hola a todos!
This has been a fun and exciting week. the weather is definitely not hot like i had hoped, but when the sun is out it feels so nice. it rained a little on wednesday and has been cloudy ever since, which makes taking bucket baths very very cold! haha. But I have been busy taking spanish classes, going on field trips to where i will have my practicum (starting in 2 weeks), training at the office and in Parramos, the town that my pueblo is a suburbish like place to, and spending time with my host family and learning the ways of the guatemaltecas. One thing i have learned is that no matter who you pass (unless they look very sketchy or dangerous) you are to greet them with buenas dias, buenas tarde, or buenas noches according to the time of the day. Everyone in my pueblo greets each other. there are only 6 main families here, so pretty much you are always greeting a host relative of some sort.
Spanish classes have been fun. I am learning so much here because i am practicing what i have learned almost immediately from walking out the door. We have classes at one of our houses for a week at a time. This past week it was at Joe's casa, this week it will be at my casa and I am not sure where it will be next week. There are 5 of us in all so we will all get to host at least once, maybe twice.
training has been really really interesting because we are covering everything from health to how the school systems work to how to be a successful volunteer at my site. From what my leaders have said, we will all be in semi-urban sites and going out the the more rural parts of guate. This of course has its pluses and minuses. A plus is that i will be able to find whatever i need at a somewhat reasonable price, but it will be harder to meet people and gain confidenzia. but i am excited none-the-less!
on sundays we go down to the campo to watch soccer games, then we normally come home, take our bucket baths (which i take everyday, they take once a week), eat a big lunch, take a nap, go to mass, and then go to another court to watch soccer until late into the night. Their weekends completely revolve around the towns' soccer teams, which is very interesting to me. i think i have watched a total of 16 hours of soccer this week! but I am having a lot of fun with my host family, i have really enjoyed getting to know the girls and the mom and am starting to move away from small talk about the weather to actually conversations. but they are talking extremely slow when we speak and are so patient with my seriously broken spanish. this feels like a really good fit. One of the sister's is going to highschool in a neighboring city, which is pretty unheard of in guatemala (most girls will drop out after middle school, because they need to find a husband or because they need to work) and she wants to go onto university, which is amazing! she is very driven which is such a great thing to see and her parents are very supportive of her, which is equally great to see as well.
well i better start reading this weeks packet! more to come!