Good Vibes

My first day in Guatamala was defined by salsa. I met my friend, Naomi, who I have not seen in ages in Antigua. I spent the hour long shuttle ride from the airport to Antigua with this super crazy older man from Germany. He was a holistic health therapist or something coming to work on Lake Atitlan to do spiritual hippy like things for tourists there. He was just going on and on about how he just wanted to touch the ground and feel the presence of guatamala and how it just felt so right that he was here now. He smiled and sang to himself the whole ride on the shuttle stoked on life. All I knew is I would never want this kinda creepy overly spiritual man giving my a holistic rub down massage or something.

Anyways, I showed up to Antigua and ran into the warm embrace of my long time friend Naomi. She is one of the girls that no matter where in life we are or how ever long passes not seeing her, we will still be good friends. Her excitement for spanish, latin lovers, dancing salsa, learning break dancing, hiking, being loud, and generally just enjoying the joys of life is just like mine. Becuase of this, in the first half day of being with her we took two salsa lessons (one private and one group) and went to a salsa club. Such a good sweat. I have decided I must start taking Salsa lessons when I get back home. I really want to be one of those gringas who can just bust out with the latin dance moves. I plan to get in contact with my good friend Shakira tomorrow when I see her at the concert and ask her for free dance lessons. She has just been super busy these months on tour and hasnt been able to spend much time with me.

I had this really great moment the night of the salsa club. Naomi and I were walking home and came across one of her friends hanging out with a couple other guys on the street. One looked exactly like a super stoned joney depp from pirates of the caribean. So I was going around kissing them all on the cheek (cuase thats how you introduce yourself here in latin america), and I was unaware that one of them was blind. So I had this super awkward interaction trying to figure out how to kiss him on the cheek. It definetly caught me off guard at first. However, he turned out to be super cool and told us that the best part about being blind was the fact that he could always walk passed security without them stopping him. Never had really thought about that benefit of being blind, but he has a very good point.

I had a major freak out moment when I realized I had forgotten my new bathing suit at the hostel in Panama. However, life is just good to me, cuase my friends who were in my same hostel room picked it up and will mail it to me. YEAH!!! This bathing suit means a lot to me. It is costum made bright pink and green and makes me look tanner than i actually am. it would have been a huge loss. i almost cried.