The first day of school! Yay!
This morning I awoke more than once to the sound of passing cars, the tienda bell, and voices in the kitchen. Turns out on my new Guatemalan phone you need to use military time to put anything in PM mode so my phone time was 12 hours off and my alarm did not go off. That being said, I now have a local phone and most of my groups numbers. If you want to call me from the US, I have free minutes here. Otherwise, I am still figuring out the Skype situation and a good location to do it. The school has free Internet but we are all in a long hallway using our computers - not the most private place for a phone call or video chat. I am going to experiment with some Internet cafes and possibly buy a Internet stick that allows you to use Internet at your house.
This morning for breakfast we had mush (yes, that is what it is called) again - its a warm, horchata oatmeal, hot milk soup thing that you add cornflakes and bananas. I'm still not positive how I feel about it but I anticipate eating it a lot. We also had pancakes with maple syrup. The pancakes were very delicious.
Hannah and I walked to school for our first day at 830. My maestra is named Rosa. She is incredibly patient and corrects my mistakes quickly. The class is four hours long with a small pausa in the middle for a snack. We started class by reviewing the exam I took yesterday. She said generally I did well but need some practice with verb conjugations. I would agree. Our lessons are done orally and in our notebook. Mi maestra writes the rules and information and then I conjugate or speak the information. Today we reviewed the present tense, irregular verbs, and when to use it. Then we reviewed vocabulary of fruits, vegetables, and things around the bathroom and bedroom. I was surprised how many verbs and words I remembered. Throughout the lesson (exclusively in Spanish) we talked about the upcoming presidential election in September and the position of women in society in Guatemala and the US. Pretty deep conversations for the first day.
An interesting story about the election: In Guatemala, the president cannot run for re-election nor can anyone run in the immediate family. The current president's wife divorced him so she could run for president. There are some intricacies in the law and they will decide tonight whether or not she can participate. If so, she is second in the popular polls right now. The first place candidate is an ex-military. The election has two parts. The first is a popular vote with as many candidates as are eligible. The second part is a final vote between the top two candidates from the first part. I look forward to watching this happen.
For lunch we ate red beans, rice, and tortillas with guacamole. There was some meat in the dish as well but I'm not sure if it was actually meat or just the skin.
We met back at the school for a tour of zona 3. This area is beyond our community (zona 1) and has a large market, futbol stadium, sports complex, and mall. The market is very typical of Central America. Wide stalls with spices, vegetables, raw meat - even some brains and livers. I hope to go back soon to look at sandals, boots, and the different fruits. The sports complex has a large track and dirt trail. When I feel more adjusted to the car exhaust and altitude, I am going to run here. There are lots of other people who run as well. We are also going to check out a yoga house and a few of the local gyms.
Hope everything is well with everyone back in the US. I miss being connected to you all through text and calls. Loves.
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