I figured that I flew all the way down to Guatemala from the US so I didn’t want to just see Antigua. So I booked a tour to Tikal National Park, one of the most well-preserved sites of the Mayan ruins, for the middle weekend. To get there, I had to catch a shuttle to the airport at 4am, then a flight to Flores, and then another shuttle to the park. I booked the tour on my own, but found out before I left that 2 other students, Mary and Sean, were also going and we all ended up in the same hotel. The hotel was actually pretty nice, but the best part about it was the swimming pool. Tikal was very warm and extremely humid. By 9:30 in the morning, when our tour started, it was already getting uncomfortable. By the time the tour ended around 12:30 it was getting unbearable, but that pool felt great. If I remember right, the temples and other ruins in the park were built over a period of about 1600 years ending around 850AD. The amazing thing was that the jungle had reclaimed all of it. Everything that we saw had been unearthed by archaeologists, and much of the ruins in the park were still covered. It was interesting to hear about the Mayan culture and how they built all these structures to such exact precision, to line up with the solstices and the equinoxes, etc. But Mary had a different perspective. She said, “Just imagine the number of people who died building these temples.” As Sean said, in order for a civilization to become advanced it usually required the oppression or exploitation of a large group of people.
No matter how I looked at it, it was interesting and I was happy I went. Mary on the other hand was not. She was probably the oldest student in the group, and wasn’t real intent on learning Spanish. She also didn’t swim in the pool, which explained why she was so hot and uncomfortable in Tikal. Sean and I made use of the pool so we were just fine. Sean is a Canadian from Nunavut, if you’ve ever heard of that. I remember hearing about Nunavut being named a new territory in northeastern Canada near Greenland several years ago. He is the one and only Nunavutian that I know, though he is not from a native tribe. He’s a real nice guy, nonetheless, and if all Nunavutians are anything like Sean I’m sure it’s a real agreeable place to live, if you like frozen tundra. The next morning Sean and I went back in the park to check out more of the ruins and we hoped to see some wildlife. Not only did we see some wildlife, Sean had a close encounter. While climbing up one of the temples we saw some parrots. 
All of a sudden 2 more parrots showed up and a territorial battle broke out. Sean's head got caught in the middle of everything, but luckily he didn't jump out of the way. It would've been a long fall down. We also saw some howler and spider monkeys, but they weren't as "wild" as the parrots.
Miss Mayan Ruin Contest?
When I arrived back in Antigua Sunday evening it felt strangely familiar and comfortable, like it was home, even though I had only been there a week. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say I felt like I belonged there. Walking through the central park back to my house, I felt like I was an old timer, one of the experienced. Luckily, no one tried to start a conversation with me in Spanish. That surely would have killed the moment. Week 2 was more Spanish. I graduated on to using the past tense. I no longer had to say everything in the present tense and hope that by the context of the sentence the person to whom I was talking could figure out my meaning. Of course, with more verb conjugations to remember, I suddenly forgot how to conjugate verbs in the present tense. It’s been way too long since I had to study! Week 2 also came with more partying, which also hindered the studying part. Since I had gotten to know more of the students, I started going out more. Most of them were younger so I was usually not in the crowd that stayed out the latest, but I did manage to experience “reggatone” for the first time. Some would call it music, some would not, but nonetheless I managed to dance, or some semblance thereof, to it. Jackie, a girl from DC, was in love with reggatone so we had no choice. The students came from a variety of countries including Holland, Switzerland, Canada, Denmark, Australia and the US. After the US and Canada, the most were from Holland. Surprisingly, at our school there were no Germans. Most places I’ve traveled recently the majority of the foreign tourists have been Germans. 
The meals we had with the family were pretty good, though not overly big. There was always bread and tortillas and many meals came with rice and beans. I definitely had my quota of beans for several months in those 2 weeks. The lunches were the biggest and the best, where dinners were quite small. We’d often get something else to eat before or after dinner. And at the 10AM break at school I learned in a hurry that a lady came in everyday to serve different kinds of sandwiches for all of .50 to .70. You couldn’t beat them for the price especially considering that they came with guacamole – one of my favorite foods. There were a few different brands of local beers none of them anything special but they were fine just the same. We were a bit surprised at the price of the beer though. It was cheap by American standards, but in relation to everything else it wasn’t any bargain. We had cheaper beer in Costa Rica. I think it is because Antigua caters to tourists.
On my last night, I decided to try and stay out with the youngsters all night. My shuttle was picking me up at 4:00 the next morning so I figured it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to go to sleep for just a few hours. We started out with a nice dinner and then headed to one of the dance clubs until that closed at 1:00. In Antigua, they have this strange concept they call an “after party”. After the clubs all shut down at 1, guys stand outside and hand out maps to their “after party” – supposedly illegal parties at some out-of-the-way unmarked place where they serve limited booze and play pretty bad music in a darkly lit room. I pretty much think they bribe the cops to look the other way, because it is way too obvious for them not to get caught. (One of the major complaints of the locals I talked to was that of corrupt police and politicians.) Well, the music was pretty bad so I lasted ONLY ‘til 3:00 before heading back to the house. I somehow managed to stay awake until 4 when the shuttle picked me up to start my journey “home”, which at that time happened to be Colorado. Whenever someone asked me where I was from I would just say “the States”. And they would say, “Of course, but where in the States?” So I’d have to go into this explanation of how I live now. Just before leaving for Guatemala I decided to rent an apartment in Boulder, CO for the summer starting just after Memorial Day until the end of August. So sometimes for simplicity sake, especially if I was explaining it in Spanish, I would say that I now live in Colorado.