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What’s it like outside the gate? This is what we saw the first time we came to school in an old taxi – but wonderful driver!

A very typical street scene. The “famous” Mercado Las Flores is on the left with vegetable vendors set up on the sidewalk. Many streets are cobblestone which beats the c**p out of the vehicles…

View from our balcony. I love the sound of rain on all those tin roofs!

We’d heard about the intensive Spanish language schools of Quetzaltenango (Xela – Shayla – for short) from many people while in Mexico City.  So while our academic time in D.F. was excellent, we felt we needed to jump to the next level.

We flew into Guatemala City (Guatemala is just south of Mexico) and the next day took a 4 1/2 hour bus ride “up the mountain” to Xela. We’ve since learned and experienced that the bus drivers know within 1 MPH how fast they can go around each mountain curve before crashing off the road, so for about 4 hours we were flung from one side to the other as we took curve after curve.  But the buses are very nice and comfortable once you get yourself wedged in place.

Xela (this is a Google map link) is at about 8,000′ in a valley surrounded by the volcano Santa Maria and other mountain peaks.  The temperature is temperate (now) but gets cold in the winter.

We chose the Sol Latino language school because we’d met a Canadian nurse in D.F. who’d just spent 7 weeks there and recommended it.

Why is this different?  Immersion learning means one on one, 4 or 5 hours a day, conversation with a teacher.  Starting from scratch, students start to learn much like a 2 year old, with basic phrases (“I want a cookie”!) and working up from there.

Our teachers are excellent and we’ve found this is just what we need.

Leslie and Alicia

Don and Rony

We spent the first 3 weeks living on the 3rd floor of the school and during our morning class sessions wandered around Xela with Alicia and Rony looking for an apartment.

The front patio and entrance to the school. The building opens up to the side and back. Leslie and Alicia meet on the 3rd floor balcony (back balcony) for class and Don’s in an inside room.

The front gate/door to the school. This “look” is very common in Guatemala.

In mid-April we left the gorgeous, forested foothills of the Sierras and flew back to Mexico City.

I was surprised how comfortable I felt coming “back home”.  Because we took the red eye out of SFO, we landed in the dark (5:30 am) but I knew the airport, I knew where and how to get a taxi, I knew where we needed to go and I was comfortable engaging our taxi driver in conversation. So so different from when we first came to Mexico!

We spent a week in Mexico City for re-packing stuff for Guatemala (we’d left a lot of our “stuff” in the Casa) and to catch up visiting with our refugee friends and other good friends in D.F. (Distrito Federal, like Washington D.C.).  We even made sure we stayed in “our” old room where we’d lived for 10 months.

We also went to the top of the big Monument to the Revolution next to the Casa and looked down on another demonstration or political rally much like many of the demonstrations we saw while living in D.F.

Then on to our new adventure living in Guatemala!

We’re finally starting to catch up on our blog!

After a fast trip through Ventura we headed north to California’s famed gold rush country where Leslie’s brother Toby lives.  I helped with some home improvement projects and we took time to explore some of the history of California’s early days.

Judy (our sister-in-law) arranged for us to go on a hiking tour of land adjacent to Beale Air Force base that was used in World War 2 to train infantry troops and tank drivers.  These thousands of acres, now in a land trust and very tranquil and pristine, are in a gentle valley, with bunkers built along both sides of the valley just like this one.

The sod (camouflaged) roofs have since collapsed but we tried to imagine what it must have been like for young 18 and 19 year olds learning how to storm these bunkers, most of whom maybe never came home again.  The diagonal concrete wall was designed to protect the occupants in the event of an explosion in the bunker – only half of the bunker would take the hit.

The valley was also used as a training field for tank drivers.  These concrete obstacles (Dragon’s teeth) were designed to stop – or at least slow down – tanks.  We have no idea if tanks could get through these defenses or not, or maybe they simply blasted their way through.

So during our time with Toby and Judy in Nevada City, we did a little work but lots of play!

Waterblasting the upper deck which overlooks the heavily wooded backyard.

Priming the deck.

Who did all the work??

A deer family hanging out in the backyard was a common sight.

A really pleasant afternoon burning brush.

Spinning around the old miner’s trails in Nevada City and Grass Valley.

Dumpster diving with new son-in-law Jim and Toby.

A very fun and surprising snow day in early April!

Leslie and I flew back to California a week or so ago for what we call “admin” – stuff that just needs to get done back in the States.

For me, a major project was to find a new home for the wings of my Tiger Moth project because our existing hangar is being torn down to make room for a larger hangar.

Ali, a good friend of mine who finished building his beautiful Wheeler Express as I was starting my plane, graciously offered his hangar for storage while the new hangar gets built.  Good friends Allan and Gary helped me take the wings down from the old hangar.

Ali and Gary (hidden) are mounting one of the wings in Ali’s hangar.  My replica Tiger Moth (a 1930s era bi-plane British trainer) has 4 wings (upper and lower on each side) so we stored 2 wings on each side of Ali’s hangar.

All snug in their new home for a year or so!  The “tail feathers” are strapped to the side of a wing.  When I return in the future I still need to build the fuselage, add the engine and instruments, cover the whole thing with fabric – then have fun!

Other “admin” stuff that got done was getting yellow fever (for Panama), typhoid, and booster shots, our annual physicals, and on and on.  Also need to do taxes before we leave – oh joy…!