A rough first couple days....

Well, guys, it´s been a rough first couple of days, but I´m still optimistic that it will get better. I know some of what I´m experiencing is simply culture shock. Here´s a rundown of the past couple days. (By the way, I´m using a Spanish keyboard, so please excuse any typos.)

Saturday
My flights went just fine, which was good. The flight from Atlanta to to Guatemala City was an interesting combination of people. Most of the people on the flight were either returning home to Guatemala, visiting family-friends in Guatemala or on a mission team to Guatemala. They actually had to request volunteers to sit in the exit rows because most of the people on the flight did not speak English. (I volunteered.) They served a hot meal, which I´ve never experienced before. It wasn´t great, but wasn´t disgusting either.

As a side note, I´ve found it interesting how many people have heard I was going to Guatemala and then assumed I was going on a mission trip. It was even more interesting to see several groups headed there on mission trips. I´m not going to teach the Guatemalans anything, but rather to be taught by them.

I met Gilda at the airport and traveled to her home (the bed and breakfast). Her home was quite lovely, but she put another girl and me in a small ¨house¨beside her house. It wasn´t nearly as nice. The girl and I decided to walk to a shopping area in town. Gilda told us the walk was less than one kilometer, but what she failed to mention was that a large portion of the walk was EXTREMELY uphill. I could honestly describe it as hiking. Anyway, we got to town, visited a mall that felt very much like home (Levi store, Guess store, TGI Fridays, IMAX, you get the idea), then we went to a store called Hiper Paiz and it was very much like a Wal-mart, but livelier. On the way back it started raining. I have never seen rain like this. We both had umbrellas, but they were useless. We both got soaked. The roads turned into streams. I had seen strange things beside the highway on the walk there that looked like continous horse troughs. On the way back I learned that their purpose was to route the water to appropriate places. They were FULL. Anyway, it rained like that for at least the next 12 hours. It was extremely loud on the clay and tin roof all night long. I was pretty much stuck in my tiny room. It got very cold that night. I wore three shirts and had four blankets and was still cold.

Sunday
I traveled to Xela via bus. Luckily there were three other girls from the B and B traveling there, too, so I wasn´t by myself. It was a long ride - four and a half hours, but it seemed longer. The roads were bumpy and some were just dirt roads. We had to drive around countless mudslides from the rain the day before. The whole trip was literally either up or down a mountain.

Enrique, the director of the school, met us at the bus station. (Two of the girls I met are also attending ICA.) He was wonderful. He showed us around town and explained several things to us. He only spoke to us in Spanish, but I understood him very well. He dropped me off at my host family´s home. They are very nice, but it was an overwhelming experience. There are nine or ten people living in my home and there is one bathroom. My host mother´s name is Aura. She was a little confused by my food requests (no meat, eggs or beans), but she said she could do it. She fed me a lunch of all vegetables (corn, potatoes, cucumber, and two things I didn´t recognize), but it was really good. One of my host brothers talked with me while I ate. His name is Alexes and he´s 16. He told me I spoke Spanish very well, which was a huge compliment. It definitely boosted my confidence.

The other girls I met picked me up and we walked downtown to an artisan market. I wanted to buy some things, but it was my first day in the city, so I didn´t. We also walked to the theater and watched a free dance drama. It was so bizarre. The women danced with their shirts off. I wasn´t expecting that. I might have appreciated it more if I knew the story behind it.

Then we walked back home for dinner. My host mom made me something similar to spaghetti, but the sauce was more like salsa. It was good, but she gave me way too much to eat! Then I met the other girl who is living in the house and also studying at ICA. She was really upset because she had just been robbed! Not what I needed to hear when I was still getting settled. She was perfectly fine, but lost her purse and everything in it. I went to bed after that.

Monday
And now, here I am at the school. The school looks really nice and I should have dependable internet access. I´ll meet my teacher at 2pm and have class from 2-7pm. My cell phone does not work here, so I haven´t been able to call Dave yet. My goal for the day is to figure out how to call home and either buy a phone card or a Guatemalan cell phone. I also want to figure out how to upload my photos.