Muy bien, graçias

Wow, what a day! First, i must apologize for no pictures today. For some reason the card reader i´m using with my digital camera isn´t working. i´m not sure if it´s the card, the reader, or the computer, but i´ll try again later.

Lots to write, so I´ll just jump right in.

Guatemala City: I didn´t see much of the city, just what I saw from the taxi as we drove out of town. My impression was a very large, crowded, dirty city. Lots of cinder blocks and corrugated tin roofs. And many cars and trucks in desperate need of a catalytic converter. I´m certainly not a car expert, but I do know that cars should NOT be billowing black smoke that smells like a tire factory. blech! Also, many large guns in sight, in the arms of very civilian looking guards guarding pretty much everything. i´m glad i took the advice to get out of the city ASAP.

Antigua on the other hand is charming. I can´t wait to post a few pictures, it´s really lovely. Ruins of churches everywhere, mostly unrestored, but very beautiful. I´d heard the city was very touristy (it´s the most visited place in Guatemala) but I was happily surprised that it´s not too bad compared to some places i´ve travelled. Yes there are a few tourists here and there, but apparently it´s the low season now, and there are certainly lots and lots of locals around to practice my spanish with.

I got into town yesterday afternoon with my Isreali friends from the airport, and we wandered around town a bit and had some lunch. Of course I had to dive right in with the authentic food, and ordered "tacos tradicional" and got something not remotely like what we call tacos. But still very tasty.

I looked around for a spanish school that seemed decent and was pretty cheap, and found a really nice one with the best hostel in town right across the street. So I signed up for 5 days of classes with a homestay that started today.

Last night I went for supper with some folks from the hostel, got some good advice about travelling in the country and spanish school. One of the girls was from kingston ontario and was clearly homesick, because she kept directing the conversation back to her home town. She was happy to have a former Queen´s student to reminisce with.

Today I woke up at 7, did a little exploring, and made it to the spanish school for an 8 am start. My teacher is named Sara, and she´s really awesome. Does not speak a WORD of english (like most of the people here, surprisingly considering it´s such a tourist destination). But I like that she doesn´t speak English, because it forces me to stumble through.

I feel like I´ve learned SO much spanish in only the first day. And the classes are amazing. We sat in a very nice courtyard full of plants and flowers. At one point in the lesson I was explaining that I really wanted to learn all the names for all the food (typical me) and right in the middle of going through a vocabulary list, Sara asked me if I wanted to go the market and learn them there. So we just jumped up and spent the next hour wandering around a supermarket and the big marketplace talking about food and other things to buy there. Everyone should learn languages in an environment like this!

I saw a huge crowd of people gathered around a truck, and asked what it was. Sara brought me over there, and it was this hilarious man selling "natural remedies" in a completely over the top way. I couldn´t understand much of what he was saying, but almost everyone in the crowd was throwing money his way, so he was obviously pretty convincing. He had a big snake squirming around in a bag, but I didn´t stick around to find out what he was going to do with that (hopefully not demonstrate the curative power of his pills on snakebite).

After class a woman picked me up to take me to "mia familia" about 10 minutes away. They showed me my very clean room, introduced me to their 2 chihuahuas, and fed me a much needed lunch that was very tasty. I sat and talked to the Senora for about 30 minutes in Spanish, since the only English words she knew were "greens beans".

The rest of the afternoon I´ll spend exploring the town and then I´m going to see a Guatemalan film this evening (subtitled in English) with Katie, another student staying with the same family.

I feel like I´m writing all this in broken english, since my head is swimming with spanish. again, sorry for the lack of pictures, i´ll remedy that asap!