un poco de espanol

today is day two of spanish classes and already i am feeling much better about life. but to rewind.
my house casa is great. miriam is a divorced woman who speaks no english and cooks very traditional guatemalan food. her daughter is 15 quince and also speaks no english. gabrielle is her son and as it goes also my spanish teacher. he is 29. so far so good on the homestay front. already i am able to at least say that i am having a good day or could i please have some water agua. there are two other students living in the house. amy is from colorado and it is her third week here. her spanish is enough so that she can get around. i think she is planning on staying one more week. ciprian (pronounced chiprian) is from portland oregon and is at least 6 foot five. he is great fun though and his spanish is just a week ahead of mine. in some ways it would be good to be forced to always have to speak spanish, but honestly it is nice to relax sometimes and be able to speak english with them.
a typical day (so far) looks like this:
breakfast is at 7:15 in the kitchen. the school is literally three doors down so we leave right at eight to be there on time. there are about ten students, maybe 12 at the school right now, but the number changes from week to week i understand. (the woman who runs this cafe just took huge fall and hit her head badly on the tile. i hope she is alright...people seem to be taking care of her though). so we arrive at eight and stand around chatting for awhile drinking coffee. there are a bunch of little tables set around a few rooms and eventually everyone sits down across from their teachers. today though gabrielle and i went to a cafe down the street to study for the morning because we both prefer cafe con leche (with milk). so we study from eight to ten thirty. that is a very long time. then there is a half hour break where we drink more coffee and stand around chatting more. some in english, but not all of the students speak english so there is some spanish too but really that means that i can not really talk to some of the studets except to find out their name. we then study from eleven until one. also a very long time. however, as i said, just two days and already i am feeling good about the very very basics of the language. lunch is at one thirty at mi casa, then we chill for a bit. at three there is usually an activity. yesterday was a lecture about the history and evolution of agriculture in guatemala, today is a dance class and tomorrow we are watching the motorcycle diaries. activities end at five and then starts the homework la tarea. we get a lot of it, but really that is good...we are here to learn spanish. today i think i will have about two or three hours of homework. dinner is at seven and then there is more homework. there is a bar next door so after homework it seems as if that is the general course of action. needless to say, there is not a lot of very good spanish spoken once the drinks start.
anyway, so far so good. i have not really had time yet to look around the town but yesterday i went for a bit of a walk with ciprian and he pointed out some nice cafes and bookstores. generally, it seems like a nice place...definitely a student presence around but all in all it is a very real guatemalan city.
right now i am very tired but i do really want to learn to dance so i will go and do that. maybe doing something other than studying and thinking will be good for me too, haha.
soon i will take some pictures as i said i have not really had time. plus, it has pretty much rained the whole time so far so i can not see any volcanoes because of the clouds.
hasta lluego
meredith