Days 576-583! Honestly, what a crazy title! Finishing up my wonderful trip to Wrightsville Beach, then flying across the entire US to Portland Oregon to hang out with friends… and then fly all the way to Antigua, Guatemala?! You’re in for a real treat this week as I embark back out of the US! I appreciate everyone who followed along my adventures back stateside, but let’s get back to seeing the world!

Thursday, July 31st, we kick off with our final full day in Wrightsville Beach! This trip has been a blast so far, but we still have a full day of fun left.

I woke up at 8am for my last surf of the week. My parents and I walked down to almost where my grandparents old cottage was and I got into the choppy ocean… but there really weren’t any surf-able waves this morning, so I just got a solid hour or so of paddling around.

The rain came rushing in after the surf session, so we spent the remainder of the morning hanging out at the house, reading books and playing games.

The rain finally cleared around noon and we hurried out to get a final beach day in! We jumped around in the choppy waves, body surfed a little bit, and played some bocce too.

Later in the day, I dropped off my surfboard. Even though the waves were nothing close to writing home about, I was glad I spent the money to have the board for the week! It brought me a lot of joy to paddle around on a surfboard and with Tuesday’s surf session (of last week) I had a blast!

We had pizza and leftovers for dinner and then ended our night with some more custard to top off a very sweet week.

Friday, August 1st (how is it already August!?), it was finally time to pack up and head out from our lovely beachside getaway. To be able to spend so much time with family and in a part of the country that is very special to me (and my family) is incredible!

It was a drizzly morning while we packed up our belongings into the cars. We gave lots of hugs to each other before setting off on our drive to Raleigh Durham Airport.

I went from the rental car company to the airport with my siblings and we parted ways as we arrived at the terminals.

I was going to spend time with my eldest sibling but… the Sun Country desk was closed! So I had to wait hours and hours before they opened up.

The day was full of chatty travelers though. The first one was a lady asking me about standby flights. Apparently she hadn’t ever been on standby and I tried to explain it to her with my minimal experience…

The check-in desk finally opened up (around 3-4 hours after I got there), I got my bag checked, and then headed through security. I found my sibling right after that. We chatted about a bunch of random topics.

I had an apple packed with me, but that wasn’t enough. I’ve also learned my lesson on not eating while traveling, so I got myself an overpriced burrito. A couple hours later, we parted ways and headed to our respective gates. I boarded my flight and…

We just sat on the runway for a while…

I had a really tight connection in Minneapolis and this was cutting into it! I was a little stressed, but luckily in a worse case scenario I could just stay with my cousins.

I sat next to a man named Jeff who was from Minneapolis. I heard all about his life, he was a pretty chatty guy. Funnily enough, I had a short interaction prior to my flight so it was kind of serendipitous that we’d be sitting next to each other. He used to be an environmental engineer, then became a lawyer, then quit to start a vineyard in California which he eventually sold and is now retired on his hobby ranch.

We chatted about my travels and what I used to do (and have been doing) for work. We also chatted about humanistic religion, which was something he was involved with in Minneapolis.

I then decided I needed a nap, so I paused our conversation and woke up on our descent to Minneapolis. This is where some fun begins…

By the time we got to Minneapolis I had about 15 minutes to get to my gate. Thankfully this happened to be a couple gates down from our gate… but who knew if they’d still have the doors open. I was optimistic since it was the same airline, but it was a budget airline so I could’ve seen them trying to get more money out of us with a new ticket.

They made an announcement telling everyone there were people with tight connections and to my surprise, everyone let the few of us straight to the front of the plane!

When we got off we sped walked two gates over and…

The door was closed.

I asked the desk is there any chance they could let us on?! And one lady said “nope sorry, doors closed.”

I was like “uhhh are you kid…” and before I could finish another worker said “no no no, you can go in, Katie [some other worker] closed it for some reason.” PHEW! A bit of a whirlwind of emotions.

