New Home

We have finally moved into our new home. It´s part of a spanish school not unlike the one T and I are studying in. It´s one of those old falling-down Xela houses that has an enormous sunny courtyard, and cloisterlike corridors around the edge, where the rooms are situated. It´s really lovely. Yesterday, as we struggled across town, weighed down with our luggage, plus all the guatemalan fabrics we have now acquired I suddenly felt distressed. I hadn´t thought for a moment that I would feel regretful at leaving the host family, but I suppose it was easy, comfortable, a safety net. Here we have to look after ourselves. Our next step along the road that we have planned to take.

This morning, however, I feel much nicer, and settled already (I think the more often you move house, the less time it takes you to settle in), I love the yellow painted walls, the guatemalan fabric wall hangings, and the sunny courtyard where flowers grow all year round. Less cool is the back of a pizza delivery place right outside my window, with motorbikes nipping in and out all day. Still, nothing is *totally* perfect.

Amusingly, the landlord here plays the panpipes (really big ones, almost as big as he is!) and last night we were treated to the incongruity of á breathy rendition of ´we wish you a merry christmas´ rasping along the red tiled corridors, cooling after being baked by the hot sun of the afternoon.

I nearly bought a flute yesterday. 1500 quetzales (12 Q to the pound). It was a close thing. It would have meant we couldnt eat for 2 weeks, but it was almost worth it. I wish I´d bought mine with me. How I mocked T for bringing his clarinet (which he hasn´t played!!!!), but now I must eat my words. I guess the obvious thing is for me to learn to play the clarinet!

The president visited Xela on Thursday. I heard helicopters in the sky (which you never hear in Xela), and sure enough he was doing some economic thingie in the square. The amount of military presence was pretty offputting, and you couldn´t walk more than a few paces without bumping into a small bundle of kaki-clad muscle, with a very large gun. Disconcertingly, these guys were actually pointing them, as opposed to the guys at the bank, who wear them carelessly slung around their shoulders like a fashion accessory. Still, Berger has gone now. Back to his business of trying to weave the tatters of this country´s political system into some sort of fabric.

Enough for today. The sun is shining, and it´s almost time for sunday lunch!

Looking down into the crater of (now extinct!) Tajumulco. Our descent was along the rim of the crater! 

sunrise looking north into Mexico from Tajumulco. The shadow of Tajumulco can be seen on the sky behind the mountain pictured. 

Sunset over a sea of clouds 

Tajumulco

We have returned safely from our biggest adventure yet - climbing the highest mountain in Central America. An extinct volcano called Tajumulco, at 4220m.

Our adventure started at 4.30 on Saturday morning, when we met with the other trekkers at Casa Argentina, a youth hostel nearby that also houses Quetzaltrekkers - the trekking organisation I´ve mentioned here before. At about 5am, our pickup arrived. On hearing the word pick up, I pictured a minibus of some description, to take all 15 of us to our destination. I was wrong. An open backed pick up truck arrived, and 15 of us, plus 15 overloaded backpacks were stuffed in the back. It´s yet another of those things that would be utterly illegal in the UK, yet you see here all the time. It was freezing cold, but fortunately I was in the centre of the huddle of people, hanging on for dear life, and listening to the sound of the exhaust system dragging along the cobbled streets.

20 minutes later we were spat out at Minerva bus station. My guidebook says that this isn´t a place to hang around at night, and it wasn´t much better at half five in the morning either. There were groups of people standing around fires made out of litter, much like you see on american post-apocalyptic television programmes, However, these people were our bus drivers (apart from the one with the pump action shot gun - I don´t know who he was).

At about 6 we climbed onto the chicken bus (luggage on the roof) and set off for the mountains. We stopped to change to another chicken bus about an hour and a half later, and then began to climb in earnest. This bus was even older than most of the others, and chugged along at about 10mph for the entire 2 hour journey, spewing out enormous clouds of black smoke as it did so. After about an hour and a half, the road ended, and was replaced by a rough dirt track, with pot holes that had the bus kiltering from side to side. The driver carried on regardless, whilst subjecting his passengers to bizarre 1920´s accordion music at full volume. A bizarre spectacle. Finally we dismounted, feeling rather nauseous for several reasons.

