I live with 4 other students and we are lucky to have a wonderful house mother named Ana, who when she was little wanted to be a teacher. She makes us really good salty food, she eats with us each meal and is constantly yelling at us if we speak in English and corrects our Spanish. She is this tiny little woman, who is always smiling and singing. The 5 of us get along well and have a good time together. There is a woman from New York, Maggie a guy from Boston, Ryan a woman from Vancouver, Hayley and a guy from Japan,Taka. Everyone is really relaxed and although we are an interesting mix of personalities, there is balance in our personalities.
I live in the back house with Hayley and Taka. Yesterday before lunch, I told Taka and Hayley about my gift from Charlie. I then showed Taka my handy Lonely Planet Japanese Phrase book.....it took about 2 seconds before Taka was hysterical. As would be expected, Taka quickly went right to the romance section and began laughing. Hayley then, with a Spanish accent, began phonetically reading Japanese romance lines to Taka. The book, along with the three of us, then made it´s way to lunch, where we took turns reading a ridiculous romance line from the book with a bit of Spanish...no English allowed at meals.....it was hysterical....and it only got more hysterical once our house mother, stated she too could speak Japanese!! She then proceeded to say about 10 different things to Taka in Japanese...it was awesome.
I am truly enjoying school, my teacher´s name is Mayra and it has been really easy to learn from her and improve my Spanish. I definitely understand a lot more when I am listening and if I slow my mouth down a enough to let my brain catch up and I can also say a lot more.
I enjoy daily games of verbal charades. I play it daily with Mayra or with my Guatemalan Family. Today. Mayra and I were reviewing certain words. To get me to figure out the definition of a word, she told me a story. I understood the whole story but could not understand to save my life why she was telling me a whole long story about her dinner last night and what her dinner had to do with the word I was looking at. I completely cracked up laughing, I was crying I was laughing so hard...I eventually got with the program and figured it out.
Each meal in my house is like that too....if a single word is missed in a discussion or misunderstood the whole conversation dissolves into everyone trying their best to say something but no one is talking about the same thing...it has made for many very funny meals. Today at lunch, Hayley was trying to get Ana to tell her the word for a ¨bay¨ as it relates to water...Ryan tried to use the example of the ¨Bay of Pigs¨just to get Ana to say the word bay...you can only imagine the absurdity of what then took place and the looks on each person´s face as we tried to have this discussion...it´s like this everyday!
There is no shortage of things to do, places to get coffee while looking at one of the volcanos, food to eat or new people to be met. Classes are held outside in a beautiful garden with banana, avocado and other fruit trees. There is a break during class everyday and a food cart run by the cutest couple who sell tostadas with all sorts of goodies stacked on top, and chuchitos, small tamales, with the same sorts of goodies stacked on top for about 70 cents. Each afternoon school offers activities, I´ve been to a chocolate factory and a jade factory with school. I´ve also stayed out late for open mic night and all sorts of other carrying on......
Tonight we are all, about 12 people, going out to an Absinthe bar and tomorrow after class I am leaving for a weekend at Lago Atitilan, where I plan to waste Saturday away sitting in hammock studying my Spanish words......
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