Monday, May 4, 2009

School’s in.


I am a geek. I love school and learning and all that stuff. I know, I know, what can I say. So you can guess, how excited I was about starting classes. But before that fun could begin I had better get some work done. Yes, that’s right – this blog. So I spent the day at a nice hostel around the corner using their wifi and managed to get a week’s worth of photos uploaded and postings up and which was enough for one day. Of course, spending so much time at the nice hostel made our attic room at the Spanish school look like something from Flowers in the Attic. Adrian replied that for $5 per night our room was good enough and clean enough and it had a kitchen. I suppose.

So off we went to get groceries to put that kitchen to use. Unfortunately the closest grocery store had a rather limited selection. I guess most people buy their fresh goods at the market but after hearing so many tales of amoebas and other unpleasantness we decided to skip the market and loaded up on breakfast and lunch stuff. At least we’ll cut down our eating out to just dinner. And tonight it was Indian food (yes Indian food in Guatemala) which was enough to put me in a food coma despite the crappy room, and chilly night (that’s right it was quite cold in Xela).

Good thing I went to bed early because I got up early and had a shower only to be greeting as I was walking out with my hair in a towel by my Spanish teacher, Karina. Gulp, classes started at 8am. Good of the school to let us know some of these important details. I excused myself for a moment and then ran up the stairs to wake Adrian.

Then it was to work. We started with a test and I did well. Yay, a gold star. But Karina took this as a cue to speak nothing but Spanish with me. And worse yet, forcing me to speak Spanish too. And to make it worse I could hear Adrian speaking in English to his teacher in the other room – no fair. Yikes this is going to be a long 5 hours.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. And the five hours were full but when class ended at 1, I already felt like I had learned so much.

As we made lunch, we met some of the other folks staying at the school. There was a Dutch and Estonian couple who were here for a month while she learned Spanish and he wrote his dissertation. An American pediatrician about to start a volunteer stint but first trying to learn some Spanish. And another guy from Rochester, who was just finishing up three weeks of advanced study. It will be nice to see the same faces for a little while - maybe I'll even manage to get their names.

It would have been nicer to go out and put some of our Spanish to practice but Adrian was taking his lessons very seriously spent the entire afternoon doing his homework. I hope some of it sticks - maybe then he’ll be able to order his own food or at least read the menu. A girl can dream can’t she?

Then the power went out and not just in Xela but the whole country once again. It was soon dark and after two hours it didn’t look like the power was going to come on soon. So all of us struggled to make dinner in the kitchen using one candle and my headlamp. Of course once we were all done, the power came back on. Seeing what we had managed to make with no light was scary but we all did all right. I hope our classes turn out just as well.

3 comments:

cheryl said...

what? no pics of you guys making dinner by headlamp? boo!

Ayngelina said...

hmm headlamp eh? so you're making use of it?

liz and adrian said...

pictures? it was pitch black and the flash kinda woulda spoilt the effect. I don't have a lot of pictures from school sorry.

and yes the headlight is a must purchase or better yet Douglas in Rio Dulce had a wind up powered LED flashlight. no batteries required was small and with one charge it lasted quite long. i'd look into that.