One-third

Mexico was lovely (but hot), but I don't have a single picture to show for it. I did everything I wanted to do. Mostly. No massages happened, but I still count the trip a success. And now I'm back in Guatemala, at once longer than I was planning on being here, but at the same time not here for much longer. You see, before I left for Mexico my plan had been to fly back to Guatemala City, just for the night, and leave the next day for El Salvador. But somehow - and this happens when you travel, at least if you're me - within hours of leaving Cabo I'd decided that I was going to scrap ES for Honduras instead (for the time being, anyway). This meant that rather than traveling to Santa Ana, El Salvador yesterday as had been my plan, I instead came to Livingston, Guatemala (on the east coast of the country, not far from Belize, actually). It was more of a stopping point, really, because from here I'll head south along the coast, cross into Honduras, and head to the Bay Islands where I will (hopefully) get some diving in. What happens from there is still up in the air...

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I was lying in bed the other night, not able to sleep. In my "real" life when this happens, I usually am kept awake by something work related, or maybe I compose to-do lists, that kind of thing. But when I can't sleep in my traveling life? At least during this trip? I compose sentences in Spanish, apparently. Yep. I think of everything I had to say in English during the previous day and I translate it to Spanish. If I don't know the words, I open up my internal thesaurus and riffle through it until I come up with a word I do know the translation for. I practice the whole sentence in my head until I feel comfortable and confident that when an instance comes up again where I'd need to say something similar, I'd be able to. Then, I do it all over again in as many different ways as I can figure out how to say the same thing.

This leads me to believe that my Spanish IS getting better, even though I haven't taken any formal Spanish lessons while I've been here (I've thought about it, though). For now, entiendo más de lo que puedo hablar (I can understand more than I can speak). That's good and it helps a lot, but it makes for very one-sided conversations...

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Lucky for me, I still have two more months left to go. I'm one-third of the way through this particular trip and already I've added six new stamps to my passport. I still have five blank pages left, but there were eight just a month ago. El Salvador may be out, but there are still four countries I'd like to hit up in my remaining time - Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. That only leaves about two weeks per country and that should be enough, but I guess time will tell...