Sunday, May 8, 2011

Feliz dia de la madre!

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I'm going to try to call via Skype, but I'm not sure how successful I'll be. The internet here has been slow and unreliable - it's almost like being back at the house in Columbus :)

I've scattered some pictures of the house I'm staying in throughout this post. Gram will be happy to see how clean it is. The first is a picture of the dining room, and the other two are pictures of my room from different vantage points. One of my doors opens on the dining room and the other opens onto the lawn/driveway. We're actually in a walled-in compound thingy. There's a wall between us and the street, and there are about 4 small houses inside the wall that are owned and rented out by my host family.

Sabado (Saturday) is a big market day here in Antigua! The market gets huge and it seems like everyone in the city is there! I wandered around for awhile, but I didn't buy anything. Didn't really see anything I needed. I did however stumble across a the biggest grocery store I've seen since I arrived. After much gesticulating, I was able to buy some note cards to make much needed Spanish vocab flash cards.

A nice siesta and terea (homework) filled the rest of my afternoon. After dinner, Salvador and I watched some ridiculous game show. I missed Bonanza.

I did not scale a volcano today! By the time I crested cerro de la cruz yesterday, I was pretty winded. Made me think I'm probably not up to volcano strength yet. I need to train! So, this morning I climbed cerro de la cruz again. My plan is to ascend the cerro everyday - walking it at first and maybe later running - so that I can climb some volcanoes with less embarrassment than I experienced in Nicaragua on vulcan Masaya. (It was vulcan Masaya, right?)

Anyway, after descending el cerro, I meandered back to el mercado to find some fruit for breakfast. I got little ripped off - paid 4 Quetzales for a bottle of water that I discovered later was marked 3 Quetzales. I say "a little ripped off" cause one Quetzales is roughly 14 cents ... so that was a pretty cheap lesson, I suppose.

I found my way to Iglesia del Camino for their morning service. The preacher was a gringo and he had an interpreter. I met some guys at the language school who are going to be missionaries and they told me about this church. It was good because I could understand what was being said and also try to pick up some vocabulary from the interpreter.

Lunch was good, but I'm a bit nervous cause there was lettuce on my sandwich. I'm hoping I'm ok since it was a proper restaurant and there were a decent number of gringos in there ... maybe they know to wash the lettuce in agua pura? I'm about to find out! So far, my stomach is tranquilo and my fingers are crossed!

I finished mi terea para la fin de semana (the weekend) at lunch and now I'm in cafe sharing a table with a girl from Galicia ... which is evidently a psuedo country on the northern coast of Spain. She says it is very Celtic - they have English landscapes and bagpipes there. She sounds French, but she looks Scottish. She says her language is a mixture of Portuguese and Italian. I've never heard of Galicia, but I looked it up - it's real!

Also, she has what looks like a really bad case of poison ivy, but she claims not to have been in the jungle. She thinks it's some kind of bug and she's scratching like crazy ... so I'm keeping a healthy buffer zone.

Ok, now I'm getting that sensation you get when someone says the word "fleas" like you're being bit all over, but you can't see anything! Time to leave!

No idea what I'll do tonight, but I'm sure you'll hear about it whether you want to or not manana.

3 comments:

  1. You should refrain from gesticulating. I hear that it can cause blindeness

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  2. the internet is that bad wow! your hunting partner tom

    ReplyDelete