Days Five and Six

Wednesday (continued) – 6/30/2010

So, instead of doing my homework on Wednesday night, I went out with one of the other students living at my house. She is German, she has been in Guatemala for almost 2 months already and it goes without saying that her Spanish is much better than mine! At dinner on Wednesday, she asked me if I was going out that evening and I said probably not but then she invited me to come with her and against my medical school instincts, I decided to forget my homework that night and instead went with her out on the town! I have been studying so much this past year that I forgot that studying Spanish here is not exactly the same as studying neuroscience or physiology at UNMC. I let my type A personality have a rest and we first went to a bar called the Rainbow Room. It is an international bar that has live music every night. There were quite a few Americans and other foreigners in the bar but we were meeting up with an Argentinean guy, Nicolas, who Hanna (the German woman who lives at the same house as me) met on the bus ride home from one of her weekend expeditions. Long story short, we sat and conversed with Nicolas and his two friends while listening to the live music. Most of the conversation was in Spanish and I didn’t participate too much but I did listen a lot. I did realize that I am learning a lot despite the fact that I still don’t know quite enough Spanish to hold down an intelligible conversation. After the music at the bar turned into more of an open mic night for the American students who were there, we left the Rainbow Room and went to a bar called La Esquina where there was another live band. This time, they were playing only Cuban salsa music. There were quite a lot of people dancing salsa and a few couples that looked almost professional. I didn’t do any official salsa dancing but did dance a little and move my feet around while listening to the music. The main singer for the band was muy guapo! I may have enjoyed looking at him more so than listening to the music, haha. All in all, it was a good decision to leave my homework at home and go out for the evening. (I ended up waking up early and doing it in the morning…you can take the girl out of med school but you can’t take the med school out of the girl!)

Thursday – 7/1/2010

I really can’t believe that it’s July already! Time has gone by so quickly since the semester ended on May 1st! This first week of classes has passed by quickly as well. After finishing my homework on Thursday morning, I went to school a bit early to check e-mail, etc. Thursday’s lessons went really well and I was much less frustrated than on Wednesday. I showed Amanda (my teacher) a lot of pictures of my students from East Side and explained a lot to her about the population of students at East Side. Our lessons have been great because she teaches me something and then we end up getting off track because I ask a question in the middle of her teaching me something. Usually, it’s because I try to form a different example of something she is showing me and then we start talking about whatever it is I was trying to say and we have a long conversation about that topic. That is actually how we got to talking about East Side. But, those side conversations are great because it helps me realize what I still don’t know and she helps me make the sentences make sense.

Thursday afternoon was AMAZING! I went with the school on an excursion to the Volcan de Pacaya. It erupted two months ago and caused serious damage to some of the surrounding areas. No people died in the eruption but a large amout of crops were destroyed and many animals died. We took a bus to a spot near the base of the vocano and hiked, not to the top of the volcano but to about the midpoint. Usually there is running lava visible but I guess since it’s been so cold here and there was a large eruption a couple months ago, the lava was not running where we hiked. It was still beautiful and probably the most exercise I’ve done in the last three weeks. Hiking up a volcano, especially one that’s just erupted, is muy dificil! Erika and I hiked down and then back up a small part of a volcano in Ecuador but this hike was much harder. Walking up the side of the volcano was steep AND the volcanic ash was like walking in sand. You took two steps up and slid back down about a half a step.

Here are some photos…words cannot describe how beautiful it was.








Once again, I had not done my homework before I went on the excursions and we got back to Antigua fairly late. Maybe I’m starting to relax my med school tendencies after all!

Friday 7/2/2010

I did part of my homework this morning but didn’t get it all finished because I woke up a little late and then had to show a new student to the school before starting my lessons. Amanda had an “I told you so” look on her face when I said I didn’t finish all of my homework last night. She was kind enough yesterday to ask if I would have time to actually do homework and I said, “Of course! I will do it when I get back from the volcano trip!” Silly me…I should have know that wouldn’t happen, haha. I was very apologetic and she was nice enough to let me finish at the beginning of our lessons. Of course, during the completion of my homework, we somehow managed to get off on some sort of tangent about what, I’m not sure. We had a good lesson today and I am finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I think I will be able to learn quite a bit of Spanish by the end of my time here! I was also encouraged by the fact that the new student at my house, another German, doesn’t know much Spanish so I am able to speak more than her. It is encouraging to know that I was at the same point as her only a few days ago but now I can speak in full sentences, I know how to say a few things in future tense and I still have a lot of time to learn more. I will need to do some practicing and studying this weekend while in the bus on the way to Lago de Atitlan!

Right now, I’m waiting for my laundry to dry and then I’ll be heading to the artisan market in town to wheel and deal, speak with some locals and maybe even buy some presents for all of you back home. I hope everyone knows that their Christmas presents are going to be from Guatemala!