my friend Ross had been to San Pedro before, and recommended it'd be a beautiful place to study, so off i went... and was he ever right!
the couple days before leaving for Guatemala from Costa Rica, i was lose-sleep-at-night anxious about arriving in Guatemala by myself (with minimal Spanish), and from the Guatemala City airport making the 5 hour journey - as Ross explained - "just get on a bus to Antigua, find another bus headed for Panajchel, get there and walk across that town to the boat dock, and take a ferry across the lake to San Pedro before dark" - it'll cost you $5!! i can NOW say that is easy-peasy (and you can even skip the boat and go the whole way by shuttle bus from Antigua), but maybe 18 hours or so before i was scheduled to land in Guatemala City, i called the Cooperativa Spanish School and asked if i could take them up on their offer to pick me up at the airport for $120 - for peace of mind of getting picked up at the airport and getting dropped off at the door of my next home, pretty pretty pleeeeeease just come get me!
i was sooo anxious and tired of traveling alone (i'd also moved in Costa Rica just a month before after my roommate left CR, and we'd only moved a few months together before that, so i was getting pretty tired of upping-and-going) so i *almost* didn't even want to go anymore... but was i ever glad i did!
i was exhausted from last-minute everything in Costa Rica and then an early wake-up to get to the airport, so when i arrived in Guatemala that morning i pretty much gratefully saw a guy holding a piece of paper with "Rainbow Choi" on it, stepped into his car, promptly fell asleep.
i opened my eyes just as we were coming over a mountainy overpass and the view opened up to the most beautiful giant sparking blue lake surrounded by sierra mountains and volcanoes and lush greenery i'd ever seen. and this was where i would call "home" for the next couple weeks. :)
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