back in the saddle again

shame on me! it´s been roughly two months since i wrote last and i´ve got nothing but excuses as to why not. i hope i haven´t lost all of you. i know i said i´d wrap the blog up after peace corps was done, but i´m not going to wrap up quite yet. mostly because i´m still here in el salvador (and will probably be here until march) and i haven´t even posted any entries about anything i´ve done these past two months. i at least want to get some photos up before i sign off. i´m also going on one more trip with courtney (probably our last!) to guatemala in a couple weeks and we´re going to tikal, so i definitely have to post pictures of that.

anyway, so over the next week i´m going to be posting a lot....just updating you all on what i´ve been up to. once my trip´s over and i´ve posted about that, i´ll probably be be ready to sign off.

so first off, i´m gonna post some pictures of christmas and new year´s! i even had a christmas tree this year....a $6 bargain at the grocery store. we had decorations and everything.... christmas eve we went over to antonio´s family´s house and ate dinner once around 7:00 and then ate again at like 1:00 in the morning. the next day we ate christmas dinner again. i was soooo full!

me and antonio in front of our tree

me and gloria knitting on christmas eve

so on new year´s, courtney came to hang out with us. i made chili and we bought some guatemalan 4% alcohol champagne.....didn´t you know guatemala was famous for it´s grapes? i´m kidding. anyway, we ate chili and drank some champagne and then headed outside to let off fireworks. my neighbor, el licenciado had his family over and invited us to his house. licenciado was drunk! he kept offering us tequila and i didn´t want to drink anything really. the guatemalan champagne was fine with me. but we drank a few tequilas with him. but he kept pouring us more and more and i was like ¨please, no more!¨ but he kept on pouring. licenciado´s son is married to a japanese woman and they live in mexico city. so they were there, along with their other japanese friends who also live in mexico city. well, let me tell you....the fact that there were three languages being spoken and there was all that tequila....new year´s was quite hilarious. licenciado kept trying to talk to us in english and then moto, the japanese guy who is friends with licenciado´s son and wife didn´t understand spanish or english very well. so we were all trying to communicate and at one point i would have killed for a video recorder. anyway, so new year´s was really unexpectedly hilarious.

our guatemalan champagne

me and courtney toasting in 2009

shortly before midnight we all went outside to let off fireworks. here´s antonio in the street in front of the house.

courtney trying to light our sparklers

me and antonio...i have about three layers on, it was freezing!

licenciado´s son in the esquina setting up some fireworks

licenciado in-between hugging everyone for ¨feliz año nuevo!¨



licenciado´s mom (right) and his cousin, enjoying the fireworks from inside

anyway, hope everyone is having a great 2009! more soon.......