Last night (Christmas Eve) Jason couldn’t help himself, so he bought some firecrackers from one of the street vendors. We weren’t sure where to light them so Jason asked the vendor to do it. The first one was a bottle launcher (so Jason tells me) but the guy just lit it in his hand in the middle of the intersection. The next thing we knew this thing was flying all over the street screaming and hitting all the store fronts. Everyone around us was having a great time. The next one was a huge roll and the guy laid it down in the middle of the street. All the people on the street stopped to watch as he lit it. This one little Guatemalan girl hid behind a stone pillar with the crazy gringo family. It went off for about 2 minutes and by the end of it Reed was crying and we had lost Lena. After all this excitement, we headed home.
We weren’t sure how the whole Christmas morning thing was going to go over, but it was fantastic. Santa does come to Guatemala. The fact that there were only 2 presents per kid was absolutely irrelevant as Lena told me this was the best Christmas ever. Yep, I guess we don’t have to sell her.
We haven’t been doing much the past few days. We are now in a town called Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. We took a boat from Santiago where we had spent 6 days. The boat ride was great as it was really wavy so the kids laughed the entire way. We got splashed and tossed around for 25 minutes straight and the kids loved it. We have found that the best way to get Reed to sleep is to go over the bumpiest road or waviest lake possible. I kid you not, you can rock him for an hour and he won’t fall asleep, but 5 minutes over bumps so hard you almost fall off your seat and he is out.
Panajachel is the main town around the lake. All of the buses come here and then you hop on a boat or ferry if you want to stay or visit any of the other villages. It is also the main shopping village so the girls and I have been having a fantastic time here. Jason has been sick for the past few days which has been OK since the girls and I are having fun just checking the shopping out. And get this, we did all of our shopping for under $100.00 and that included dinner! These girls are getting good at bartering!
Well, that’s it for now. We are off to find an internet connection so that we can contact our families.
Merry Christmas!!! Feliz Navidad!!