I got on the flight and sat down next to another chatty traveler, Cydney. She’s a 5th grade language arts teacher from Ohio. We actually ended up chatting the entire 3 hour flight, which was pretty crazy. Good conversation makes the time fly by!

We landed in Portland, Oregon which was where I’d be spending the next handful of days!

I got my bag, called an uber, and headed to my friends Haleigh and Naomi. I met them through my Bonnaroo group in 2023 and we became good friends! I had also been wanting to check out Portland, so this was a great excuse to go.

Saturday, August 2nd ended up being a very lowkey day with not much to note. Naomi’s friend had to be taken to the hospital, so I was hanging out with Haleigh and their roommate Braden. But eventually they both had to go to work.

But before that, we got lunch at some food carts. Haleigh also has an adorable Great Dane, Millie, who I got to spend loads of time with while I was just chilling at their house.

Here’s a couple cute pictures of Millie!!

Eventually, Naomi came home and we went out for dinner and drinks with some of her coworkers. They were a goofy bunch and I got to spend time with them throughout the rest of my time in Portland.

Sunday, August 2nd had a lot more going on! Haleigh had work, but Naomi and I went out to explore the city. We started at one of the largest private book stores, called Powells, and while we were there we met up with one of my closest friends, Jason, who just happened to be in the city as well!

Jason and I were Big Jay together at KU and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s also a big reason why I’m out traveling the world too! He was the first person I saw doing it and after his first year and a half I was like… I can and WANT to do that.

As we were walking around, we saw an event going on, so we went to check it out. Turns out it was a skate event with lots of skaters taking turns trying different tricks in a makeshift skate park. There was also a heavy punk band playing. It was cool to see the genuine joy from all the people in the skate community and the people dancing to the music. And best of all, the event was free!

We ran an errand for Naomi to a Japanese store called Muji and then got an uber to one of Naomi’s coworkers houses, Armando.

It was a GORGEOUS day, so we took a long walk to a park called Mt. Tabor. We ended up spending a fair amount of time here beneath huge trees and chatting by a retention pond overlooking the city.

We then went to a taco restaurant, Armando’s suggestion, and it was delicious! We had a really nice time chatting and laughing, it was a fun group to hang out with.

We then went across the street to a bar for a drink before heading back to Haleigh and Naomi’s house. We ended up hanging out late into the night and eventually Haleigh and Braden joined us as well.

A much more exciting day than Saturday!

Apparently, a big thing that Portlanders do is river days! Now from my experience with rivers, the Illinois River to be exact, is you don’t go into it… but here they’re stream run offs from the mountains!

So on Monday, August 4th we went on a little roadtrip!

We grabbed some groceries and snacks to eat while at the river and made another pit stop at a cafe for the coffee drinkers of the group. The cafe had a chess table, so Jason and I played a speed chess match of 3 min each. It’s been 2 years since I’ve seen Jason and even longer since we’ve played chess in person, but I haven’t lost my touch and schooled him. We also play every day through online chess, which we’ve been doing for years!

The ride to the river took us about an hour and through Washington State! The Naked Falls were a gorgeous ride through stunning views of valleys and insanely tall trees and mossy nature.

The falls themselves are now on private land but that means they’ve been taken care of more. It apparently used to have a treacherous path down to the falls, but within the last 2 weeks they put in a sturdy metal staircase (still steep). We hauled our stuff down to the falls and I was not disappointed!

It wasn’t as sunny of a day as I would’ve hoped, but that didn’t stop us from getting in. There were a bunch of spots to jump off the rocks into deep pools of water and even a jump next to a small waterfall. But the water was FRIGID! So I only got in twice to do two different jumps.

It was so beautiful though. It made the cold water worth it. We also played a game called chameleon which I learned at the lake in Minneapolis with my cousins Ben and Sam! It’s a great group game of deception, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

After a number of hours at the falls, we got a bit too cold. So we headed on our ride back to Portland.

We ended up stopping for dinner at another food truck area called Hawthorn Asylum which had an insane number of food trucks to choose from! I had some tasty Thai food.

