Day 1 - Guatemala City to the Mountain School

The Mountain School from a distance.

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My sister Amy and I arrived in Guatemala City from O'hare after an all night flight at about 6:30 a.m.  At this point I knew next to no Spanish and my sister knew very little.  Noone in Guatemala speaks English.  Our next objective was to find our very nice and very helpful escort Ingrid and her son Pablo.  Our first destination was the Mountain School, where we would begin our 5 weeks of Spanish lessons.  Once we found Ingrid and Pablo, they took us to a cab that that drove us to the necessary bus terminal.  It was a 15 minute drive or so, which I found interesting.  We eventually arrived at the terminal and all four of us boarded.  We got on what looked like an ollllld school bus that had been through hell and back.  The inside was PACKED.  The metal and wooden seats were very close together, with 3 or sometimes 4 people on each one.  It was hot, it smelled, babies were crying, vendors were yelling, it was chaos.  We were told our destination was roughly 4-5 hours away (ha!).  The ride started alright (minus the fact that I was squished between 3 people with my knees pressed against the metal back of the chair in front of me in 90 degree weather, no A.C.) I was enjoying the scenery.  After about an hour, Ingrid pointed out a Volcano in the distance.  I thought it was cool , I had never seen one before.  After 2 hours, something unexpected happened, we stopped.  We stopped behind a line of cars that had no end in site.  We sat there for about an hour than slowly began to move again.  We creeped along at a snails pace for about 20 minutes then came to another stop.....for another hour or more. This happened probably five times before we got going at a reasonable pace again.  Eventually at stops in traffic we would get off the bus and hang out on the side of the road to get some fresh air.  The 4 hour trip ended up taking almost 12.  The entire time without food, water, and after we had been up the entire night before.  The bus was like a noisey oven, except hotter.  We finnnnnallly arrived at our destination the Mountain School.  We met the director there, Lynn, who believe it or not, was born in Beaver Dam, WI.  She cooked us a very good big meal and shortly after we crashed out.... for like 12 hours.  After day 1 i was ready to come home.  Fortunately, it would only improve from here.