Emo Beach, far away in time...emo beach, far away in time...

Aha! I caught you looking at my blog! (I figured I may as well drop the pretense now and just call it mine, because, in reality, the girls are never going to write in it) So it's mine! All mine! Muhahaha!

Right, so now that I am dictator for life of this amazing piece of virtual detritus I feel a little more free to take part in ¨cleansing¨of the truth in order to make for better stories and ¨truth reallocation¨to allow for less incrimination of your one true leader.

So anyway, we headed down to the beach on thursday and friday nights. Not that interesting you may say... But it was for a number of reasons: (also, it is our new gracious and benevolent leader's prerogative to include more dot points and numbered items to allow for ease of writing).
1) There were fireflies! First time ever the father of this blog has seen them. Pretty damn amazing when you're sitting outside an internet cafe/shed at 6 at night drinking luke warm Gallos in near 30 degree heat and 90% humidity and not expecting them. Not just a few though, oh no, there were many.
2) The sand at this particular beach is black (the author is not racist). The sand is also very hot. Hot hot. The sand's blackness also led us to christen this place emo beach (far away in time...) I hope that song is in your head now because it's in mine.
3) We picked coconuts off trees and then made rum and coconut cocktails. Awesome gear.
4) Mosquitos were plentiful. This is evidenced by the large numbers of bites on both maie and kate's persons. My person however remains unscathed. I am more than a little happy about this. I may however cop some wrath for my gloating. Seems worth it somehow.
5) The guy who was supposed to pick us up was an hour late, not remarkable in itself but leads me onto...

The FOOTBALL!
1) Our man was late. Fine. We had to get back by four to catch the bus with the group of people from the spanish school that we were supposed to go with. We missed this bus because of our man's lateness. Frown.
2) We told the driver to go a bit faster but not too fast. He unfortunately interpreted this as please only drive at 70km an hour. Frown.
3) I think he hated me. That's fine.
4) So we got back to antigua and tried to organise another bus to get to the stadium for cheaper because it was our man´s fault we missed the bus. We got another bus but not cheaper. They don't really care if they keep us as customers, and fair enough too. I wouldn't either.
5) We made it to the football and the atmosphere was great. We had only a couple of minutes before kick off but the crowd was great and we were seriously in the minority by not waering the Guatemalan team's jersey.
6) Nil all draw. Good game though.
7) Riot police. Awesome.
8) Flares. Fun.
9) Calling people Hijo de puta. Fun.
10) Screaming Goooooooooooooooooooooool! Also fun, sometimes misplaced due to offside ruling. Still not unfun.
11) Had to meet up with the people we were supposed to be going back with in order to get back to antigua. Difficult. Anxiety inducing. Guatemala city has a very bad reputation and the prospect of wandering around town looking for a taxi or bus at 11 on saturday night with us three obvioulsy not fitting in was not in the least enticing.
12) We found the chumps. Smile!

So, now we're back here in Antigua for the day before our last week of clinic and lessons before heading off on more trips etc. Maie is heading off home on Friday via San Fran, and Kate is leaving on the 21st leaving your intrepid correspondent to revel in mexico and perhaps even belize on his own before trying to meet up with our kiwi buddies in either playa del carmen or somewhere along the carribean coast for some diving and sun/sombrero time.

Am still yet to get a cool hat though. I tried on a panama hat but wasn't really into it. Just what hat will I get? Tune in next episode, perhaps there will be an answer. (Wow, what a cliffhanger to leave you with...)

I hope everyone is well and I look forward to hearing from you if you get the chance. Can you all also try and rescue the australian dollar? The new exchange rates aren't really doing it for me. Go on, do it.

Brandon