After many questions I think it’s time to describe spanish school.  There are somewhere around 70 language schools in Antigua, and as previously described, I chose Latinamerica based on Princesa, the most spoiled dog in town.  Class is from 8am to 12pm every morning, it is one on one and I´m being taught by the director of the school.  This is most fortunate because he probably knows the most english of anyone i´ve met.  So far we have covered 2-4 verbs a day, tons of vocabulary and some phrases.  After three days I have probably covered as much as I learned in my first year of French. Actually those french classes were good for something, there are many words that are the same, just said entirely differently and learning to listen to french has helped me listen closely to spanish.  My host family was very surprised that after one day of class I could understand most of what they were saying, saying slowly that is.  What really helped was the father, Sergio, speaking with lots of hand and face expressions.  At first I thought it was just for me, but after hearing him and his son talk, apparently he does it all the time.  The mom I don´t understand as well, but she also doesn´t slow down very much.   supposedly they are both spanish teachers, but I think the dad teaches more frequently and the mom usually works at the hair salon.

Their home is in a compound of apartments in the middle of Antigua that is accessed by an unnumbered black, metal door on calle 3, across from number 35, which is how I remember how to get home.  This could be the main reason I haven´t gone out late at night yet, I´m not so certain I would find my way home.  once behind the black metal door, there is a narrow open air hallway of red cement walls.  There are a few pieces of wood connecting apartments and then are covered in broken glass to deter any robbers.  The apartments are covered in corrugated tin roofs and my apartment isn´t entirely covered, so the middle room that is a kitchen, dining room and wash room feels like a courtyard.  My room has it´s own padlock and I feel silly using it.  But much like south africa, the locals are always more concerned about security that i am, so I lock my door when I leave just to make sure I have my keys with me and don´t get locked outside the main black door. 

The bathrooms are the most interesting part of everywhere I´ve stayed so far.  Just like Kerry warned me, they have electric showers with water going through the showerhead that has a slight current.  Well, I don´t have current testers, so I have no idea what the current is, but I am more grateful for warm showers than worried about getting electrocuted.  On that note, my family´s shower does have a slight current that travels down to the knob, so I use my bandana to adjust the water flow, otherwise the slight current hurts a bit.  Also the shower is in the same small cement room as the toilet and they are separated by a tiny shower curtain.  It is just one cement floor, so if someone has showered recently, the floor is always wet to get to the toilet.  I have to admit that it really only took a day to get used to this system and now it seems mostly normal. 

Oh and food!  this will probably amuse everyone the most, especially with all the food I refuse to eat in the states, but Guatemala is a whole different game, so you should all be proud of me!  At my first breakfast in Guate, the only word I recognized was pancakes, so that´s what I had.  For my second breakfast I was already acclimated to eggyness and had french toast!  Then I started living with my host family and my first lunch had some unidentifiable beef, dinner was beans – yeah- and breakfast was fruit, so i thought I was in the clear.  HOwever, When I woke up this morning I tried to convince myself that I didn´t hear eggs cooking.  But after years of avoiding the kitchen when Dad was cooking eggs, i knew the sound all too well.  Eggs for breakfast!  Eggs covered in tomato and onions with bread.  So I steeled myself and started eating the eggs, rest assured they are just as horrible as they smell.  After gagging down a few bites (the gagging was all in my head), I devised a strategy of using my bread to take a small bite of egg and put it on the bread.  Then cover this with tomatoes.  This bite was then put into my mouth bread side down, so most of the taste was bread, I chewed fast to get rid of the eggyness and then washed it down with tea.  I doubt to most of the world that this breakfast would have caused panic, but under the circumstances I think I handled it quite well.  when I put half my plate of eggs in the trash, I was shocked to find out that it was only one egg that had made my breakfast – those things are huge!  And as consolation lunch was great.  I have no idea what it was, but it was great.