We started to climb at about 11am, and I was horrified at how bad I was. Either I have become extrordinarily unfit, or the altitude was having a terrible effect on me. I could only climb about 20 paces before having to stop and let my heart return to normal, and to stop panting. So it was for the 6 hour climb and scramble to our base camp, with a worsening headache and a growing unease that I might not be able to complete this.

We set up camp (3800m), and the trekking guides kindly cooked our meal, whilst I slumped by the fire, feeling increasingly ill - continually checking with others at what point altitude sickness becomes dangerous (it{s when you start coughing up pink bloody frothy stuff from your lungs, if anyone´s interested!). Credit also to the people who managed to get a fire going with only about 1% oxygen in the air! Fortunately I wasn´t alone - about half of the group had some symptoms of altitude sickness.

Without my backpack, I was able to drag myself up a lower peak (4000m) to watch the sun set. Apparently it´s a good plan to go up to a higher altitude to the one you intend to sleep at, in order to acclimatise better. We watched the sun set over a sea of clouds a long, long way below us.

I climbed into my 2 sleeping bags and every item of clothing I own at about 8pm, with the bright light of the moon shining through the tent. We slept fitfully, some of us shivvering in our too-thin sleeping bags (but not T and I!) until 4am, when our guides woke us up. The plan was to climb Tajumulco in the dark and get to the top in time for the sunrise. I I have never climbed a mountain in the dark before, and this was a pretty tough climb. I had acclimatised overnight, and didn´t have a headache anymore, which was wonderful! Still, the thin air meant that it was a pretty slow going affair. It struck me that had I been climbing the mountain in the daylight, I may have been quite scared by being able to see the cliffs to my right hand side, or the difficulty of the climb ahead. The illumination of only the ground immediately in front of me by my torch meant that all I could think about was exactly what was going on at that particular moment. It wasn´t really possible to worry about what was ahead.

There´s a lesson for life in there somewhere.

We all managed to heave ourselves up onto the top of the mountain by 6am, and gathered on the east side to watch the sun rise. I realised once again why it is that people climb mountians. There is something so completely indescribable about the beauty and the magic. We watched the sun rise over the santa maria mountain range, turned north to look to the mountains of Mexico, and just as we were about to descend, we saw the active volcano Santaguita erupt an enormous cloud of ash high into the sky!

We descended by walking around the arrete rim of the crater, which was really exciting, and then in no time at all we were back at our base camp for a fabulous breakfast.

***

A lovely man at this internet cafe has downloaded my photos from the camera to a CD, I´m just one step (finding a computer with a CD ROM drive) away from uploading some photos!

haggling, an appartment, and a mountain trek

Another internet cafe, another keyboard, and another set of limitations on the punctuation I can use!

It's another gorgeous day in Xela, and it has been one of more new experiences. This morning we went, with our Spanish teachers to the market at San Francisco El Alto. It was completely unlike any other market I have ever seen. First of all, it wasn't just a market place, but a whole town (incidentally, the highest in Guatemala at 2600m). Imagine every single street of a town crammed with market stalls, people sitting on the pavements outside their homes selling everything you could possibly imagine, from enormous rolls to fleecy fabric, to kitchen scourers, pigs, chickens (alive or dead), scissors, belts, fabulous fabrics, and carcases of creatures I have never seen before in my life.

There was a man with a microphone and 2 'things' on a table in front of him. An interested/horrified crowd gathered around as he extolled the virtues of these creatures, and all the foods that could be created from them. They were dead (thankfully - I think), and looked like some prehistoric creature that might have been dragged up from the bottom of Loch Ness. Honestly! It had like a sort of beaky face, with wings/fins, and covered in a dark brown leathery skin. It was about 2 ft in length. Clearly no-one had seen one before. God only knows where this bloke had got them from. T wondered if they were some creature previously unknown to science.

Possibly we have just witnessed the last 2 specimens, and now they are extinct.

I also had my first try at haggling. This is such an alien thing to me, I felt like I was pulling at my cultural leash and really doing something utterly wrong. My guidebook tells me that the first price the vendor asks for is 2 or 3 times what they expect to get for it. But when this initial price seems really cheap anyway, haggling seems utterly immoral. Yet at the same time, you don't want to feel like a ridiculously rich foreigner splashing their money everywhere, so you are forced to give it a go.

