So, I am officially on my trip. I arrived in Guatemala yesterday, and today was my first day of Spanish class. I am staying in a homestay arranged through the school (Proyecto Linguistico Francisco Marroquin) and the classes are all day, one-on-one. Antigua is beautiful - surrounded by lush green volcanos and with all of the buildings painted bright colors, pink and yellow being the most common.
-skip forward one day-
The Mayan women are also impressively bright, their traditional dress/skirt outfits aqua and orange and true blue. Some carry goods in wide baskets on their heads, and set up in front of a few different areas selling different crafts and occasionally food. The town smells vaguely like fire, which I love. At first I thought it may be the volcanos but now I think it might be just wood fires. I guess I´ll find out when I climb one of the volcanos and see what it smells like up top.
I´m headed to a macadamia plantation on Friday where we will have a traditional Mayan lunch, get to see the growing coffee and macadamia and a traditional Mayan wedding. It sounds good. Then this weekend I´m thinking I might climb one of the volcanos - we´ll see how I feel, it might also be a good time for a photo excursion.

We had a great thunderstorm last night, and the afternoons tend to be overcast, losing the volcano tops in the clouds and smoke, so I think any of the photo trips will have to be early in the morning, which is coincidentally the best weather anyways. Anyways, back to class for me!