Pacaya

don't read this one dad, pacaya has not gotten any safer since the last time i was here....
So there's an active volcano near antigua guatemala, and it's only like US $10 to go see it. last time i was here, 6 years ago, the volcano was not as active and you could climb all the way up to the crater, but now there's been a whole lot of lava and you can't get up there any morè. they pack up a bus load of tourists, and then the bus driver walks up to the volcano with you carrying this huge shot gun, which doubled as a walking stick. when you get up to the base of the volcano, everyone just sort of spread out and started climbing over the "cooled" lava flows to where the molten lava was flowing. the ground was super hot, and if you stuck a stick into the lava where we were walking, it would catch on fire. it was really crazy to be walking over all this stuff. the lava was super unstable, and just underneath the surface you could see red moltan lava.
by the lava flows there was a guide, and he said if we just hung out and waited the lava would reach where we were standing in a half hour. he said it was moving at a rate of 5 kilometers per hour. you didn't want to stand too close to the flows because of the heat. but i was close enough that i could hear the rocks cooling and tumbling down the side of the volcano. it sounded like a river, but made of stones instead of water. it started to get dark, and i was feeling a little scared because it was hard enough climbing over the lava when you could see were you were going. looking at glowing lava in the dark is pretty cool though. the clouds over the flows were pink colored, and it was just this wild contrast between the black cooled lava, the red molten lave, the dark blue sky, and the pink clouds of smoke and steam. we did end up getting down off the lava flows before the sun set, but we had like an hour climb down the side of the mountain in total darkness. we all looked super cool with our matching petzel head lamps. i think that if pacaya was in the US, probably you'd be allowed to climb up to the base and look at the lava, but there's no way that you'd be alowed to climb all over the flows.
this is a picture of antigua, guatemala. it used to be the capital of guatemala, but in 1777 (easy date to remember) there was a big earthquake that destroyed most of the town, so they moved the capital to guatemala city. antigua is really cool looking though. the streets are all coblestone, which sucks if you're on a bike, and all the buildings look like they could just as easily be in an old european city. all the doors are made of huge slabs of wood with these ornate knockers shaped like lions or womens' hands. it's cool just to walk around and check out the old buildings. this is probably like the worlds least attractive photo of our spanish teachers, but it's the only one i took. i invited them over for dinner last night becuase it was our last day of classes. Milli (my spanish teacher) is on the left, and then on the right is Ceci (erik's teacher), and next to her is Molli (peter´s teacher). the teachers said we were all bad students because we never did our homework, but i liked hanging out with them cuz they were funny and always telling mildy of color jokes. milli kept cracking up at me when we had class because all of my grammer examples were totally morbid. like we'd be learning about past participles, and my examples would be stuff like, "the dead dogs rotting along side the highway", or the "broken bicycle was fixed by me.", or "the sick cyclists are in the hotel". i think maybe i could be hired to write a dick and jane style spanish primer for the adams family if they ever wanted to learn spanish. i think we're leaving tomorrow. love,
-jessie