I had my eye on a really beautiful piece of fabric in the traditional style, and asked her how much it was. 40 Quetzales (about 3 pounds fifty), I pretended to be thoughtful, and offered her 15. Her reply was swift, 30 'es muy bonita' (I know, I know!!!), then I offer 20, and she sticks at 30. I stick at 20, and we go on like this for a bit. I'm a bit confused. Does she really want 30? Am I insulting her with my offer of 20 quetzales. Eventually, I cave in and offer 25, which she accepts readily. Hmmm. I'm sure that an experienced haggler would tell me that the point that you get stuck is the point at which you walk away, and that's when she accepts your offer. Oh well. Despite it feeling odd and wrong, I did feel a rush of excitement after having completed my purchase, even though I'm sure she got a better deal than me.

T and I have found somewhere else to live! Well, at least I hope so. We handed over a Q200 deposit this morning to a guy with a long ponytail and a big grin. It's a room at one of the other spanish schools, and we have a kitchen to use (hooooray!), bathroom, lounge, and courtyard. There are 4 other rented rooms there, which will meet my need to be living near other people. Plus it's a language school, so there will be people milling around there in the day. We will move in (i.e. pack our few posessions back into the small backpacks we brought with us, and walk over there and empty them onto the bed) on the 27th Nov. This feels quite exciting, like we are beginning to get established. The rent is 60 quid a month for both of us, which we can't complain about. The houses in Guatemala are really cool. From outside they look very small, falling down, peeling paint, many of them with second storeys yet to be completed. You open the front door (often like a big metal set of garage doors) and walk into a hall area. From here you walk out into a courtyard. The rest of the house is laid out around the courtyard. Many of the houses here are shared by travellers, so you have a kind of motel effect, each person having their own room that faces on one side onto the street, and the other into the courtyard. It's really lovely. The courtyard is really sunny a lovely in the day, and is where everyone washes and dries their clothes. A nice, communal feel. Our new home is just off the central square in Xela, and close to our favourite cafes.

This weekend, we are hoping to go on one of the Quetzaltrekkers treks - climbing the highest mountain in Central America - 4200m. If there is a space for us, we will leave at 4.30 tomorrow morning, and return on Sunday afternoon. I'm slightly concerned about hypothermia camping at 4000m, and my sleeping bag is rubbish, but there, I'll have to see. Maybe I'll just sit up next to the campfire all night.

Guatemala mourns

My brief flirtation with football is over. Guatemala were stuffed (is this the correct footballing terminology) by Canada last night, and their brief chance of entering the world cup has fallen by the wayside, as has my interest in the sport.

This morning I felt homesick. It was fleeting, but very poignant. Ísn´t it strange the things you miss when you´re away. I had a burning desire to breathe in the clean air of Leeds (and no, I´m not being sarcastic!!!) have a bacon sandwich in cafe 41, and just generally loll around in my house.

Learning a language is a hideous undertaking. I think I undertook this lightly, thinking that it would be pretty straightforward to have a reasonable command of the language in six months. Ha ha. I´ll be lucky if I can even introduce myself! Still, I will soldier on. Studying for 6 hours a day must be doing me some good, surely...

What other news do I have. The first is that this keyboard doesn´t seem to have any question marks, so my questions will appear as statements. The other is that last night T and I went to a Quetzaltrekkers benefit dinner. This magnificent organisation was set up 9 years ago by an English social worker, who helped out at Escuela de la Calle (school for street children in a poor district of Quetzaltenango) and was horrified at how underfunded it was. He set up Quetzaltrekkers, an outfit that runs treks into the nearby mountains and volcanoes and uses the money to fund the school. It also runs things like this benefit dinner, which drew in about 150 people - pretty much all of us English speaking, language students and volunteers most of them American.

I must withdraw any previous comments I have made about Americans. EVery single one I have met since being here (and I´ve met quite a lot) are suitably horrified about the results of the recent election, and one even said that she doesn´t want to go back there whilst G is in power. She has taken a permanent job here in Xela! So there I am, lots of Americans are cool!

There´s not much else to report today, T and I are beginning to look for an apartment or similar that we can call home. It seems slightly daunting, particularly in view of my poor spanish. However, there´s a glimmer of hope inasfaras one of the language schools (complete with sympathetic, english speaking owner) seems to have lots of houses and apartments to rent out at reasonable rates. We are going to see what they have in a moment.

