Old Stomping Grounds

What a treat for us today to take Sheri to Xela to our old Spanish school to refine her language skills for a couple of weeks. Glenn and Neva went with us, and we all enjoyed the beautiful scenery as we headed west, climbing to 10,000 ft altitude at Alaska, Guatemala and then descended to 8000 ft where Quetzaltenango (Xela) sits in a high valley. It was fun to look at all of the old colonial buildings of downtown, the beautiful central park and the downtown plaza with its historic Catholic church built in the 1500's. Best of all we got to see all of our friends from church in Zone 1 which has almost doubled since we were there. After church we went to the ever-growing mall and had lunch at Pizza Hut (I know, I know, but it's really much better pizza than the stuff in the States)! Finally we headed over to our old school, Centro Bilingue Amerindia www.languageschool.com.gt. We chatted with Hugo and Elvia, the owners, and caught up on news, introducing them to Sheri. Tourism is extremely low right now, especially in the language schools, so Sheri will have them all to herself until next week. After our visit we continued over to Sheri's host family's house-the same family we stayed with. Dona Elubia was warm and welcoming as ever, and we spent a few minutes catching up with her. Finally, we headed out, leaving Sheri to enjoy her couple of weeks of language classes, feeling a little envious that we couldn't stay too! But it was a beautiful trip through the mountains covered with fields of corn, wheat, cutting flowers and pine trees back to Chichicastenago. Tonight we rest a little and tomorrow morning we go to a thanksgiving service at Mactzul VI.