About this trip

After having a rather crappy year, I decided in Dec. 2007 that I wanted no more of these bad times and that from now on life was supposed to be fun again.

At an AFS-meeting in Karlsruhe in November I remembered a 16 year old dream of mine: ever since my AFS exchange year in Wilmington (Delaware, USA) I have been wanting to learn Spanish. Except for one class at an evening adult school I had never gotten around to it though. One AFS party (@ Anna's) later I had come up with a place where to take Spanish classes: Guatemala. On my way down there I would want to fly to Jamaica for one week and spend New Years 2008 on the Carribean Island together with my friend Valrie who lives there. On the way home (after about two months) I want be in the Philadelphia/Wilmington area for one week to meet my families and friends from the time when I lived in the U.S.

With my contract at the University ending in December, with my corporation out of business, with no love of a woman this appeared to be the perfect time to take off and relax, leave some things behind and fuel up my batteries again for whatever life may have to offer after this trip.

As this whole things was kind of a last minute plan, I booked the plane tickets only the Thursday before X-mas and left on Saturday before new years eve, just in time to get me onto the island and celebrate the new year at the "Jam Jam" reggae festival in Clarendon (http://www.dancehalljamjam.net/). As one would expect from a reggae festival, I started the new year off with a Red Stripe an high grade in my hands. 2008 has already started to be better than 2007...