¡Juramentación!

Well of course any night outing in Antigua involves a bit of alchy. A bunch of us celebrated on the terrace on top of hotel Burkhard until 10pm, when the manager told us to keep it down. Once the mixers ran out, Amber, Cady, Marla, and Mincho went straight for the bottle. Amber didn´t make it out after that. The rest of us all went to hang out with Scott and Melissa hanging out at the ***** hotel Santo Domingo. It was a very nice hotel. One of the "pissed" people (as my friend Germain would say) had some interesting phone calls with an ex in the middle of the night. Those famous 3 passed out on Scott´s bed while the rest of us helped Melissa with a powerpoint slide she was making from all of our pictures for the graduation the next day.

We finally left and made it to a bar, but it took a little effort as some had to be carried. One of those 3 made it to the bar, and he passed out on the couch. John took advantage of the moment and a picture was taken that had the potential of being on of those "priceless" emails floating around the internet. Sorry John, I deleted the picture; Mincho´s been through enough tonight.

At least 3 people woke up this morning with hangovers. I was fine, just was a bit broke for breakfast after the expensive hotel and went to graduation hungry. Not worries, today is payday!

Graduation was short, maybe about 1 hour and a half. Craig, our training director, Cindy, the PC Guatemala director, and the "acting" ambassador (we´re between ambassadors right now) gave a speech. The acting ambassador basically admitted to stealing the previous ambassador´s speech during his speech. I guess you could call that giving credit in the political world. :) Finally Mincho Dos (not the one I was talking about earlier, that´s Mincho Uno) gave the equivalent of the valedictorian´s speech. After some refreshments, Melissa set up the powerpoint with the Juanes song "La Camisa Negra" in the background since that´s practically the only Spanish song we all know all the lyrics (we learned it in Spanish class).

After maybe 1000 pictures we went out to lunch at a really nice restaurant called Las Palmas, expensive related to our allowance here. Thanks to Keenton, we had a nice discount. Way back in May in D.C. we had given him money to pay for the shuttles to the airport. Apparently he didn´t use it all, and decided this would be a good time to share it with us. For the first time in Guatemala, I had some real beef that was tender and didn´t taste like rubber - a pepper sauce covered steak and a glass of red wine. With my 30Q discount, I think I payed about 62 Q. Hey it´s a bit steep but we gotta let loose once in awhile.

Some people will stay in Antigua tonight, but I will head back to pack up my stuff. I don´t feel like babysitting again. The guardians are coming by all our houses tomorrow at some time to pick up our stuff. We have counterpart day tomorrow and Friday, so all of our counterparts will come to the training center. Don Efraín, my counterpart, and Don Gildardo, the president of the coop, are coming. Friday we´ll head off to Oratorio for good.

I´ll post some pics when I get a chance.