Tajumulcu, Orphanages, and life in general

This last weekend I went with a group of about 20 other ICA students to climb the volcan Tajumulcu which is the tallest point in Central America (nearly 14,00 ft). It was an overnight camping trip and quite an experience. To begin with, the whole trip was quite disorganized because ICA is not an official tour group. For example, there was no cook stove, the tents would not have kept out the rain, and I´m sure there was no first aid kit with us. That was what I expected though, so was fairly well prepared (and very grateful that I had my own sleeping bag!) and the trip was well worth it. It started out as an adventure when we stopped for breakfast and the director of the school told us that the owner of the comedor we ate at knew of a different, much shorter route to climb the mountain. The only catch being that our private transportation bus could not make the drive up to the starting point. So, the same guy offered to take all 18 of us up in the back of his lage double tire traction truck (with all our stuff) up to the starting point. I´ll post a picture later of this truck, but I still can´t believe we all fit! Also, I can hardly believe there was a road that far up in the mountains! So, after getting dropped off, we hiked uphill for an hour or so to the base camp area about a 45min-1hr walk from the top. Part of the group walked up that afternoon to the top and, although it was quite foggy at that point in the day, the view was still incredible. That night, most everyone nearly froze to death (I was fine, and slept under the stars with a couple other students). Man, I´ve seen stars before, but there is really nothing like start at 14,000 feet. That was incredible. The next morning we got up at 5 am to climbe the volcano again to watch the sunrise. Pretty neat. Plus, now I have bragging rights about having been on top of the tallest volcano in Central America.

Last Thursday I decided to not take classes anymore, although I by no means get all the grammar. I just wasn´t enjoying them anymore and was ready for a change. So, that leads me to the orphanage. I went yesterday afternoon to an orphanage called Hogar Temporal (it is government run) with another friend from the school. We took a hike yesterday up to this little park on top of a small mountain with 28 boys between the ages of 5 and 12. It was exhausting, but a good experience. I get the impression that the volunteer program is quite disorganized, but think I will start working there fairly regularly. It is was pretty incredible how starved for attention the kids were, there was hardly a moment where my hands were not being held by some child and several of the young boys who didn´t know my name would just say ¨Mami¨ when they wanted my attention...

Other than that, life keeps flying by! Today is the youngest daughter in my faily is turning 10 and I was woken up at 6:15 am by the traditional firecrackers outside the house. We are having a ¨refraccion¨this afternoon to celebrate and myself and Paul (the other student in my house right now) took both her and her mother to a Xelaju soccer game last Wednesday as her birthday present. (She is a fanatic fan and had never seen a game in the stadium before!) I´m still trying to track down salsa classes here, but am in no huge hurry. Since I am still staying with an ICA family, I can still participate in school activities etc, which is a nice option to still have. Well, that´s all I have for now!