Here I am in Guatemala

I am in Guatemala!! The flight was actually about 5 hours, and complete chaos with Guatemalans running around all over the place and ignoring all of the flight attendants' commands to sit down, even during taxi on the runway! When we finally started to decend from the clouds, we saw gigantic volcanos popping their green heads up to say good morning, some even had smoke coming out of them! We got near the runway and then suddenly did a loop de loop g-force turn that left my stomach in my eye sockets, and then suddenly started to climb. The Guatemalans put their hands up like a roller coaster and screamed, but we were looking at each other pretty certain that this wasn't normal. A few minutes later the pilot came on to tell us that he had to pull evasive maneuvers to avoid a flock of birds going through the engines. Great! Our second attempt at landing was much more successful, and we were finally on the ground. We scrambled through the airport (there were 8 of us from our group on the flight), got through customs without so much as a blink, got our luggage, and then waded through the receving line at the exit where we found our professor's niece and nephew with the hotel shuttle. Ten minutes later found us at the hotel and we finally met up with our professor and got our room assignments. The rooms are actually pretty nice, though the bathroom has sort of a florescent flickering disco light, we do have VH1 sort of in english on the tv. We had a traditional Guatemalan breakfast that consisted of eggs, meat (mine turned out to be brightly red colored ham that I didn't eat) and really yummy beans. Finally, we all retired to our beds and here I am now. We are getting ready to go out and go grocery shopping since we have kitchenettes in our suites, get some quetzales (local currency), and maybe take a drive around the city.