Another reason that I am keen to move out of my host family, lovely as it is, is that I can´t quite cope with the fact that there is a live-in maid there. She belongs is one of the indigenous people here who are generally treated badly. Although I can´t really say that she is treated badly at our home, I still feel uncomfortable about it. We have been there over a week now, and she has worked from 6 in the morning until after we have gone to bed every single day. She also has a small child. Although the maid thing seems to be a pretty normal part of life here, and I should be working at accepting the culture, there are some things that will always feel wrong to me.

Guatemla gripped by mania

Now, those of you that know me, will also know that I am nowhere near what could be described as a football fan. Not a little bit, not even a micro scrap of interest in that hideous game hides within me. However, here all is different. Tonight Guatemala plays Canada at football. And if they win, it will be the first time in the whole of history that Guatemala will ever have qualified for the world cup. My interest in the game feels somewhat maternal, like a devoted mother watching her child play every Saturday. I have developed a fondness for this crazy country, and want her to do well.

Not having any knowledge of football I don´t know at all what kind of competition Canada will put up. All around Xela screens are being erected, and the game will even be shown at the cinema. I am interested to see what the atmosphere in the streets will be like after the game, and how it will compare to back home. One of the things that makes me hate football so much is the ramifications of the score on how safe the city centres are, and sometimes, to be honest I feel that win or lose, Saturday night in Leeds is not the place to be after a big game.

Tonight I´m going to a benefit dinner at Quetzaltrekkers, the organisation I am planning to work for when I finish my studies. So when I come home I will see what the atmosphere is like on the streets! Quetzaltrekkers run hikes around the Guatemalan highlands and use the money they make to fund escuela de la calle - a school for street children. At the moment in Guatemala it is the Summer holidays! All the children have November and December off school, which is another reason why I can´t start working until after Christmas. Yesterday however, I went to one of the local orphanages to play with the children and generally have fun. Another new experience to add to my many - reading a story book to loads of wide-eyed children without having a clue what I was reading about!!! It was quite surreal.

Orphanages are quite common here as there is no social care system as such that would organise things such as adoptions or foster care. The orphanages are set up instead by altruistic individuals, or church groups. This orphanage was a small house on the outskirts of Xela, down a dirt track. It was home to 18 children and 2 staff. Where they all slept I couldn´t fathom. It was quite a moving experience, and I know it will sound corny, but they were the grooviest, happiest kids I have seen in a long time. There is so much potential for that place. Just an hour or 2 spent planning some activities, and preparing some materials would work wonders. And I guess that´s exactly what the volunteers that go there do. I hope to go there again, and be slightly more useful next week.

Well, yoga, Quetzaltrekkers, and the football all await this evening. I will report again soon!

oooo! I just trotted out of my yoga class and bumped into a man with a pump-action shotgun.

I.m even beginning to get used to the sight of them. I counted four men with guns in the bank today, all smiling at me with golden teeth. Most surreal. It seems that in Quetzaltenango, the men with the pumpaction shotguns are the good guys!!!

I can feel my life here beginning to settle into something of a rythm. Spanish class from 8 in the morning, till 1 in the afternoon, then home for lunch and a siesta, and then out to our favourite cafe to do our homework, with yoga at 5 or (yet to be experienced, but awaiting with much enthusiasm) salsa class at 6. Woo hoo! I am going to be a salsa queen when I get back to the UK.

I promised a description of Quetzaltenango, and I am still scratching my head wondering how best to do it justice. I am pleased to report however, that I have seen a place that offers to put piccies from your digital camera onto a CD, and I think that from there, I should be able to put them on here. Quetzaltenango (Xela) is quite a strange mix of the modern, and the very, very old. All the cars here are the very same ones I saw on cop shows in the 70s when I was a small child! They are here! belching out smoke, burning oil, and generally making me feel ill! All of the buildings are literally falling down, there is a kind of colonial splendour that has been eaten away. There are magnificent arcades with piles of rubble in the corner, and beautiful buildings with no roofs, and trees growing out of the windows. The streets are very narrow, and the houses small and squat, with stone floors and no central heating. Everything is really basic, and yet it has a kind of beauty that I have a feeling will grow to take a strong hold on me. The whole city sprawls like an enormous multi-coloured shanty town among the volcanoes and forested mountains. Each day dawns the same - a cloudless azure sky, with a sun hotter than I expected.

