Back in the Tropics

I wasted no time after school ended for the year. If I was to have a month of travel before my mid-summer training, I had to catch a plane to Guatemala Saturday night when school ended on Friday. Gilda and I drove down to LA, where I would get a cheaper flight. I saw my brother for a few hours before his own trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I went to a performance of The Merchant of Venice by the Hobart Shakespeareans. That event deserves a post of its own when I can post the video I took from it.

I took a red-eye flight to Guatemala City. Gilda's uncle Jorge picked me up from the airport, took me to breakfast, and saw me on the bus to Flores. After a hot and sweaty 8-hour drive, I arrived in the lakeside town just as night and rain were falling. I plopped down on my bed in Hotel Casablanca, took a shower for the first time in 2 days, and faded off to sleep.

Today I'm taking a boat across the lake to San Andres where I'll be starting my spanish classes. More later when I can get back into town for Internet access!

Ensenada Adventures

Movie theatre in Ensenada. $4 for a ticket!

Well the language studies have been continuing had a good pace. Today we learned the imperitive or command form, which is very good for handling a room full of hormonal adolescents. Sientente (sit down)! Trabaje (work)! Afternoon activities have been slightly robotic in drills, but I guess I need the practice.

My "social" life outside of class has certainly been worthy of quotation marks. I´m on my own, just here for a week, so making friends or going on outings with others hasn´t happened. Today the school went to the winery, but alcohol isn´t my thing, so I skipped on that and conjugated irregular verbs in the preterite and imperfect for 90 minutes. What fun!

I did make a point of walking 1.5 miles to the cinema to watch "Hancock". Just my luck, the movie started 5 minutes before I arrived. It was in English with Spanish subtitles, so I got a little reading practice while I mostly just enjoyed listening to the dialogue. During the movie, this woman´s cell phone kept going off and she had no problem chatting away during the movie. I almost turned around and gave her the evil eye, but then I realized that she´s just reading the subtitles and doesn´t need to hear the English because she and the other watchers may not understand it anyway. I chalked it up to another cultural moment, laughed, and read the subtitles along with her.

Tomorrow`s my last day of class, then I retire to my favorite local hostel for a day of r&r from my mostly relaxing week. Just a way to kill time cheaply before I go to San Deigo for my AVID conference.