Monday was my first day at school. Here the spanish teaching is being offered as one-on-one, so I have my own teacher. His name is Mynor and he's very cool. We wasted no time and dove right into el espanol! My class is from 8am to 1pm with a break in between. It's been only 4 days and I have learned so many verbs and vocabs and grammer already. I have to study every afternoon in order to remember all the new words. The class is very informal and we can do whatever we like. Yesterday we walked to downtown to check out the historical buildings and also got food at street stalls for like an hour or so. Sometimes in school there are vendors who will have food to sell for Q.5 (~US$0.70) which is quite delicious. Today I had some kind of mashed potatoes with some cheese and chicken in it. MMM......very tasty.
So let me talk a little about my host family! They are a family of 5: Lety the mom, Raul the dad, and three kids of age 21 (Mily), 19 (Raulito) and 17 (Esduardo). The house is about 10 blocks or so from the school and it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk. I have my own bedroom which is quite nice all things considered. They are very nice people but speak almost no English. However, every day I will try to use the new things I've learned to talk to them, mostly at meal times, and I'm glad we can have some broken conversations. I go home for lunch and I'm surprised that my host dad is usually back home for lunch too. If I understand him correctly, he's an accountant. =) My host mom Lety teaches primary school but only in the mornings. She will cook both lunch and dinner every day. I've also met Mily (the eldest daughter) and her boyfriend, who knows more English. I talked to them a bit and they both go to school and work part time. Very hardworking people! When I get up around 7:30am most family members are gone already. Anyways, I should mention the bathroom! They have flushing toilet but like many Central American countries, you are not supposed to flush the toilet paper down as it will clog the toilet. So there's a waste basket for your used toilet paper. Hah! As you can imagine, it can be a little stinky in the toilet stall. The shower in this house is separate from the toilet, and I have been told that taking shower after 5pm will not be good because water pressure is too low at the end of the day for some reason. But early in the morning until 5pm it's all good. However, their hot water comes from an electrical element right at the shower head, so I've learn that the trick is to turn the water down to a minimal flow if you want the water hot. I'm just glad there is hot water because I've heard stories from other students that there isn't hot water at their house. Or even, this girl got shocked once during shower because the heater is broken! She's okay but she requested to switch house. Oh last but not least, the TV at home has actually like 100 channels!! Mostly spanish channels some from US. I don't think they have local programs. I was watching CNN this afternoon for a bit. It is interesting here something is very modern (like cell phone and TV) but other basic things are missing (shower and good sewage system). However, I'm just doing fine so maybe not everything is as important as we think they are...
