INTERNET!!

I'm in an English mood right now. I'm tired. And I don't feel like blogging, but I know if I don't I'll regret it. Two of the volunteers at my project are from the United States and keep speaking in English to each other and to me as we walk to the project, which is like 20-30 minutes!! :/ I hate it. I came here to speak Spanish. But what can I do? Oh well.

Yay, the internet came back in my homestay!!! WOOOOO!! Now I don't have to go out at night to the internet cafe! :) And I can leave my laptop on so it can upload my pictures and videos. Right now I'm uploading videos of the kids hitting the piñata yesterday, omg they were SO CUTE!! But the internet is slower here, I can't watch MLB.TV like I did in the internet cafe haha. I can't even listen on Gameday Radio. :/ But I can follow on Gameday, which is waayy better than before! Shoot, 2 years ago when I was in Peru I got info on the Giants like 5 times total the whole time I was there, when one of the people there checked the Giants score on his phone. Last year I got text updates from Rachel and my dad & mom (<3 they're the best!) and a little from the internet when I went. Now I can go online EVERY DAY and I get free Twitter updates on my phone in realtime, watch in the sportsbar, watch on my own tv in my room if they're on ESPN and everything! WOOO!! And the other nice thing is like the past 2 years I took TONS OF PICTURES and didn't go through them ever, and I still haven't uploaded any :/ cause by the time my trip was over I had 2000+ pictures and completely did NOT (and still don't) feel like going through every single one and deleting the bad ones lol. But now I can go through them day by day and upload all of them! Yay!

OK today the Spanish lesson was cool, we spent the first 2 hours just talking. Carolina (my tutor) told me all about the Guatemala education system (which I might explain later, but knowing me I'll never get to it, so if you see me in person after you can ask me about it). And I talked about ours. We talked about a lot of differences between Guatemala and the United States and there's like fewer opportunities here and stuff, it was interesting and sad. And there you have more things to pray about - in a nutshell, if you don't have money you can't get an education past middle school, and you can't really take out a loan here. OK after that conversation, I had another list of questions for her. (I don't remember if I mentioned this yesterday, but I came to her with a bunch of questions yesterday, and it was so cool cause I could just ask her WHATEVER I wanted about little things about Spanish I didn't understand, or that needed clarification, and she answered them all!!) It's so cool because like in any group learning setting, you can't just ask a million questions about every single little thing you don't get. So like even though I've learned a lot of Spanish, there's a ton of little things I've never quite understood, but they haven't really been that big of a deal so I haven't worried about it. But now that it's just me, I get to get ALL of that cleared up! Woo! It's really really cool!! After all my questions, that took like another hour haha and then we did some preterite/imperfect exercises.

So apparently Byron and Luis come for lunch every day. Which is cool! Cause we get to talk to them in Spanish! Woo! They work for Bantrab, which is a bank. They're co-workers of Ana Maria, a girl who lives in our homestay. Luis is really funny, and we've decided that since I take a picture of all my food every meal, I'm going to take a picture of him with the food every day at lunch. So if you're wondering why there's so many pictures of Luis in my food album, that's why. :) My mom emailed me asking for pictures of the kids at the project and the homestay. I'll try!! I've got pictures and videos of the kids that are uploading now. I'll get pictures of the people at the homestay tomorrow! And I'll definitely get a picture of the outside of the buildings and stuff. I'll take more video of me walking too, I guess. Then you can see what it's like for me to walk to class every day! And other places! Yay!

I'm just gonna say again, seriously, this is the best food I've ever eaten in my life. Every meal. I can't believe it!! It's so wonderful!! I don't know if I'm like the luckiest girl in the world or if it's just my disposition to be satisfied with everything, but man, I love this trip SO MUCH. Everything is just PERFECT! I mean, sure, the rain sucks, but whatever. Everything else is just so wonderful! All the people, the Spanish classes, the FOOOOOD, the city is so quaint and cute, walking is great, oh the kids in the volunteer project!! Just everything! Oh and when it's not raining, it's so gorgeous out!

OK I'm like getting all excited telling about my day now I'm not that tired anymore! Anyway, at the project, I met 3 boys, Samuel, Jonathan, and José. (I forgot to ask how old they were!) I had taken a picture of them yesterday, because they were in the area next to where I was, and both the girls I was helping left to get stuff. And when they saw me today they were like "OTRA FOTO! OTRA FOTO!" ("ANOTHER PHOTO! ANOTHER PHOTO!") so I took more pictures of them and then ended up just sitting down with them and helping them with their work. At the end, Martha, the director of the program, decided to split the kids up into groups and assign them to "teachers" (Maya, Esther - the other volunteer that's Maya's friend from Brown, and me). I got Petrona, Kimberly, Angel, and Samuel, the first-graders. I think it's a good idea because before, the kids would around and bother Jorge (he seems like he's the head teacher guy that has all the materials) and wow, Jorge seemed like he never got any rest cause all the kids were asking him for stuff the WHOLE TIME. But now, it's supposed to be like I'm in charge of these 4 kids, and we have our own little table, and if any of them have a question they can ask me. And if they need some materials, then I'LL ask Jorge. So then it won't be so crazy. It ensures that each kid is taken care of, and also that Jorge isn't so swamped with stuff. So we'll see how that works out.

Usually the program ends at 5 but we ended at 4 today I think because it started raining really hard, or cause they didn't have a special activity planned afterward like they usually do? I'm not really sure. But oh earlier in the day it was just GORGEOUS! In the morning it was perfect, blue skies with pretty clouds, not too hot. But when we were walking to the project, wow it was so hot!! Eew! And then the storm clouds came and there was a bunch of thunder, and it got a lot colder. And then it started raining a little and gradually started pouring! But right when we left it stopped! So weird! But good for us! But Maya and Esther didn't bring a poncho or anything so they didn't want to walk back in case it started raining, so we decided to take a bus. It was really funny because we didn't know where the bus was going exactly, so I got on the bus (oh I have to take pictures, they're pretty! They're like school buses that are painted colorfully and I think they go from Guatemala City to Antigua and back) and I was standing in the aisle looking at my map trying to figure out which street we were on and which street I could get off at close to my house. And I always see these colorful buses driving past my house (and I have to wait for them to pass so I can cross) so I knew it would stop at that intersection but I had to figure out where. I felt really stupid cause I was wearing a poncho even though it had stopped raining and I was like holding this map trying not to fall over...it was funny. Some people were laughing at me. Oh and then I kinda sorta figured out where we were headed so I put my map away. Maya and Esther wanted to go to Parque Central so they got off a couple stops ahead of me. I was just standing there waiting to get closer to my stop and I looked out the window to see where I was and realized I was at the intersection of my house! I yelled "OH!!" and ran to the front of the bus and got off, and the whole bus laughed at me. Good times. LOL! Oh and it only cost Q4.50 for the 3 of us to ride, that's like less than 60 cents!! Woooo!

OK I think I'm done now. Feel free to ask me any questions about anything you don't get, especially in the last 2 entries that had lots of Spanish in it. :) Or any questions about anything else you'd like to know. And I'll take photo requests too!