This is a place of 2 cultures living alonside one another, and somehow worlds apart. There are those that are descended from the Spanish invadors, and those with indigenous descent. Tragically, all of the people that you see begging, struggling around with missing limbs, or squatting in the market place selling magnificent woven handicrafts for a few quetzales belong to the latter group - testament to the continuing oppression of this cultural population.

Street scene, Xela.

Illness

This post will be really short as I am knocking on deaths door. Yes, the excesses of perhaps a few too many cervezas last night, the time difference, the altitude, and the pollution (will I ever get used to inhaling vapourised oil?) have all combined to produce a rather ill Hilary.

T and I have spent most of the day sleeping, with one foray out to find some painkillers, and another, with some American pals to a place called the Alcemista, a fabulous cafe high on the hillside of Quetzaltenango with astonishing views of the city nestling among a circle of enormous mountains. If I had been anywhere near conscious, it would have been quite nice!

Anyway, my sick bed calls. More when I recover.

A Guatemalan chicken bus. Bags are stored on the roof, whilst inside it's 3 of 4 to a seat.

The bus ride to Quetzaltenango

We did it! Still, alive, in one piece, and enjoying the Quetzaltenango, which is like no other place on earth I have ever seen! I will save descriptions for my next entry however, as I have so much to tell you about our journey yesterday!

We travelled 'first class', not by any choice of ours, just by chance the bus terminal at which we got dropped off at. The first class bus was about 35 years old, but looked quite comfy, and we were quite relieved that our bags were put inside the boot rather than on the roof. The ticket inspector was a cross eyed soldier with a pump action shot gun (surely not a good combination?). And we boarded with not a little trepidation.

So many things happened on the journey that I haven't seen before! First of all, once the bus left the city, the driver and his pal in the front seat would look at the side of the road for anyone who looked remotely like they might be waiting for a bus. If he saw anyone, he would pull on a toilet chain horn, and his pal would wave out of the window. Anyone that waved back, he would stop for. This is cool. I wish they did this in Leeds, where you're lucky if the driver even stops at a bus stop!

At some points, I felt like I was on a white-knuckle ride. Especially when the driver decided to overtake another vehicle. It seems that the rules for overtaking on the interamericana are:

1. wait until there is a blind bend approaching
2. pull up, centimetres from the vehicle in front
3. slam into low gear
4. swing out, narrowly missing the rear of the vehicle in front, whilst pulling on the toilet chain horn
5. greet the driver of the other vehicle as you pass with much waving
6. notice the large vehicle approaching you at high speed
7. pull back in without signalling.

All of this, and there was no evidence of road rage. People seem to wave, grin, hang out of doors/windows to greet one another. It's ace.

There are food stalls all along the sides of the interamericana highway, along which we were driving. At random points, the driver pulls up, opens the door, and in a second the previously quite bus is transformed into a bustling market place. About 15 traders pile onto the bus, each shouting and waving their wares under your nose. It's ace! We bought sandwiches, and an additional unknown edible item each, for Q20 (less than 2 quid). Other amusing things that I have never seen before include:

* a man riding on top of a coach
* someone painting the white lines in the middle of the road, with a small paintbrush, whilst traffic roars past, centimetres from his fingers
* all traffic producing thick black clouds of smoke that completely engulfed our windscreen rendering us utterly blind - just like in scooby doo!
* women bent almost double, carrying enormous loads of wood on their backs
* flagrant disregard for the rules of the road (or maybe there just aren't any)
* a horse riding in the back of a pick up truck

We are safely installed with our host family - more about that in another entry. The house is lovely, there are 2 cute children, who are teaching us spanish, and a mysterious cat, what we hear but don't see. Tomorrow, we have our first spanish lesson, which I'm really excited about. I really hope that I can become fluent during our stay here. I also hope that I can put some pictures up here soon to show you what this small city looks like. Imagine Mexico 100 years ago, but add loads of very old cars and vans, belching out fumes that I've never smelt before (what *do* they run these cars on?), and you have this city. Still, I said I will describe it more in another entry, so I shall sign off here.

Guatemala City

Well, we have arrived safely in Guatemala city - although haven{t really seen anything of it yet.

