Language School, after Day 4

We've settled in to a weekday routine... up at 7am, breakfast on the table at 7:30 (made by our house mother Estela), and out the door to school at 7:45.

My teacher and I in school

It's about a 10 minute walk from our casa to the school. Each student/teacher pair gets a desk, and there are about 30 desks scattered around the school. We get a break from 10:00 to 10:30am. There is an old woman selling meat pies on the street at break. Or you can go next door to the internet cafe.

During the morning, one of the people from school comes by and describes the day's afternoon activity and asks if you want to participate (all in Spanish). Yesterday, it was a free Salsa/Merengua class. Today it was a visit to Mayan family house for a demonstration on weaving, a mock wedding, and some 'plata typica' (typical Mayan food), with, of course, an opportunity to buy some Mayan handicrafts (yep, bought another one).



Tomorrow the activity is a bicycle tour of Antigua. These are generally free or inexpensive. And they are all in Spanish.

School ends at 12 noon. Lunch (back at the casa) isn't til 1pm, so we have time to either check some email or lounge a bit before lunch. Most of the afternoon activities start at 2pm, so it's back to the school for that. We are usually back at the casa by 5pm, where Estela has dinner ready.

Then we study... an hour or two, perhaps interspersed with a little bit of TV. (CNN in English, sometimes a Spanish channel).

Every weekend the school also organizes a group tour for the weekend, to some place in Guatemala. This weekend the tour is to Coban, Lanquin, and Semuc Champey. This is an area of caves and rivers, where the attractions are rain forest, caves, tubing, and waterfalls. The cost for the trip, including transportation and hotel, is $85 pp. This is an area that Dave has been dying to visit. So when I heard that was where the trip was, I called him and asked if he wants to try to meet me. He researched the logistics of getting from the Rio Dulce, and said it was do-able. He also enlisted our friends Ron and Dorothy. So the three of them are going to catch the Litegua bus to El Rancho, where the road from Antigua/Guatemala City turns left to Coban.

Note: Coban is not Copan, which is a place of ruins in Honduras.

Our humble abode.