Xela, Guatemala sits at an altitude of 2,333 Meters above sea level. According to the professionals "Acute mountain sickness is common at any altitude above 2,500 Meters", while other professionals say "It's common to get tipsy from two or three beers". Which is perfect because then I have two excuses for telling the crowd at my show last night that I "want" two daughters. I was introducing my song, Freja Grace and thought I'd be clever and try and speak a little Spanish. Great idea after a week of Spanish school. What I intended to say was "Yo Tengo Dos Hijas", translated as "I have two daughters". Instead I mumbled "Yo Quiero dos Hijas", and after a few snickers and giggles I was very glad that there was still 3 more weeks of school left. Until then I'll leave my witty stage banter to Hola, Xela.

Anyways it was a nice little French restaurant that I played in aptly titled "Royal Paris". The woman that we're staying with knew the guy who played there frequently and basically set the gig up, his name was Fernando. He played a set, I played a set, then he went on once more and I closed off with a couple tunes. It was fun. I got some dinner and a couple beers for playing, and the small crowd made up of students from School, our home stay family and a couple tables out for dinner all seemed to enjoy themselves and left smiling. I'm not sure if the smiles were for my broken Spanish or the music but either way I'll take it. Fernando could find his way around the classical, nylon string guitar effortlessly and played a wide variety of Latin American folk songs along with a few of his own compositions. It was a pleasure to watch, I'll definitely go back and he mentioned maybe doing it again in a week or so.

Today was a lazy day, Shona got off to school in the morning and the girls and I watched some Spanish cartoons and ate breakfast. Watching Curious George -or should I say Jorge el Curiouso- is actually helping with my Spanish if you can believe it. Eir had a little nap and I dug my way out of the mountain of Vocabulary and Irregular verb homework. Shona got back from school and I headed out the door, in what has kind of become the tag team ritual. There was a trip with the school in the afternoon, and luckily my teacher let me take the hour off to tag along. It was a bus tour around Xela, with a tour guide telling stories about the history of all the buildings we passed. Xela has an odd gothic feel to it, not common for Central American countries. From what I understand, when the Spanish left, the Germans came in and had a major impact on the Baroque style architecture here. The tour finished off with a trip to a local Chocolate shop where we were shown first hand the Cacao process from start to finish. Another one of those little things in life rarely thought about; I know I never thought of Mayans when I bit into a Mars bar. I didn't realize that the conception of all chocolate basically originated from Central America, primarily in Guatemala and Mexico. I guess it's a very picky plant that knows where it likes to fruit. More than I can say for myself. Ha.

Anyways during the demonstrations we were given a cup of hot chocolate right from the source. I have no problems with saying that it was and probably always will be the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted. No seriously, it was mind bogglingly good. After the Chocolatier we got back on the bus and I headed back for the rest of my lesson. It was a hard return to conjugating irregular verbs after being in chocolate heaven but I managed.

So tomorrow evening I have another show at this really great place run by an Ex-Pat from Spain and his Australian girlfriend. The whole school is coming to the restaurant for their Friday dinner so I'll at least have a few English speakers in the crowd to save more embarrassment. Hopefully we'll get some photos and post them up for all to see.

Off to bed, Buenos Noche...