The dueling churches and "going Rainbow"

Tomorrow is our last day of spanish classes in San Marcos. Today I tried to explain (in spanish) to the hotel manager that we wanted to check out tomorrow afternoon instead of on Sunday and that I wanted my money back for the two nights that I had already paid for....so that was rather interesting. To say the least he was pretty good at figuring out my spanglish and he refunded me my money! Chad got wednesday off from class because his instructor had to go to court or something. We are going to San Pedro tomorrow which is a 15 minute boat ride away. We start classes there on Monday. We wanted to get out of San Marcos a bit early because the hippies are really starting to get wierd!! There is the thing called the Moon course where you have to meditate for 7 hours a day and then only eat fruit and then fast for 5 days and then sit in darkness or be silent for 5 days and pretty much torture yourself so that you can come to some sort of realization about what your life is about and the path to take. After you complete the moon course which is about 28 days you can do the Sun course which is i am guessing 3 months? not sure but it sounds even more intense with 40 days of silence at the end. During these courses you have to analyze your dreams and journal them and then try to make some sort of connection with everything and anything. This guy from California was so intrigued becuase he dreamt about making space for a garden and then lo and behold meditation that next day was held in the garden...whoaa! We heard this other guy talking about how he was going to consult with the universe and maybe go talk to Rainbow to figure out if he should date this girl or not. So ya, we are in need of some non hippy socialization. We hope to meet some friends to do a hike up the Volcan San Pedro!! There is the option to start hiking at 3 in the morning so that you can reach the top by sunrise! Hopefully we can get to San Pedro and get organized enough to do it on Saturday. It will be nice to stay in a hostel that has a kitchen because eating out for every meal is getting expensive and not very good for the belly. We have had every type of stomach ailment so far so when we get home there is nothing that will penetrate our bellies of steel! We went for curry at the restaurant voted best in San Marcos and the rice had a big bug in it and the chicken had bones and cartilage still in it! The chocolate and coffee here is amazing! We went for coffee earlier today at the Moonfish Cafe. The owner is an American who has lived here for 18 years and owns some property near Santiago(around the lake) and he grows his own beans and roasts them everyday...so you can imagine freshly roasted, freshly ground, freshly brewed coffee...yep, its fresh! I bought some chocolate from this little girl who was at the rocks today and paid way too much for it but she was so frickin cute that I couldn't help myself! Another interesting San Marcos tid bit is that there are 2 churches in town that hold a sing off at about 6 every night. They pick the worst singers in the entire congregation (usually a 10 year old kid) to sing one song for an entire hour over a huge megaphone perched atop the church roof of course!! Both churches do this and they try to out sing each other. This is what we refer to as ear plug study hour. ahh the joys of travel!