I get a better night sleep last night. Studied Spanish for about an hour and a half. Went to my Casa de Juanita place but it was closed. I went to another restaurant. It wasn’t very good but it put a lump in my gut. I ate two eggs, black beans and some tortillas. 

I was feeling kind of down. Just the idea of not knowing when I’m gonna be able to leave really bothered me. Plus missing my hike up the Acatenango volcano was something I was really looking forward to. But I’ve enjoyed the benefits of all that hard work out that I did for five months. So that’s good. 

Whenever I’m feeling down I always try to push myself physically. So that’s what I did today. I decided I was going to walk from here in San Marcos to San Pedro. That’s about a 5 1/2 mile hike. It is just up and down hills all the way there’s no flat areas at all. My goal was to work out for about 4 1/2 hours. That’s the amount of time that it takes to climb Acatenango. I had a backpack on with several water bottles to kind of be a little bit heavy and I just tried to think of it as if that was my hike. 

I did very well. It was funny how much faster I was than all the Guatemalans walking. I wasn’t racing. I just think I was fitter than they are generally. Which is kind of wild to think about. 

I got to San Juan and had three pancakes while I was there. They weren’t very good. They were super dry. I don’t know what they made them out of. I had a couple of them and drank some Coca-Cola and ate the fruit with two of the pancakes and saved one of the pancakes for tomorrow or whenever. 

I went onto San Pedro to ask some people about the roads and stuff. But nobody really knows what’s gonna happen. The protests are still on in full force. This sort of stuff happened in September and the protests went on for one week. 

Tomorrow will mark one week, so hopefully they’ll go ahead and cancel these protests again till later. The guy I talked with in Saint Pedro was not optimistic about that though. So that made mefeel sad. I just miss everybody at home. 

I enjoy my travels but I look forward to getting home and being with everybody.  I cannot control the government. So I just have to make the best of it. We all do.

Today’s Sunday and it’s been interesting to hear the churches in the area of which there are a lot at least six in this town and all playing hymns that I know. They’re just all in Spanish. So that’s been kind of fun. After I ate im San Juan I hiked the rest of the way back home which is about another 4 1/2 miles. So in all I hiked for 4 1/2 hours and did about 11 1/2 to 12 miles in all something like that. 

Felt really good. At the very end of the hike I could see torrential rain headed towards San Marcos. So I really stepped up the pace because I didn’t wanna get caught in that deluge like I did yesterday. Fortunately, I saw it coming then too and knew I’d get caught by it and so I took one of those little three wheeled motorcycle things back to town, and I was glad I did because it came down in bucket loads. 

It was the first night when it seemed like it rained the whole night long with thunderstorms. We’ve  had rain for the other nights, but had no thunder or lightning and last night was a tremendous amount of thunder and lightning. 

I got home immediately got a shower and got cleaned off and man I mean the lightning was just going on all around us. It was just Some of the loudest lightning I’ve ever heard. Huge bolts! I’m not sure if it’s because it was just so close to me or because we’re just higher up and so we’re closer to it. I don’t know what it was. It sounded like bombs going off. It’s crazy. 

When I got into town The lights were off in the store I usually stop and get some cookies a Coke. I thought oh crap. Well, there’s no power at my house. But I also thought, I’ve got all external batteries and stuff so I know I can last at least two days with no power if I had to. 

I got up to my house though and I noticed that the chargers still had green lights on was on so I have power and that is all good. 

I noticed yesterday when I was trying to take notes on this app that it did not let me record talk to text which I never seen before and I thought maybe something was wrong. Then I realized that you have to have Internet connection for it to be able to do that. so overall a very good day. 

 I feel tired, ready to rest and maybe get some more studying in on Spanish.