We headed back to Haleigh and Naomi’s house where we again hung out late into the night until I called it quits and time for bed! I had a long day of traveling ahead of me.

I woke up at 4:30am on Tuesday, August 5th… not ideal, but I had a 7am international flight to get to! My friend Naomi took me to the airport, which was super nice of her to wake up so early.

I quickly checked my bag and flew through security. I found my gate and was ready for my first flight (of 2).

My first flight was from Portland to Houston. I was sat next to an elderly couple, who turned out were deaf! At one point I helped the older gentleman out of his seat so he could use the restroom, my good deed for the day.

The flight was uneventful but the views were incredible! We flew over Utah’s Salt Lake, I saw some bits of the Grand Canyon (I believe), and lots of mountains.

Not the best pictures but that’s what I get for not being in the window seat. Thankfully my random selected seat was an aisle!

I scrolled through the list of entertainment options on the little tv infront of my seat and I found live recorded events and concerts! Wildly enough, they had the final show of an Odesza tour at the Gorge (a beautiful concert venue in Washington). Odesza is an electronic music duo and they put on quite the show for my first flight. I fell in and out of sleep throughout the flight, but it was enjoyable!

I landed in Houston, Texas for my layover. I had a bit of a walk as I made my way to my next gate, I had around an hour to spare. I grabbed a chicken sandwich from Wendy’s and munched on that until my flight! Before I boarded, I saw two people that stood out to me. One was another backpacker (given away by her big backpack) looking for a place to charge her headphones… the other was a woman wearing brightly colored neon clothing. And guess who I happened to be sitting in between?! Both of them.

Weird…

It turned out the backpacker, Jasmine, was from Germany and the other lady, Valeria, was from Arizona. Both were traveling for different lengths of time, a couple months and 2 weeks respectively, and we chatted for the first hour of our flight! They were both super nice people. The rest of the flight I listened to music and slept, I was tired.

It wasn’t a terribly long flight from Houston to Guatemala City. It was cloudy and drizzly out which made for a slippery landing, but I had arrived safe and sound!

The next step was finding an SIM card for my phone, customs, and getting my bag. I decided to hold off on the SIM card because the airport prices seemed a bit steep… so I was hopeful I’d find one once I got to Antigua or soon after. Customs was a breeze and I actually got a physical stamp! Another one for the collection.

Getting my bag took a bit longer because the belt broke down for a little bit. But I was able to get my bag and actually meet but up with Jasmine and Valeria. I exchanged some money out to have some on hand and then walked with my two new friends out of the airport. I already had a shuttle set up through the language school I’m attending, but I went to inquire if they could join the car since they were headed to Antigua as well.

But with lack of Spanish and the driver looking uncomfortable with the idea, I decided against it. But they quickly found a ride to share together along with another backpacker they met up with!

The ride to Antigua was long and full of rain. The traffic was packed and the driving style definitely reminded me of SE Asia (especially with the motorbikes flying around the cars). I’m pretty sure the traffic added about a half hour to an hour to our drive.

My driver had some great taste in music and we listened to classic and modern rock the entire ride. Unfortunately we couldn’t speak too much but we chatted a tiny bit at the beginning. This is making me even more excited to get into the studying and learning!

The drive was fairly intense though. Lots of weaving in and out of traffic, narrowly avoiding motorbikes and cars, speeding up, slowing down… we’re back and traveling!

I nodded off a couple times on the drive, but I made it safe and sound to my homestay! My driver helped me get to the right house and I met my host family. I met the father and mother first (the mothers name is Odilia and the fathers name is Adolfo). They definitely don’t speak a lot of English which made the first interaction a little stressful… because I had very little idea what they were saying.

Thankfully, their son Hector came to my aide and cleared things up for me. Now obviously the goal is to not have to use English… but I also have pretty much zero Spanish knowledge, so a little help is definitely necessary.

They asked me if I had ate dinner yet and I said I hadn’t. They immediately whipped me up a small meal of refried beans, bread, and a sort of thin noodle pasta salad. It was tasty!

