una semana ha pasado

holllllllaaaaaa
or halo

yikes i can´t believe its been almost a whole week...
so we went to the hot springs yesterday i´ll try and figure out how to share my picasa album to you guys. first we took a public bus to get there which are basically old school buses from the US that have been painted and altered in certain ways to fit their use. My favorite part is like a tassel hanging in the middle near the front for the driver to pull in order to honk....which they do here A LOT... like really a lot... honking equals annoyance, hello, we are here, im coming through, im going fast... and basically for any reason you can think of
so anyway we ride the bus to this town which is mostly indigenous people and then julio who is our instructor taking us on this trip asks around for a ride to the hot springs. he finds this guy with a pick up that is used to carry produce or flowers to drive us up there. for a 15 minute ride jon, this girl kathleen, and i ride in the back, bruising our tailbones every time we hit a pothole or speed bump. it was a really pretty view the whole time tho. we got there and there was a big pool that was filled with naturally hot water that was reallllly hot... it was nice
and had a gorgeous view of a giant mountain, which my teacher told me was a volcano and banana trees everywhere. that was a blast, the only problem was when i got out of the pool into the cold i felt like i was going to pass out and vomit... and i kept being like come on body you cant do this in guatemala... i feel better today tho

a few days ago we made CHOCOLATE! from absolute scratch. they had the cacao beans and we roasted them on the stove and then peeled EACH ONE separately. we then took them to a mill in this person´s house and ground it, adding it to sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and eggs. after it was ground several times we spread it out on the table and proceeded to palmarlo or pound it with our hands...which took....a very...very...very long time... like hours we were all sweating from pounding it and then you have to make it into little tortilla shaped things and then you are finally done. you can then add it to hot water to make hot chocolate. the teacher said we would all die of hunger if we had to rely on chocolate made by ourselves...hahaha sooooo true. that shit is hard work...i appreciate chocolate a lot more now (and secretly so does jon) trying to figure out how to upload pics
i will update you all mas tarde.

hope you guys are all having a wonderful summer! miss you all!
ps. jon loves chocolate