Antigua, Guatemala: Boots on the Ground!

I made it! Now that I’ve been in Antigua for a few days, and I’m relatively settled, I have a little time to update my blog… So, yes I made it here safe and sound, but it was quite a trip!

I took the Red Eye from LAX on Sunday night assuming that I was going to be able to catch a few hours of sleep before my connection in Ft Lauderdale. I mean, that’s the point of taking the Red Eye…right? So wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t get one minute of sleep on the flight. We left LAX at 11:30 and were due to arrive in Florida at 7:00am eastern standard time. So basically, you only have about 4 ½ hours to try and get some sleep and it was pretty much impossible for me to go to sleep when we left at 11:30. I was awake for a good 2 hrs then just as I started to doze off we had a sort of “in flight emergency”.

So I’m sitting there dozing off and this girl comes walking down the isle really fast and bumps me pretty hard as she’s passing by, so I look up and she just collapses at the back of the plane. Her boyfriend was right behind her and managed to grab her as she’s falling. The flight attendants rushed over and the girl started coming to. I was within ear shot and heard her say that she started to feel weird at her seat and then felt faint. So they have her on the ground and are calling the captain on the intercom and I’m thinking, “Ok were going to have to do an emergency landing or something.” But after like a minute the girl came to and was talking and sort of back to normal. While this was all going on, one of the flight attendants was questioning the boyfriend and asking him all sorts of questions about her health right next to my seat so I got to hear everything that he said… like, “Yeah, shes late and we think she might be pregnant but we don’t really know for sure”. LOL!!! Anyway, to make a long story short; the plane landed right on time, the girl who might be pregnant was OK, and I got zero sleep.

After a 4 hour layover in Ft.Lauderdale, a terrible cup of coffee, and an egg sandwich that tasted like crap, I got on the plane to Guatemala City. It was a short flight, and I really have to give credit to the airline. I actually went the low cost carrier route and took Spirit Airlines and seriously they were really good. All the planes were brand new, so you didn’t feel like the wings were going to fall off in mid air or anything, and they were really efficient. So props to them!

When I arrived in Guatemala City, a driver from my Spanish school picked me up at the airport and gave me a ride to Antigua, where I will be staying for the next couple of months. So for those who don’t know here’s the deal…

I decided to do some traveling through Central and South America, and before I go through all those amazing countries I felt that I needed to learn Spanish so I don’t end up missing out on talking to the people and doing all the things that I wouldn’t normally do if I only spoke English. So, I enrolled in a Spanish Emersion School here in Antigua that a friend recommended. They put you up with a family and you have private Spanish lessons with an instructor at the school Monday-Friday. I’ve been doing the program for a few days now and its friggin awesome! The family is great, and everyone at the school is SUPER cool. But I’ll get into all that later and put pics up and everything of my Spanish school and the town where I’m staying.

So now here’s the good part, I managed to capture a little video as I made my way all the way down to Guatemala. I’ve been fooling around with my video editor in my downtime and put together a little clip of my journey so here it is…

PS. I did a little commentary right after I got out of the airport and stuck it in the middle of the video. The weather was a bit of a surprise and you’ll see what I mean…Lol. Oh, and by the way, if you’ve never seen what I look like totally exhausted after being awake for 26 hours straight, and in serious need of a shower, your about to find out…