I chatted with Hector a little bit while I ate, in both English and a little Spanish. He would ask me a question in Spanish and if I didn’t know what he was saying he’d help me out in English. Definitely a good first step even though I might’ve just heaved myself into the deep-end. Hector told me there’s another American staying in the homestay currently, but I didn’t have a chance to meet her.

I said buenos noches to Hector, took a nice cold shower, and called it a night!

I woke up bright and early on Wednesday, August 6th, 6:45am to be exact. Breakfast at the homestay was at 7am and my first Spanish class started at 8am. It was go time!

For breakfast Odilia made us some sort of porridge, I believe it’s called Mosh, some bananas, and scrambled eggs. I also finally got to meet the other American at the homestay, Savanna.

We chatted a bit as we ate, she’s also beginning to learn Spanish for a volunteering job but she’s a month into learning. So she also helped bridge the gap between me and the host family AND me and Antigua.

Savanna offered to walk with me to the schools office where I’d meet my teacher. So at 7:40am we set out into the streets of Antigua!

Savanna dropped me off at the school’s office and she set off to meet up with her teacher. I was welcomed to Antiguena Spanish Academy by Julio. He had me sign a couple forms (he also wanted payment which he let me put off till the afternoon) and then he introduced me to my personal teacher, Tulio!

Right off the bat Tulio and I hit it off, cracking jokes and getting to know each other. I told him right off the bat that my Spanish was as beginner as it could get. This put him in the mode of saying something in Spanish, if I didn’t pick up on it he’d say it in English, and then I’d try to say it in Spanish and if I couldn’t he’d help me through it.

We walked across town to the garden where clases were being held. And the next 4 hours were pretty much that. One on one, talking in mostly Spanish, with English sprinkled in.

There were so many people taking one on one classes, it was awesome to see! Tulio and I started our session just casually chatting, about age, height, life, etc. I’m sure this gave him a good base as to where my Spanish was at. Also, I want to become conversationally fluent, not necessarily know everything. So just chatting is a great place to start to get the hang words and phrases I need and then dive deeper as I go.

We then went through a couple exercise books that the school had provided. We discussed the alphabet and the importance of pronunciations and sounds of the letters. We also went through how different letters sounded together and the importance of the vowels and vowels with accents.

Tulio then had me read through a passage about the “Último Viaje” (the last trip). Interestingly enough, I could actually understand a majority of what I was reading. I tripped over a few words the first time through and Tulio helped me through it, but he was very pleased with my pronunciation! Thank you Language Transfer (an amazing app that’s free and way better than Duolingo).

We had a 30 or so minute break where Tulio and I walked around the corner to another building that had a pickleball court, another garden, and a cafe! This cafe didn’t sell coffee and tea though, it sold tostadas, chiles rellenos (egg wrapped peppers), and a few other things for very cheap.

I had a tostada with avocado, beans, and a few other things on top. Tulio and I chatted while we ate. It’s definitely a time where I could go chat with other students, but since it was day one and my Spanish is still needing loads of work, I felt my best option to keep learning on my break was to chat with Tulio who’d help me through it.

The back half of today’s lesson was a lot of information about masculine and feminine words. We talked about general rules of thumb and of course, the exceptions to the rules as well! It can’t just be easy… thankfully there are rules, I felt like in French, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, the genders for things felt so random.

We also sporadically threw in useful words and phrases as we went. Tulio was writing a lot as we went and I jotted notes onto the workbooks, but my plan was to reorganize Tulio’s notes later (spoil alert, I did).

Class honestly flew by! There were a few points where my brain went to information overload, but for the majority of it I was locked in and enjoying the process.

After the lesson, I walked back to the homestay with my new friend Savanna. Odilia and Adolfo were ready for us and had another meal set out. With how much I eat beans and such at home, I’m fitting right in with the meals here.

