General observations on the second week

Kathleen: Through our Spanish school, we are living with a family here in Xela. We couldn´t have gotten more lucky with our placement ... Carlos, the dad, used to be a Spanish teacher, so he is very patient with our garbled efforts at communication (mine are more garbled than Tait´s). The mom, Monica, is kind and sweet and funny, and the kids are AWESOME. Javier is 17, Daniel is 13, and Alehandra is 9. Alex, their 14 year old cousin, is around quite a bit, and they are just silly and mischevious and sweet to each other and fun to be around. They also consistently kick Tait´s butt at Mario cart, which is always entertaining.

As a vegetarian, its been quite easy in Guatemala. Beans, eggs, and fresh toasted tortillas are a staple at at least one meal a day (portions are quite small... because we´re Americans they serve us about twice as much as they eat themselves, and I still feel like I´m eating much less than usual). I have a date with Monica to learn how to make tortillas, as I don´t think that I can now live without hot fresh tortillas at every meal ;-) Breakfasts and lunches are relatively big, and dinner is quite small. Meat is probably served at one meal each day... although they teased me today by handing me a plate of ¨pork for you¨or ¨puerco por tuya¨(I think that´s what they said) which was really some steamed broccoli. Maybe its the altitude, or my body trying to make up for the smaller portions, because I have developed (or indulged) quite the sweet tooth.... luckily there is a Menonite bakery that is open twice a week that sells the most amazing goodies... cakes, pies, homemade donuts stuffed with jam and cream and covered in glazed goodness, bread, fresh yogurt, etc.... Tait took a trip with his Spanish teacher and brought us back some banana bread for our overnight volcano hike tomorrow...

...which brings me to another topic: volcanos. We´re about to hike our second volcano in two weeks. I was not expecting this to be the "year of volcano hikes", particularly as I am generally a lazy person when it comes to strenuous physical exercise, but it seems like this is the thing that you do when you travel central america. So... when in Rome, I guess. We´ll post more on that later (If I make it back).

Two things happened this week that have me absolutely out of my comfort zone: we started Spanish classes and tried to salsa dance. The former includes five hours a day of one on one instruction. Every morning we head off for our 8am class, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. By one o clock, as we head home for lunch, we can barely speak comprehensible ENGLISH, as our heads are full and spinning with prepositions and verb conjugations and the frustration of not being able to understand or be understood. Then more studying in the afternoon and evening. THEN, on Wednesday the school sponsored salsa classes at a nightclub before all the people showed up. Now, I´ve never been much of a dancer.... but IT WAS SO EMBARRASING!! As the teacher was teaching spins and turns and fancy steps, he suggested that we just focus on the basic back and forth step (we could save the posture, rhythm, and style for later, he kindly suggested). We immediately signed up for private lessons the next day, as much of the nighlife revolves around salsa and there is only so much humiliation a girl can take. But, if Tom Delay can salsa, I´m determined to learn too.