Salsa and Soccer Saturday

This past Saturday was a fabulous day. At 8am I arranged for my host dad to drive me in his pickup truck to the city of Totonicapan to pick up a dresser and table that I bought from a Peace Corps Volunteer who is leaving in a month. I paid my host dad 150 Quetzales (~$20) for the two hour drive round trip and helping me move everything (I live on the second floor). My 16 year old host sister and 9 year old host brother were also going to Totonicapan so they rode in the back part of the pick up truck for the whole hour ride down the Pan American highway. This seemed highly dangerous to me, but they made it. Finally after three months of being in Guatemala (we arrived February 13) I am finally not living out of a suitcase!! Although I did have a file cabinet in my room when I lived with my first host family that worked pretty well as a makeshift dresser.

That afternoon I took a two hour salsa lesson in Xela (pronounced Shea-la) the big city with some other PCVs and locals. This was a lot of fun and only cost 20Q (around $2.50)!! Needless to say I plan on doing this every weekend. Later that night we went to a Xelaju soccer game and then spent the night in Xela because buses do not run at night and it wouldn't be safe to take one even if they did. We stayed at the Gato Negro hostel right in the center of town for 60Q each ($7.75) with a large free breakfast in the morning! I highly recommend all of the above experiences. Also I apologize if you are tired about reading about how much things cost here, but I am constantly amazed at how cheap things are here so I am probably going to keep writing about it.

All in all it was a great weekend and I am so happy to finally be able to unpack! (Pictures of the soccer game will be added soon!)