After lunch, I had some errands to run! The first was for a SIM card. I went to the closest convenience store and confidently asked for one in Spanish… and then she responded and I fell apart. But there were locals to my aid to help get me through the process. And for 145 quetzales ($19) I have data for the next 30 days. A bit more expensive than Thailand, but not bad!

I then took a nice walk to an ATM where I pulled out enough quetzales to pay for my week of class, my homestay, and my driver from the airport. In total, that was 2,320 quetzales for the entire week (just over $300). Now that feels like a steal for the one on one tutoring, a place to sleep, and three meals a day!

I walked to the school’s office and paid Julio. Then I found another nearby convenience store to buy a bar of soap! An important task. I started my walk home (which is beautiful if you can’t tell from the pictures) and realized my hands were a little light…

I had forgotten my water bottle!

So I started to retrace my steps and found it at the ATM, sitting right on top where I left it. Hopefully this town doesn’t turn into Hanoi, Vietnam where I actively tried to lose my water bottle (well not on purpose, but you get what I’m saying).

I got back to the homestay and took a nice power nap. But once the nap was done, it was back to work! It was time to study.

I found a nearby cafe to get a smoothie and study at. In college, I was always an at home studier, but I wanted to be out of the homestay and enjoy the new town that I’m in! The cafe I found was Siena Luz, Coffee & Book Shop. It was a cute and small indoor and outdoor cafe and I chose to sit outdoors.

I started working on homework Tulio assigned me (homework!! I never thought I’d have that again). This assignment was practicing placing the right gender infront of a word based on the general rules and exceptions.

Another piece of homework was saying ma, me, mi, mo, mu and other consonant vowel pairs to work on pronunciation.

I then took Tulio’s notes and organized them in my notebook in a way that made sense for me! This all took me around 3 to 4 hours… a lot longer than I expected, but I’m in town to study and learn. A much different experience compared to SE Asia.

I set back to the homestay, but decided to sit and watch the sun go behind one of the volcanoes. While I sat there, I read through the story I read in class again (that was my last piece of homework for the day).

Dinner wasn’t until 7pm, but Savanna and I were in for a treat! It was Odilia and Adolfo’s son-in-law’s birthday and they were including us in the celebration!

Their whole family came over to celebrate. They grilled up meat, had potatoes and beans, and of course plenty of tortillas to go along with it all!

At first the dinner was super quiet and I felt that it was going to be a bit awkward. But then the family started talking to each other, asking us questions, and constantly correcting our Spanish! It turned into a lively event and they were all very understanding of my lack of Spanish and were happy I was trying and willing to learn from them.

Hector got a piñata for the celebration and we each took turns smacking a Spider-Man piñata (not sure what he did to deserve being strung up and beat).

The stick actually broke in half at one point and flew straight towards Savanna. Luckily it narrowly missed her. After everyone asked if she was okay, everyone started laughing. It was pretty wild how fast the stick broke and we were all glad Savanna was okay.

It took almost everyone, but eventually all the candy came flying out and the grandchildren (technically great grandchildren too since their abuelo was there) were very happy. I tried a few Guatemalan candies and enjoyed a couple of them.

The eating wasn’t over yet. There was a pineapple cream cake waiting for us when we got inside and we spent the rest of the night eating and chatting.

Savanna went to bed early and I stayed to sit with the family more. I wanted to listen to what they were talking about and take a few more stabs at conversations before I went to bed.

In Spanish, I thanked them for dinner, wished their son-in-law a happy birthday, and said good night!

Spanish won’t be easy to learn… but I’m in one of the best environments to do so and succeed! The host family is kind, generous, and helpful, Tulio seems like he’s going to be a fantastic teacher and friend, Savanna has bridged a gap that I am very happy to have bridged, and I’m super stoked to start this journey!

I’m glad that I had so much time with family and friends, but I had been itching to get out of my comfort zone… and let me tell you… I am very far out of it.

Next week I’ll have plenty going on. But a little teaser, I heard there’s an Antigua football (soccer) match on Saturday… so be prepared for stories!

Hasta Luego!

– Elie