Cosas divertidas (fun things)

Wow i cant believe i havent written in so long. I will catch you up on the most exciting things that have happened these past two weeks.

Glass Blowing
As i previously mentioned, there are many activities that one can attend during the school week. the week of the 20th of January i visited a place called Copavic during class. I went with my teacher Monica and a couple of other students. It was the coolest thing ever. Copavic is a place where they make all sorts of glass products in the style of glass blowing. They make everything from cups to bowls to glasses to figurines! They use different colors of glass to make different colors. I wish I could explain it better but there were many workers working to produce the glass products. When it came out of the hot hot stove it looked like lava and then they mold and shape it into whatever it is that they are making by blowing throw a tube to form a bubble. I got to blow my own glass!! I will try and add pictures to my blog but your best bet will be to continue checking my flicker account, I am really going to work hard on adding pictures this week.

Itra
Two weekends ago Jenna, Shannon, Monica, Tania (another teacher) and I went to a entertainment park called Itra. We had to take two different buses to get there. One micro bus and one chicken bus. One part of it is called Cocomil and the other is called Xetatul. I liked Cocomil because it was a water park! Probably one of the coolest water parts I have ever been to! Its one of the best or the biggest in Guatemala or central america I believe. The slides were huge and there were many different kinds. some had tubes and others had mats. Besides the amazing slides there was a lazy river, a wave pool, other park type things in the water, and regular pools. It was soo much fun!! Afterwards we went to Xetaul for a bit and rode some of the rides there. Xetatul was really nice but there was only about 6 rides there. I would prefer Valleyfair to Xetatul.

Mi Cumpleanos!
Even though it still seems surreal that I am 21 my birthday was really fun. I woke up and dressed cute for once. It is cold here in the mornings and since I didn't bring many long sleeve T-shirts or cute warm clothes I pretty much live in my north face. BUT on my birthday I wore a really cute dress given to me by yours truly Karri. I usually eat breakfast at seven, and when I came out of my room Sonia had brought a different boom box out and blared a celebratory birthday song for me. One was in English and the other was in Spanish. I had my normal breakfast which now consists of cereal and two pieces of bread, but it was good. Sonia also had a present for me on the table. She got me a really cute scarf and two bracelets! I wore the scarf the day the whole day because it coincidentally matched my dress perfectly! Sonia is so nice. My day at school was pretty much normal. Jenna is an amazing friend and told me that she had most of the day planned out already. She gave me flowers at school and steph gave me hot chocolate. Everyone at school wished me a Happy Birthday :) including a majority of the teachers. After school I went home and ate lunch with Sonia. Then I returned to school and checked the internet to see all of the lovely posts from friends on facebook and personal emails as well. They made me very happy and sad as well. Then me, Jenna, Steph, and Shannon all went out to eat. It was a surprise as to where we were going. The place was called Paris something....and it was very yummy. I had fettchini. And of course drum roll please.....my first real drink was.....a tequila sunrise! I actually had two with dinner, haha. Then all of a sudden Jenna was acting weird and said that we needed to leave the restaurant by 730, and I was like why? I thought that the plan was to go to a bar and meet up with a bunch of other people from our group. I just went along with it, and thought that they were probably waiting at the bar for us the whole night was planned by Jenna and I didn't know where we were going. Jenna said she needed to stop at Celas Maya (our school) to use the bathroom, she knew it would be open because Tuesday night because Tuesday night is movie night. Then she asked me if I had to go and i was like no....then she pushed me into one of the back rooms which was completely dark and about 40 people yelled SSSUURRRPPRRIIIISSEEE!!!! Jenna had planned a suprise party for me! It was awesome. Everyone from the group attended, the director of the program Brian and his wife Terese and their daugther Carolina, some other students from Celas Maya, some of the teachers from the school, and some local guatemalans that we recently have become friends with. Needless to say it was a party!! There was food and cake and balloons and.....A PINATA!! I was the only one to break it open. It was really exciting! After breaking open the pinata we ate cake and played some fun group games. I don't know if you all know of 'Vroom' or 'Ride my Pony' but that is what we played. After the party a small group of about 8 of us went to one of the bars in central park. Don't worry I didn't drink anything at the party at school, but I did have another drink at the bar :) I took a taxi home with Jenna afterwards! Needless to say even though it still feels a little surreal that I'm 21, my birthday in Guatemala will be a day I will never forget.