La Primera Dia en Guatemala

Okay, so here’s the details about my very first day :) I woke up at 6:30a (Way too friggen early, especially since I didn’t get in from the airport until 1am) and I took a shower. So it seems that no one has hot water here, the faucets just have one knob on them; water is either on or off, no options. Thankfully they have these things called something like caliendores (btw, this is a clause for all future attempts at Spanish words: I might be wrong. Está un bueno posibilidad.) The caliendore is basically this big showerhead that has electricity running through it, it actually gets plugged into the wall which defies all previously-learned precautions against electrocution. I’m not complaining though because that thing works! Not only does it work, it works well! I had a delightfully warm shower today, no reliving my teeth-chattering backpacking trips when I had to bathe in creeks.

Here’s an interesting Guatemala bathroom fact for you: you cant flush toilet paper here. Everyone seems to follow this rule, at first I thought it was just my host family. You just clean yourself and throw it in a garbage can and then someone empties out your nasty poop paper. I’m already dreading this, can you tell? To make the experience even more embarrassing, for some reason there’s an open window that runs along the ceiling of my bathroom and connects it with the living room. Who the hell would design something like that?? People here must be a lot less bashful about bodily functions.
So for breakfast we had a plate of sliced pineapples and bananas with granola and honey, and some kind of really sweet porridge. She had also baked fresh bread but I was somehow stuffed already and couldn’t do it. (I really cant bring myself to eat much that early in the morning.) There’s only one other person staying here with the family right now, a girl in her late twenties called Marta or Greta or something equally German. She’s some kind of social worker from Germany who’s working here until February. She seems nice but I can’t really talk to her since my Spanish is piss poor. She has a much better grasp on the language and even though I know she speaks English, there’s kind of an unspoken rule that that would be rude. So I struggle along as best I can. The family is very nice, it’s an mother named Lucia, her husband Ignacio, their adult daughter Nora and her two children who I don’t know yet. Lucia used to be a lab tech at the big hospital just outside Antigua, so we’ve been bonding over that. Her husband is super nice. He’s always cracking jokes that I don’t understand and then trying to put them into words I know which only makes me more confused. He’s very patient though, they all are. Here's a pic of my room for the next month:

So the language lessons went well today. It’s really amazing how quickly you pick up on stuff, I seriously can see a difference from just one day. The fact that I know basic Spanish is a HUGE help though, I cant imagine trying to do this with no vocabulary at all. Right now I can understand about 40-50% of what’s said to me and I can say about 60% of the things I want to, though not always correctly. I’m really excited to see where I’ll be in a week or two! I’m thinking that I WAY over booked for my Spanish lessons, though. After seven hours of non-stop talking with my teachers, I seriously can’t imagine needing to do that for the next month and a half. Not only do I predict that I’ll be totally fluent after another two weeks of this, but there’s NO WAY I can think of more stuff to talk about with these people. I can make small talk, but not seven hours worth for the next 23 days of class! I was hoping there’d be some more structure to the classes, but it seems like the bulk of the time is just practicing talking and listening. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just hard to focus on translating what’s being said to me when I’m also trying desperately to think of more conversation topics. I get really anxious when there are long periods of silence with people I don’t know well, I might have to make a list of ice breakers for tomorrows sessions.
Also something noteworthy: I have been renamed once again (I seem to do this every ten years or so). My new name is Esteban, which is the Spanish version of Steven. Shawn is too difficult for people to pronounce here, so this will hopefully keep people from shunning me. Now I just need to get used to answering to it.
Oh, one more noteworthy thing. I met another student at the language school today named Maureen. She just returned from visiting NPH, apparently her friend is a large donor of theirs. She was filling me in on things there, it sounds really great.
Ok, I’ll write more soon! I haven’t taken a lot of pics but I added the few I have. Once I make friends and I can travel in a group I won’t be as skittish about having my iPhone out. Until then, just trust me that it’s pretty!

I found this little shop that sells cactus! It made me think of my mom :)