Brian's Birthday in Guatemala

Saturday morning, Brian, Dave, Maggie, and I got up early and rented bikes at a nearby store. We had decided to head up the mountain to the hot springs in nearby Fuentes and thought that it wouldn´t be that hard to just guide ourselves. After finding our way out of Xela, we took a road that basically went straight up and then straight down a mountain. It was so steep heading down that we all had to walk our bikes... good times. My favorite part of going down into whatever city we were heading towards (we were extremely lost) was the kids yelling at me that it was very dangerous and I was going to die. Hahaha... oh kids. They were probably right though because of my brake situation... Anyway, after finding someone to give us directions we finally found our way to Zunil which is at the base of the climb to Fuentes. It was then a 8K climb straight up to the hot springs. I believe at one point I wanted to kill some people because I was so out of shape, but I made it thanks to Brian because he hung back and talked to me up the very last part of the mountain to the springs. The springs were pretty damn cool. The sulfur smell was strong, but that´s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. There was one wall that was really just hot to touch and the water by it was just awesome. We stayed in for awhile and then it began to rain. We imagined it was letting up and decided then would be a good time to start the descent. I mentioned that I had a ¨brake situation,¨ well what that means is that my back brakes didn`t work and all I had were my front brakes. This is very bad because if you pull the front brakes you´ll just flip right over your bike. So here I was, in the rain and fog, going down a mountain with no rear brakes. Maggie told me to just stick close to the wall and to keep my eye out for places I could jump off the bike to in case of an emergency. I know how to jump off horses, so that´s the same, right? Anyway, I think that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I probably would have felt better if they had at least provided helmets, but I guess that Guatemala doesn´t really believe in basic safety. Luckily we only encountered one chicken bus on the road which scared the crap out of me... but that´s OK because I survived. We got back to Xela with just enough time to get a cake for Brian´s birthday party and head over to the Chinese restaurant. They served a lot of food and were so cute about it being a birthday celebration because they played the longest rendition of ¨Happy Birthday¨over the loudspeakers when we had the cake out. Very cute. We headed over to Salun Tecun where it was unequivocally proven that I cannot chug if my life depended on it. Eight people going in sequence against me and I STILL LOST. Sigh oh well, I just must be missing that gene. After Salun, we headed over to an EntreMundo party which was quite hilarious. At first the music was awesome and we were all dancing up a storm... Toby even did the worm in the middle of the party in a puddle and proceeded to kick over the candles that were lighting the party haha. When the music turned bad, we all took turns trying to make the DJ play good music... at my turn he yelled at me to get out of us booth because I didn´t appreciate is ¨vision¨ Right... All in all we had a fabulous time and celebrated Brian´s birthday right in Guatemala.
Sunday we all met at Cafe Babylon for breakfast/lunch and tried to go to the Natural History museum (which is supposedly hilarious). Unfortunately it was closed, so we came back to school and just watched pointless American TV (CSI, Law and Order, E! countdown) for a couple hours that had Spanish subtitles (totally counts as studying). As my one and only weekend spent in Xela, it was definitely a good time.