Class went well last night

I had my first class last night, and it went well. Mi maestro (teacher) is Pedro. He is only 20 years old! Hes very mature, though, and patient. He teaches part-time and then takes classes at the university. He speaks English, too, which is very helpful when I dont know a word. (By the way, Im using a Spanish keyboard and apparently the key that I thought was an apostrophe is not what I thought. So, I will intentionally refrain from using apostrophes, since I have no other option.) Class is taught all in Spanish and we are encouraged to use Spanish when talking with other students, too. Pedro and I are doing some review this week. Its very exhausting for me talk to someone for nearly 5 hours, though. I am such an introvert. Ive found that I am already thinking in a mixture of broken Spanish and English, which is cool. No dreams in Spanish yet, though.

Class is from 2-7pm with a half hour break every day at 4:30. However, since my body hasnt adjusted to the time change yet, it feels like class is from 4-9pm! And then I go home and eat dinner! Last night the other gringa (white girl) who lives in my house asked me to wait for her while she made a phone call after class so that she wouldnt have to walk home alone. (Shes the one who was robbed.) She talked so long that it was dark when we walked home. I have rarely been as scared as I was during that 10-15 minute walk. In reality, I was probably fairly safe, but it didnt feel like it at the time.

I asked my host mom if it was safe to walk the streets alone during the day, and she said its very safe and I shouldnt be afraid. By the way, the streets are crazy. On some you basically hike up or down because of the slope of the hill. They are not asphalt, but rather similar to cobblestone. The old ones are all torn up and not flat at all. The sidewalks are crazy, too. (At least in my humble opinion.) :) You have to watch where you are walking at all times because theres holes and they end all of a sudden. They are so narrow that most of the time two people cannot walk side by side. Theres dog poop, too, from all the dogs who live on the street.

I told my teacher about Goshen College, and he said that there is a small community of Mennonites in Xela. This is pretty funny - all he knew about them was that they own an amazing panaderia (bread and bakery shop). :) I was able to enlighten him a bit.

I walked downtown with my host mom to the bank today. It was supposed to open at 9am, but hadnt opened yet, which didnt seem to be strange. There was a line of about 10 people waiting outside. I asked her if it was normal to have such long lines at the banco (bank), and she laughed and said this was not a long line at all. Wow. There are bancos everywhere, too! Then she helped me purchase a Guatemalan cell phone and call Dave. We only talked for a couple minutes, but it was wonderful! My host mom saw how happy I was, and she was very pleased that she could help me in that way.

I cant use the computers at the school to upload photos, so I will have to find an internet cafe somewhere later this week and do it. My posts will probably become less frequent, too, because I will begin doing the activities tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we visit a Guatemalan fabrica de chocolate (chocolate factory). Yum! This weekend I am going on an overnight trip to a black sand beach on the Pacific coast. That should be fun!

The food is very different here, and my stomach is not adjusting well (if you know what I mean). Hopefully I only have to deal with that for another day or two. Breakfast is corn flakes with lukewarm milk. Lunch is the largest meal - usually meat (or for me, soy), bread and salad. Dinner is usually eggs, beans, and plantains, but for me its just plantains.