As long as it's talking with you, talk of the weather will do.

We went to Quetzaltenango(Xela ) over the weekend with the five BYU students who are in Santa Caterina: Dane, Ben Jonathan, Deborah and Thuy. It's a very nice, very big city. Andy and I got into town first and went to the parque central, a huge, beautiful central park with big statues and fountains and these really cool looking trees. We looked around a bit at the central park, and then we saw in the Lonely Planet that there are a number of bookstores in the area. So we headed for them. The first one we found was a small used bookstore run by a gringo with long hair and a beard. I bought five books there, one of which was a big, old English dictionary. Then we looked around for a second store but couldn't find it.

Our friends got in by then and called to see where we were, so we went and met them in the park and then went to another bookstore where I bought two more books: Neruda's Veinte Poemas and a nice collection of Ruben Dario's poems. Then we went to Wendy's and had lunch. I got a triple cheeseburger and fries and a frosty. I've taken up drinking Pepsi lately. Tat Lu and I finished off a bottle of Pepsi one afternoon while he told stories and, I don't know why, but it tasted so good that day. Ever since I've ordered it at restaurants when there aren't any good non-soda options.

Oh, Andy and I hadn't planned on staying over night, but once I got there I decided I wanted to, and then Andy decided he would too, so we went back to The Black Cat Hostel where the others were staying and got beds in one of the dorms. It was a great hostel, and the lady working it was awesome. She was lots of fun to talk to, loves Mormons apparently and was playing Radiohead in the lobby when we walked in. She had all kinds of great music like The Whitest Boy Alive, Arcade Fire, Beruit, etc. And the girl from the cafe in San Marcos that tried to hike up the price on the De Beauvoir book was there at the same hostel. She recognized me and came over to say hey, and there I was with a sack of old books in my hand. She was like, what's the deal, are you like a collector or something? We had a good talk. She was really nice and ended up telling me that Victor, the guy who sold me the books, didn't own them. He was just working there for the day and pocketed the money. We had a good laugh. I think she said she was slowly working her way to Mexico. I can't remember why though.

After that we went to the HiperPaiz, which is basically Guatemalan Super Walmart. And then looked around the mall that it's connected to. We did bumper cars in the mall, which was lots of fun even though it was really small, and then saw a movie, for the sake of seeing a movie in a theater.

Then we tried hunting down the art exhibit of an artist who had won a national competition this year, but we ended up going to the wrong place. Everyone really wanted to eat at Pizza Hut, but we weren't sure if we'd still have time to make it to both. I really wanted to do both, but especially the art show. So I said, let's call each place and find out when they close. I called both places and found out that we would have just enough time to do both if we hurried. So we hopped on Microbuses and headed out. I' m so glad we made it to the art show. It was a really good exhibit.

We spent awhile there, took some pictures with the artist, Josue Hernandez, and then went to Pizza Hut, which was great. We also stopped into a restaurant and listened to a pretty good band before heading back to the hostel. Back at the hostel, we hung out for a bit and I perused the old dictionary I bought (I think the most interesting word I found was “probabalism;" I´m still trying to figure out exactly what it is.), and then went to bed in my clothes in a room with a bunch of strangers.

In the morning we went to church there in Quetzaltenango. The building was huge. It was a really nice ward. There was an American traveling through Guatemala with his daughter as a gift for her recent graduation from her masters program in Rochester. She's going for her PhD in 19th century British literature. So we talked a little literature and then we had to go. We got some ice cream and got on the buses to come home. The bus we took had a very aggressive attendant that crammed it way beyond capacity. I was sitting on the edge of a seat that already had two people on it and then this very large lady somehow sat down on the edge of my seat and the other seat across the aisle, completely blocking the aisle. Any time we took a corner I got leaned on BIG time, and ended up leaning on the poor lady next to me with a sleeping daughter in her arms. At one point Andy and I gave up our “seats” so these two girls that had nowhere to sit could take a rest. It was actually kind of fun to stand and fight the swing and sway of the switchbacks around the mountain. It almost felt like old times in the keys when we had to lean off the side of McDougal's catamaran to stabilize it.

Today I've tried trimming my beard, and the trimmer won't hold a charge for long, so I'm doing it in pieces: Trim a little, write a little while it charges again, trim a little more, write/charge, trim . . .

I want to see if I can get Minus the Bear big here. I think it could work. I'd like to see their faces when/if they come on a random vacation to Atitlan and overhear some kids listening to their music. I think I'll start with the guys at the Internet place and let it spread from there. They're pretty cool and listen to some good music, including a lot of American stuff.

And I bought a guitar in Solola.