We’ve been in Guatemala for three full days now. It's been a challenging few days but good overall.
It's frustrating that we can’t communicate very easily with people. Being very social people, we feel trapped inside brains that can’t make sense of everyone else’s words or find the words to tell people what we're thinking. AHHHHHH!
Making arrangements or trying to figure out anything new is a laborious and frustrating task. We also have a lot of uncertainty as we learn basic day to day living.
We've been walking the city quite a bit, just to get to know each street, businesses etc. It is a little annoying when we walk, we are regularly approached by people selling handcrafts. They are lovely but we just don’t buy a lot of extra stuff so we are constantly turning down some pretty persistent people.
But at last, day by day, hour by hour we are figuring out how to live comfortably in Antigua, Guatemala.
Now for the good stuff. The family we are living with is absolutely fantastic. Reina, the lady of the house, is a sort of grandmotherly figure. She spoils us like crazy by attending to our every need. She also happens to be a wonderful cook. She lives two doors down from us and we simply walk over and join her for three meals per day. Reina's daughter, Claudia, watches Harold everyday when we are at class. Claudia has a boy, Diego, who's just a few months younger than Harold. They have lots of fun together. Did I mention we have our own apartment? Unheard of! It is small and very basic but more than adequate for the next three weeks.
We have had our first day of class, which went very well. The tutors are patient and do a great job of making us feel comfortable and not too much like idiots.
Here’s our typical day.
6:00 a.m. -- wake up (it's hard not to wake up since the church bells ring like mad from 6 - 6:30 a.m.)
7:00 a.m. --breakfast with the family
7:45 a.m. --leave Harold with family, go to class
8:00 – 12:00 -- one on one Spanish tutoring
12:00 – 1:00 – rest up for lunch
1:00 p.m. lunch with the family
2:00 p.m. siesta (Harold's nap)
3:30 p.m. walk around town and do one or more of the following:
drink coffee
sit in the park
eat a snack from a street vendor
shop
do homework / review lessons from a.m.
take a tour near or in the city
7:00 p.m. Dinner with family
9:00 p.m. Go to bed
Pretty intense huh? Or not. Is it possible to be totally relaxed but stressed out at the same time? That’s about how we feel now.
We’re feeling the growing pains of learning a new language but we're glad we are here.
--AnnMarie
The teachers are wonderful and have a very systematic and effective method of teaching Spanish. They don’t speak much English during the lesson, the explanations are done in Spanish. At first it’s overwhelming but, amazingly, you do catch on by the second or third day. We still feel pretty at a loss for words but certainly know a ton more Spanish than when we started.
