Day 38 - Today was my first day of Spanish classes at the Minerva Spanish school. It is kind of funny, in addition to not knowing anything about Guatemala before getting here, I also did not know anything about the town I'm living in, Xela. I had picked it because I'd read that it is a good place to study Spanish -- it's not touristy and is high in the mountains, and few people speak English so you don't have them all trying to talk to you in English all the time. I had imagined a tiny hamlet with narrow streets, chickens running around, and mothers ushering their children inside doorways as I passed by on the motorcycle.

Instead, it turns out Xela is Guatemala's second biggest city with over 120,000 people. It's huge! Plus it's really crazy here. Large garishly painted US school buses ("chicken buses") barrel down the streets at crazy speeds, belching enormous amounts of black smoke from their exhausts. The tiny corner convenience stores all have floor to ceiling security bars. You basically stand in a virtual cage in the doorway and point out what you want, and the guy on the other side will get it and hand it to you through the bars. There are security guys with shotguns standing all over the place -- any store with merchandise of value (clothing, tv's, banks) has an armed shotgun wielding guy at the front. And they don't have it slung over their shoulder -- they stand with the weapon in both hands, at the ready. Volcanos surround the city on the outskirts -- most of them dormant, one of them active, with steam eruptions every hour or so (you can't see the steam from the city though -- it's on the backside of the mountain).

The Spanish classes went okay today. It's the same rote verb drills I remember from my two years of Spanish in high school -- "me, you, he, us, them" versions of verbs. Not super exciting, but I guess it's the way the language is taught. The picture on the left above is of the school.

My family seems very nice. They live across the plaza from the school, so it's less than a minute for me to get there in the mornings. In the picture on the right above, I'm living in the house in the middle with the blue gate. I have my own room and bath. The head of the household is a late 50's lady, Leti, who works as a teacher at a school an hour's public bus ride away. She is raising her 10 year old granddaughter, Mishel (same name phonetically as me). From now on we all decided to call her Mishelita, to avoid confusion :) Also living there is Leti's older sister, Ilda, and Leti's son, Ludwig, who is about my age (he's an uncle to Mishel, not father). And their nephew, Fernando, who is 24. None of them speak a word of English, except for Ludwig. And they are very Catholic, praying to their god and genuflecting before they eat anything.

Ludwig is a professional, working as a lecturer in the university by day and a volunteer firefighter at night. He is applying to study for a master's degree in Germany. He has a Swiss girlfriend, who is coming to visit this weekend for a couple of weeks.

Fernando is a party guy and a freeloader in the house. Apparently a couple years ago he had a job for a month and didn't care for it. He stays out late, doesn't contribute, and brings home questionable people. Leti and Ilde now have padlocks for all the doors in the house, and whenever they are out of the house at the same time they go around and lock all of inside doors, so that none of Fernando's friends steal anything.

Mishel(ita) is an adorable 10 year old girl. She is really spunky and loves to ride her bike around outside the house in the plaza. It's sad that her mother abandoned her at birth (she is now living somewhere else in Guatemala), but very lucky that her grandmother is raising her.

Ilda, the cook and cleaner of the house, has a bit of dementia I believe. Last night I told her I wanted to get up at around 7:30 am and would eat breakfast then. At 6:30 am she was pounding on my door. "Michelle! Queires desayuno?" "Yes! I mean Si! A las siete y media!" Then at 6:45, more pounding. Same question. Same response. Then again at 7:15! What is it with her?!? At breakfast the same questions we'd gone through the night before. "Do you have brothers or sisters? Where do you live, the US or Mexico?" (I can't quite figure out the last one -- it seems pretty obvious!)