Secretos & Nuts

Yesterday I learned irregular verbs and by the end of my class I thought my brain would explode. Subsequently I spent a great proportion of the day trying to study, however I was derailed by the salsa class at the school. Somehow we managed to have equal numbers of boys to girls and it was definitely entertaining watching everyone try to bust a latino move.

However the real winner from yesterday was our dinner in the guest house. Our conversation took an interesting turn when we decided to share secrets, en espanol, from our past. This provided an interesting insight into my fellow housemates. While none of these secrets belong on this blog, all were highly entertaining and incredibly random. Unless of course you are me, in which case you are likely incredibly boring and have nothing interesting to note. My travels here are likely the most interesting thing I have done. Others however had much more devious pasts.

Today’s class and verbs had clearly escaped my brain because this morning’s class was the most difficult yet. I will need to spend more time studying. Although this afternoon I took a detour from my studies to visit a macadamia nut farm. This trip included my first ride on a notorious Guatemalan chicken bus. Thankfully ours was not overflowing with humanity and/or chickens.

We visited the Valhalla Finca which grows one of the few varieties of macadamia nut trees which aren’t poisonous. I must admit I was slightly disappointed with the tour portion which essentially was a 20 minute conversation with very few specifics. It was sort of a let down. The supposed highlight of this tour was a taste of macadamia nut chocolate and a macadamia nut oil facial. However, I couldn’t eat the chocolate and the ladies providing us the facials  were slightly surly. I will say that it was worth it just to visit, experience fresh macadamia nuts, and learn about how they produce them. Also the grounds of the farm were incredible. Beautiful flowers were growing on the property and had one of the nicest bathrooms I’ve ever seen. The building was covered with flowers.

I actually enjoyed the three-legged dog more than the macadamia nut farm. And I probably didn’t need to go all that way to find a sad looking three legged dog. On the way back I was trying to get Dave, one of the students who joined on this adventure, to talk with his Aussie accent. We had some fun joking about how ridiculous we all sounded. Apparently I say pasta funny. This is the sort of useful information that you can only acquire by traveling.