January 12

Here’s how my days usually go:

• From 8-12 we have Spanish class at my house on the patio (each week we switch houses). The other four students who live in Ciudad Vieja as well as our teacher come Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to discuss different things about Guatemala (school system, religion, family life, etc.) in Spanish. We get off topic a lot though! Then we go home for lunch from 12-1. After that, we usually meet in the park to get to know the city a little more. The first day we talked about the church, which was built in 1527 and was the first cathedral in Guatemala (this was also the first Spanish capital of Central America before they moved to Antigua). Today we went to visit the municipality and got to meet the mayor and talked about plans for our ecotourism project during training in Ciudad Vieja.
• On Tuesdays we take one of the camionetas or chicken buses to the Peace Corps office in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas for medical, safety, and development training as well as technical training with our program, and for vaccines. These first couple of Saturdays we will also have Spanish class.
• Usually we are done with our day by 5, and I try not to stay out too long cause it gets dark around 6 and even though Ciudad Vieja is not particularly dangerous, it’s just better to be home by dark.

Spanish is spoken pretty much all day so I get a lot of practice, but it’s frustrating because I feel like I’m not improving very much. But that will change!

Chofi got a haircut today so she looks a lot different! She used to be a little shaggy dog but now she looks like a miniature poodle!

Also I had my first aguacate from the coffee plantation that Don Hugo’s family owns and it was so delicious! It’s avocado season so they are cutting some to sell. The food here is really good as well, but again, I think I’m really spoiled with this family. We even have peanut butter in my house! But most of the time we have traditional food, like scrambled tomatoes and eggs with beans and tortillas, tostadas with guacamole or frijoles, some kind of vegetable soup, tamales, or crepes. Fernanda is a very good cook so she helps Chiqui a lot with the cooking. We drink coffee with almost every meal, but it is instant and I think it is decaf. There is also sweet bread with every meal to dip in the coffee.

My family is very resourceful when it comes to earning money- besides getting money from working on the finca and driving kids to and from school, they also sell aguacates right from their door, they sell homemade popsicles from the house, Chiqui sells Tupperware, and Don Hugo sometimes takes tourists in his van to the volcanos. They are very busy! And they also host students from Canada from the language school in Antigua. I am the first Peace Corps person they have hosted.

Everywhere is really noisy, no matter what time of day. There are always dogs barking, fireworks going off, people playing basketball, camionetas going by, or radios blasting. Lucky for me, I sleep really soundly haha so it doesn’t bother me at all. Today I also saw my first marimba and met the music teacher here. Apparently famous marimba bands (I guess that’s what they are called) live here but travel the country a lot. When I have more free time and when I can understand more, Im going to try to take a lesson.