finding transportation and lodging, but despite all the stress, Kenan did find time to do all the things he would miss one last time.

Here he was caught in the act losing his last game of Guatemalan Hearts.  

     Kenan's flight left around midday Thursday, which meant that I was able to stretch my trip to drop him off at the airport into a three day vacation from the monastery, which was very needed after more than a month of being cooped up here.  A friend of mine who used to work at the library named Dulio decided to tag along with us gringos, giving me a travel partner back to Esquipuas after dropping Kenan off.  We left Esquipulas ready for a wild vacation on the town, but after the 5.5 hour boiling hot bus ride, plans had changed a bit.

I snapped this picture of Dulio comfy in bed around 7:00 pm.

    

     Finally Thursday came, and I couldn't delay it any longer.  Kenan said his last goodbyes as I wept gently to myself, and promised that he'd think of me when he took his first nice, long, hot shower, slept well in a soft bed, and enjoyed drinking tap water, all things that I have another 9 months without.

 
     Now alone in Guatemala, I decided to see the sights with the help of my more than capable tour guide, Dulio.

      Or so I thought.  

     Luckily this was the only dead end freeway we ended up walking down during our all day walk from the airport back to the hotel.  Guatemala City turned out to be very similar to most big cities except for the overwhelming smell of urine, but we did see some interesting things.  We were able to tour both the bank museum, chronicling the history of Guatemalan currency and the Railroad museum, with it's history of money, corruption, and politics, all at the hands of the railroad authorities.

   There is also some spectacular architecture in Guatemala City, what really interested me was the aqueducts dating to the first European cities in the area.  I've made a few jokes about Guatemalan infrastructure in the past, but in all honesty, some of the old bridges really astounded me.  This one was built in 1894!

As a reference, the 35W bridge was built in 1967 and survived a total of 0 earthquakes.

   While I would have loved to stay and experience more of the big city, the doctors from Catholic Healthcare West arrived in Esquipulas on Friday, and I had to return to meet them.  While it was nice to escape the monastery for awhile, it I'm actually looking foward to returning to non-street food and a little routine.

     My AWkward Foreign Language Experience of the week (AWFLE) came upon my return to working in the library.  I was sitting behind the counter as Willy was helping some very cute girls.  At one point, one of the girls looks at me, cocks her head to the side and says "que chulo sus ojos" (you have pretty eyes).  The mixture of me not expecting her to talk (I was thinking in english) and the fact that "chulo" means either "tacky" or "ugly" in Chile left me staring at her like a complete idiot.  She looked at Willy and said "oh, he doesn't understand spanish?" as Willy broke down laughing.  I sat there flabbergasted, trying to trying to regain a foothold in the conversation, but by the time I actually figured out she was complementing me, the only spanish I was able to spit out was "gracias" as she was leaving the library.  I guess I can chalk that one up to experience.