Antigua 2010 – day 9

Last day in Antigua today. Feels like the perfect amount of time here. We’re ready to go home, but also feel at peace here.

Today we dove back in to a market in town that has many booths of local people selling goods, mostly hand-made goods from the Mayans.

The people in the booths are the used car salesman of this place. The sell you things more aggressively than I’ve seen anywhere else. They also play games with you…haggling games. You can almost always work them down to half of the price they start out with, and if you don’t feel like haggling, you can simply ask them how much for something, pause, then say you’re going to go look around and think about it…and they drop the price right in front of you….

Antigua 2010 – day 8

Twice now, during our stay here, Noah has been mobbed by groups of local teenage girls. It’s really quite something…they get so excited to see him, their cameras come flying out, and they all pose with him for photos.

Then the bring us into the photos at the end. They are giggling and saying “Hola Noah,” “Noah, look over here,” trying to get him to look at the camera.

I don’t think they see many young blond, cute kids from the states very often. It’s like he’s some kind of child actor star or something. Crazy. He thinks it’s pretty cool, thought the group of girls today were a bit too animated and moving too fast. After a few minutes he started to cry…he was ready for a nap at that point. It’s hard to be a child celebrity with naps to take.

We went out to dinner tonight at a hotel that has a restaurant in it…Hotel Posado de Don Rodrigo. It was the best meal we’ve had yet…amazing food.

There were 7 or so local guatemalan men playing Guatemalan marimbas right in the restaurant. Noah was way in to the music…dancing and running around, making everyone smile (except some grumpy, old americans.)

More on this and some photos after the break, or, after you click on Read More…

Antigua 2010 – Day 7

My business meetings have ended now, after 3 days of all day meetings. Things went very well with the meetings and we got a lot accomplished.

The hardest part of it all was not being able to help Bari with Noah, and to not be able to be with them while they went out and about in town. But I did what I could after the meetings ended each day, and got to spend a little time with them during lunch each day.

Yesterday, for lunch, the whole Joomlashack team went up to a coffee plantation to have lunch at the restaurant there and to take a tour of the coffee fields and the processing plant. It was pretty interesting, actually. I had no idea that coffee was so work intensive to create.

Antigua – Day 3

Seems like we’ve been here a week already! Hard to believe it’s only been three days.

Today we went to see a hotel that is also a living museum…they are both intertwined.

The hotel is called Casa de Santo Domingo, I believe, and it’s been built in and around a very old convent and church that was built in 1500.

They’ve got a big rubber roof over what’s left of the main church area, and many of the ruins are very well preserved, as you’ll see in the photos.

Enjoy

Here’s the link to the flickr set again. I haven’t found a photo gallery plugin for WordPress that I like yet, so I’ll just keep using the flickr gallery for now.

Comments are just below the photos:

Click here to see the photos on flickr

Antigua 2010 – Day 2

Hi All,

Day two in Antigua has come to an end.

Here’s some new pics…just double click on the first one to bring up a slide show that you can move through. To close the slideshow, just click once on any image in the slideshow:

[View with PicLens]

If you’re having any trouble seeing those photos, you can also see them in the flickr set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25359449@N05/sets/72157623476868468/

Pretty simple day today, mostly focused on getting in to town for various meals and adventures.

We have a window between when Noah wakes up in the morning (around 7:00 or 7:30 am) and when he needs to go down for a nap (around noon or 1 pm) where we can head out and do some exploring of the town.

Today we went up and down some new streets, checked out many new restaurants and bakeries, and bought Noah a great little marimba set (we’ve been wanting to get him one for a long time.)

Papa has learned how to count in spanish better now, so buying things is a little easier. I still barely know spanish though, so it’s making things challenging for me.

More of today’s story after the read more break:

Antigua 2010 – Day 1

First day in Antigua, Guatemala!

Two trips walking around this beautiful town. Riding in a tuk tuk taxi. Dinner at a great italian restaurant. Nooey had tons and tons of noo-noos with parmesean tree. 4 hour nap for Noah. Marriachi band at night at the bed and breakfast in the courtyard. 72 degrees most of the day. Lots of people here. Papa can’t remember how to count in Spanish…had some trouble paying for lunch.

Dancing Noah (loves Mariachi music.) Dipped his finger in mama’s wine and like it. Had three or four dips. Lots of truck, motorcycles, horses and carts. All the roads are bumpy cobble stones. Slower pace in this town. Amazing, amazing doors and walls everywhere you look. Ancient ruins of old churches and convents from the 1500′s.

Here’s a link to some pics from the first day:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25359449@N05/

Love to all…

Christmas 2009 and the dancing boy

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to put together a collection of clips and post them here. Life has been a bit crazy busy for the past couple months.

Every day Noah seems to grow up a little more. New words are coming almost every day and he seems to get an inch taller every week. And wow, the boy likes to move and dance and run! Amazing how fast it’s all happening.

So, below is the latest collection of clips…another rough edit of moments from Noah’s life over the past couple months. There’s a few blips in this one…not sure what caused them. Could be time for a new video camera.

Hope you enjoy it

We’re off on our first big family vacation abroad in a couple weeks: going to Antigua, Guatemala for 10 days. The video from that trip should be interesting and fun!