an adventurous weekend...

Ok so Saturday was quite the adventure. I got to hike up Pacaya, one of the active volcanoes nearby with a few of the girls from my language school. There are so many words I could use to describe it. Wow. Ok so we went up in a group of 14 and a tour guide. It was quite a difficult climb. The altitude we were hiking at, combined with the steepness of the trail made it pretty tough. We didn’t go at too fast of a pace though because many of us were kinda out of shape. :) I was told it was a little less than one and a half miles one way, but I feel like that might have been wrong. It felt longer than that. So we went through a wooded area first and that was kinda lame because everything was dead looking. Then we got to the lava ash where we could see the peak, which had smoke coming out of it(SO COOL!). Lava ash is like walking in sand but with the effect of walking in dirt, it came up as dust and was awful to breath in. we definitely had the taste of it in our mouths. Nasty… The lava ash was also very difficult to walk uphill in, 2 steps forward one step back. It was steep and very tiring. Then we got to the lava rock and it was really steep. Some of the rocks were loose so we had to be careful and slow going up. As we got higher we could feel that some of the rocks were warmer, which was cool. Then we got to the top of where we climbed and it was miserably hot. We were standing on a few very large rocks and you could see the lava under them, pretty freaky. And it was so hot in that spot that it was hard to breath and my shoes started melting on the bottom. So we quickly wanted down from there. I didn’t get to roast marshmallows but when I was up there that was the last thing on my mind. It was quite beautiful up there though. We were above the clouds and could see the other 3 volcanoes and the sun setting. It was so beautiful. I loved that part so much. So anyways then we had to make the trek back down :(. We had to come down the way we went up, which was super hard and scary, especially since it was getting dark(we had flashlights thankfully). There was a lot of scooting on our bottoms and just kinda sliding down. And once we were at the spot where we could see the peak really well, lava started flowing down the side. Don’t worry it wasn’t near where we were. It was running in a completely different direction. But it was really cool to be able to see it running. Oh and when you looked at the smoke from the peak, it was red where it met the peak because of the lava, that was pretty cool. I was pretty relieved when we finally made it back to the van. I emptied lava ash out of my shoes like 4 or 5 times that day. Ha ha. Oh and now I'm really sore from the climb…ugh I'm out of shape...

Ok so language school is going good. I still get frustrated. I wish I could just be fluent in Spanish. My life would be easier. I've been getting lots of sleep here. I can't go out after dark because its dangerous and it gets dark at like 6 so I usually go to bed pretty early. Getting the sleep is good though, I like that :) plus I have had a ton of time to read, which is great. I have finished reading 2 books already since I've been here. :) I've been having some good times with the Lord. The isolation has been enjoyable, but hard at times.

As I see the homeless people in the streets here, I just don’t know what to do. I hate just walking past them, but I don’t know how to help them. It breaks my heart to see them. To see the sadness in their eyes…