Despite my many complaints to all that would listen about our flight going through Miami when I paid more for it not to - it didnt. We flew straight from Madrid to Guatemala. An 11 hour flight that had me so completely and utterly confused about what time it was where, how long we had to go, and what time it would be when we got there, I completely gave up. I now have no idea what time it is anywhere else in the world, and it will probably stay that way, at least for a few more days.

The best thing about waking up in this hostel (dos Lunas - right by the airport, we even got met in a windows-blacked-out car by a nice man called Victor) is listening to the dawn chorus, and not recognising a single sound. I am intrigued to find out what kind of creatures are making those noises outside my window. They sound so exotic and exciting. The weather here is warm, and as I type (7am) the sky is cloudless and the sun is shining. It looks like it{s going to be a really lovely day. From what little I saw of Guatemala City last night in the car, it really does look different. How to describe it? I{m not sure. Lots of low buildings crouching by the road, beautiful trees swaying in the evening sunlight, but also lots of razor wire, indicating that people like to retreat into their fortresses. Indeed, this hostel comes with strict instructions about keeping the gate to the street locked. Nevertheless, there{s something about the place that feels good. I almost wish that we had made some time for a quick exploration of Guatemala City itself - today Victor will drop us at the bus station, and we{ll be off. Still, perhaps we will look around this City in a few months time when our Spanish is great, and we{re feeling generally more confident.

Actually, today is the day I have been dreading for months. We must take a bus from here to the city where we plan to stay for the next 6 months. The journey can be a bit risky, with several buses getting held up by armed robbers, stepping onto the bus to relieve travellers of their valuables in a Robin Hood manner. I am less optimisic about the altruism of those involved here however. Still, there really isn{t any other option (other than hiring a helicopter) to get there, so I will put my faith in my angels and hope that it will all go ok.

I promise that for my next post, I shall work out how to use an apostrophe instead of an {!!!!

El Madrid

Today has been quite an emotional rollercoster! I woke up with a feeling of dread, and wondering why I am setting off for Guatemala, when the rest of Leeds is going about their normal Monday morning lives. Still, my housemates were so excited for me, constantly telling me how envious they are, so that made me feel a little better.

So today I have travelled just as far as Madrid, and we´re staying in a hostel in the Chueco district. This place is really lovely, and I really want to return in the future. It feels very studenty and groovy, with loads of cafes, cervezarias, and even a juice bar, complete with lovely man who rescued us from a fate of wandering around Madrid for the whole night looking for our hostel.

I am still suffering terrible withdrawl pangs from not having my mobile phone :o(. Which reminds me, why is it that when you are have had a few too many cervezas (as at my party on Saturday night), you have a desire to text message everyone in the world? I can only hazard guesses at what I might have written to these poor unsuspecting chums by deciphering their responses the next day!

Tomorrow we fly from Madrid at around midday, which should give us time to spend our remaining 11 euros here in Chuec0 on breakfast (and juice from the lovely man in the lovely juice bar!). T has come down with the worst cold ever (imported from Sweden I believe, by G, a friend and party guest on Saturday), and is already in bed. We are sated and happy as we found a fab Thai restaurant literally next door. Our flight will be 7 hours to Miami, and then 3 hours to Guatemala city. I anticipate a very sneezy T, and us both collapsing into our bed for the night. Still, one step at a time!...

Incidentally, if you´re looking for budget accommodation in Madrid, this is the place to come. It´s called hospeja dolce vita, calle san Bartoleme, Chueco, Madrid. It´s fab.

The morning after :o(

Well, I haven't had a hangover like this one for quite a while. Last night was our leaving party, and it was great that so many people were able to drop in. It started at 2pm and finished at half 2 this morning. Wow! I'm quite proud of myself. I thought that such partying stamina had finished with my student days! .

When I see how worried those that care about me are, it feels as though going away is a selfish extravagance that just makes people feel worried and miserable. What can I do to make them feel better? I don't know. Just take care and stay in touch I suppose, and accept that they are worried, and they are allowed to be. And hope that they will forgive me for making them feel this way! :o(

Yes, today feels very strange, the house eerily empty, and transforming, because it belongs to S and K now.

I am quite surprised that I haven't had my recurring missing passport dream at all in these preparations. It's a dream that I have had pretty regularly over the past 10 years. I'm at the airport, just about to go through passport control, and I realise that I haven't got my passport, and that all my plans are ruined for the want of a small book of paper pages with a hideous photo of self in the back. I must remember to take it with me tomorrow .