Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

It's been five straight days of class, five hours a day, one hour lunch break and then hours of study at the local cafe, another hour break for dinner, and more studying, review of flash cards and finishing up homework before we drop into a sound sleep by 10:00 p.m. every night. While a couple days are interspersed with cultural activities where we communicate only in Spanish, for the most part, we're committed 7x24 to learning Spanish. I spent a day with my teacher preparing to teach yoga in prison, learning the words for body parts and to explain each of the postures. It's fair to say that we're now dreaming in Spanish, I probably sleep talk with Spanish words, and Darrin is now singing little songs with Spanish and not English words. Our brains feel like alphabet soup, and they're so full we think our heads will burst. While we think the only way to learn a new language at this age is to fully immerse ourselves, this method is pretty difficult, because it doesn't give us a chance to just sit, absorb and memorize. It might be better to do a week on, and take four days off to memorize, absorb, and practice, and then sink ourselves into another intense week. But we don't have the luxury of months here in Guatemala, and we must learn what we can in these four weeks to enable us to successfully communicate and make our way through South America. What's most overwhelming is that no English is spoken during lessons. At least when we were studying at school in the US, textbooks have some English to explain the grammar and rules. Here there is no textbook, rather hours of conversation, introduction of rules, sentence structure and words. We've borrowed a couple of books from the resource library here to help us a little more outside class, to reinforce our learnings and attempt to decipher what we've learned during the day, and to ensure we understood it all correctly. The great thing about our school (ICA) here in Xela is that all the teachers speak clearly and slowly. At break time, one of the teachers makes public announcements about what we're supposed to do for activities. Thank God I've had a little Spanish several years ago, and can understand a little, otherwise Darrin and I would sit wondering what we're supposed to be doing. By the end of this week, we're now able to better understand everything that's being said. We're even able to strike up conversations with locals on the street, and the people here are so friendly and curious - it's a blast. For example, the license and insurance guy a few blocks away from school eagerly greets us every morning on the way to class, requesting us to come in and chat for a bit. Good practice, forcing us to have live conversations outside the classroom environment. It's been an intense first week, and while we don't think we can fit anything else into our brains, it's been a great week of learning and we're looking forward to a bit of decompression and absorption this weekend.