Climbing

I found the climbing gym. I will see you all again in a couple years.



Ahh, not really. But it turns out there is a climbing wall about three blocks from the volunteer house. One of the head volunteers from Brazil (Paulo) took me and my volunteer friend from Vermont (Jacob) to this rumored gym. It kind of felt like we were looking for some underground secret society meeting, walking around the dark back alleys looking for this indefinite location. Once we found it though I was quite astonished. What a wall! There was quite a group there, guys and gals climbing some pretty tough stuff. Of course they insisted that I lead the hardest, most exposed route there as my first climb. Porque no? So I gave it a shot. I made it all the way out on this overhanging ceiling that sticks out from the wall about 20 ft and my arms started to shake. Then I realized;
"Taylor, you just wandered into this random gym, picked up some frayed harness, put on some very used shoes that probably are giving you athletes foot, you are being belayed by a guy who's language you don't understand, and are about to fall with 40ft of air and a cement floor below you. What are you doing?" Then my stomach added it's two cents: "Why did you go eat a huge German meal and pint of beer before going climbing?" In all fairness, I didn't know I was going climbing... A long story short, I fell. But luckily everything worked out. But my stomach still isn't happy about the German food.

I also restrategized my approach to marketing the tour to Spanish schools today and talked to 5 schools, two of which were very promissing. One said that they might have too many people who would want to go! So that was a boost because I was Mr. cranky this morning because my original plan was failing so spectacularly miserably. (I walked for 4 hours in the hot sun chasing addresses that had changed or never existed).
In short, lesson of the day is, do things the Guatemalan way: eat a big lunch, not dinner and don't have a plan, things will work out if you let them find you. I don't think the shower is going to wander into my room presenting me with shampoo anytime soon though, so I'm going to stop typing and go to it.

Buenas noches