Road trippin´

My companion and I had to go out to a little town on the other side of Lake Atitlan with some missionaries over there. The trip is made by getting on an old school bus, riding down to the tourist trap town, Panajachel, then getting into a van with about 20 other people and driving too my old area, San Andres. From there you get into a pickup truck, again with about 20 other people, and head over to San Lucas. And finally another truck to the town of Santiago. In this town, everyone speaks a native dialect. It is the only area where the missionaries speak a language other than Spanish. All in all, the ride was about 3 hours, so after doing what we needed to do there, we decided to just stay the night in their house and head back in the morning. But of course what would a road trip be if everyone had their own bed!? My companion and I ended up taking the one extra mattress, turning it sideways and pushing it up against their couch. We then used our towels as blankets to suffer out the night before getting up at the butt crack of dawn. Way fun stuff. Pics included for reference. Best sleepover ever.

While on our quest we got into a pickup truck. Shortly afterwards a strange white man got on too. Turns out he ditched his wife so he could go travel, and has been in Guatemala for a really long time. He speaks some of the native languages. Really weird dude. Anyways, supposedly he was one of 2 guys that bred featherless chickens.....

Well, my companion and I have been up at 4:40am every day to go hit the gym from 5:00 to 6:15. I gained a bunch of weight when I started, and then burned most of it off, now we are just getting huge so we can get married faster. ;) All my clothes still fit me fine, I haven’t gotten much bigger sadly. As far as sleep goes I am destroyed! I fell asleep teaching a lesson standing up the other day. I tend to fall asleep in pretty much any non-important moment. But it is not from getting up early, I actually have felt better after we started working out more, getting the exercise in gets everything moving a lot better! But being in charge of a zone is really tiring... (Especially since we have sister missionaries,... I figure that it is good future wife training... because they are high maintenance!) Also, you will be interested to know that my biceps measured in at 14 inches this morning.

ADIOSSSSS
Love you lots mom! Elder Rice