Antigua and CLM

Hello there friends! I have officially been in Guatemala for two weeks! It seems longer than that though...orientation at Semilla seems like forever ago.

On Sunday we moved from Magdalena to Antigua where we'll be staying until the end of April. It was sad to leave our first host family, but we're excited to get to stay with them for several weeks at the end of the trip. Our new host family is definitely a different situation than what we had before. We were told before coming to Guatemala that some of the host families in Antigua treat hosting students more like a business than a chance to get to know students, and our new family would definitely fall into that category. They're nice enough, but they just aren't looking to get to know us like our first family was. We're also somewhat unclear on the family relationships going on. Our host mom's name is Patricia. We think her husband's name is Carlos (there is a man named Carlos that lives there. We are fairly certain they are married. She said something about a husband once, and Carlos seems to fit the bill.). Carlos is really sweet and funny. He likes to tease, and he loves soccer. Last night at dinner we talked about soccer for probably 15-20 minutes. Luis (might have a different name....) is Patricia's brother-in-law who typically lives in Chicago, but is here visiting. There's a woman who eats lunch with us, but we don't know her name. Or her relation to the family. And they have a dog named Romíl. Or something along those lines. That's what it sounds like at least. There's a girl from Japan that lives there. Her name is Tomoko, and she's here to learn Spanish so that she can better teach Japanese. There is also a girl from Minnesota named Anne. She is also taking classes from CLM (Centro Linguistico Maya). The house is kind of like a hotel, and so it's definitely different from Magdalena. We also have a maid that makes our beds each day and cleans up our rooms. Just like home, eh mom? ;)

Monday we started the class portion of the semester at the Centro Linguistico Maya. CLM is a school where people from all over the world come to learn Spanish. We all have our own teachers, and the 1:1 ratio of students to teachers makes sure you are getting lots of Spanish practice in. There's definitely not a way you can hide in the back of the class and not talk when it's just you and the teacher sitting at a table! I was pretty intimidated at first, but it's really not as terrible as I thought it would be. My teacher's name is Noemí. She's very sweet and smart, but also pretty sassy and opinionated! We only take one class at a time, so while it's intense (just four weeks), it's not overly stressful. At least not yet. I guess we're not very far into the class! My first class is Ibero-American History. I don't love history classes, so we'll see how it goes, yeah? We do four hours of classes Mon. -Fri. and then we have the rest of the day free! (Except for a few planned group things, and meals with the family) I'm excited to get to explore this beautiful city throughout the semester! Oh and drink coffee! We're already staking out our favorite cafes. :)