Joanie hanging out (eh eh) in her hammock in su casa. Her laptop´s could be playing anything from the Arctic Monkeys to French African ballads to Latin pop.
This is where I eat (that´s my laptop!)
Where I cook for the moment. (Notice the window where we throw out our meat and produce for the random chickens/dogs/geese/cats that are wandering around)
La casa de Joanie / my second homeI had quite the weekend but haven´t quite had time to sit around and write about it, so you´ll hear about it soon!
First day of Spanish school was alright. My teacher is very passionate about how unfair poverty and things are in the area, so she´s very interesting to listen to. She also has a lot of opinions about the banking system, which I´m apt to agree with, that she also told me a lot about today that was really interesting. And that pretty much summarizes my day. Her finding out that I know way more grammar than she expected, her coaxing out stupid made up sentences from me(5 sentences talking about things you have...ugh -I´m not creative!!) but primarily listening to her go on and on about her country was 5 hours of my day. Which is actually probably pretty beneficial because she´s using vocabulary I need to familiarize myself and my weakest point is understanding other people talk. Anyway, more soon! I have to go through Santa Elena every day this week, so I should be able to update soon.
May 23: First work week (if you can call it that) is DONE-ish
In the office, waiting to see if Mirko is going to call to confirm that I can sign up for Spanish classes for the next two weeks. He's super nice and we spoke this morning. The only problem is, he said he'd call back in the afternoon, but with the time difference (he's in Bolivia), it's hard to say if he called during my lunch already or if he's going to call me from home. I don't want to take the risk of going home but I'm the only one in the office so I'm going to have a bit of difficulty if I answer the phone and it ISN'T him. Which is actually pretty likely, since we get a fair number of calls here. Few from English speaking people. Oye.
My Spanish communication is slowly improving. Reading, I'm doing decently with the help of Erin's Costa Rica Spanish Institute textbook. (Plus, her certificate for passing is a perfect thickness for fanning myself in this heat that is over 40 degrees with humidity that is just out of this world.) Orally, it's a bit more difficult. It's hard to practice since my questions to Annie are generally pretty specific so I have no vocabulary. Plus, she's working so I don't want to waste too much of her time babbling on. Joanie really wants to practice her English so that's a lost cause, too. I managed to explain to Tanya, the president of the board, that I'm going to stay and close up the office and she totally understood. Woot. Although all it took was saying “puedo cerrar la puerta”, it was still a bit of an achievement. I've managed to bust out the odd sentence to add to a conversation that I understand, saying I'm allergic to food colouring, my father's name is Melvin and the cat was looking for milk (a kitten was crawling all over me while I was colouring with this adorable 5 year old yesterday, licking everywhere trying to find my secret teat. But the little girl looked at me like I was loco when I said that sentence, so I don't know if it actually made sense, haha).
My understanding is rough because the people here have a ton of accents. They're from a lot of different areas in Guatemala, but they all came together because they were part of the guerilla forces or agree with the philosophy. So instead of being in a rural area with a consistent accent or a city where people speak pretty clearly, I'm trying to grasp all of these totally different accents from different people. Annie and Joanie said they have a hard time, still, sometimes, even though they're both totally fluent and have worked around Latin America before for years.
My first work week basically consisted of studying Spanish, reading information about business plans, and shuttling to Santa Elena/Al Chal to use the internet and get settled. I am now the proud (snort) new owner of extremely ugly red PJ capris (I think they're pyjamas, anyway) with white pinstripes that are thin and relatively comfortable and a plaid Old Navy dress that squishes my boobs and makes them look totally deformed. I apparently paid way too much for them, although Joanie was with me and thought it was fine. Annie tends to get her stuff for 10Q each ($1.30) and I ended up spending 65Q (over $8) on the two things. The pants were 40Q!! I wouldn't have even paid that in Canada but I'm melting so I sucked it up. In future, I'll be cheaper. (I can see Tiana and Jessica nodding from here!)
The weekend should be much better than last weekend, where I was bored and spending more time listening to people speak French than any other language. Saturday, I want to go to Santa Elena by myself, check out the market (market days are Tuesdays and Fridays, but those days are so busy I was advised to head over the next day while stuff is still relatively fresh and crowds are gone. We went Thursday, but stuff was already starting to rot in the heat.) Joanie might take me to Flores, though, to show me around a bit. Either way, I want to park myself on the internet for a while, totally for pleasure (talking to ma baybah, sending off emails, Facebook stalking!). Sunday, the Western group is going to these falls that are around an hour away to go swimming. Mmm. I'm hoping the water is cold there. The lagoona here was disgustingly hot last Saturday and there was no relief for the few people who decided to go swimming.
There's a shallow pool at a hotel restaurant in Santa Elena where they also have wireless. One of those places that I'll need to keep in mind for the days when I feel like I'm going to go nuts! The food isn't crazy expensive, it's clean and they don't mind if you swim and hang out on the internet all day as long as you buy something. I went with Jean Claude and Annie on Monday and the food was decent, too. I'm going to agree with Leslie that the Sprite was much better than Canadian Sprite.
First day of Spanish school was alright. My teacher is very passionate about how unfair poverty and things are in the area, so she´s very interesting to listen to. She also has a lot of opinions about the banking system, which I´m apt to agree with, that she also told me a lot about today that was really interesting. And that pretty much summarizes my day. Her finding out that I know way more grammar than she expected, her coaxing out stupid made up sentences from me(5 sentences talking about things you have...ugh -I´m not creative!!) but primarily listening to her go on and on about her country was 5 hours of my day. Which is actually probably pretty beneficial because she´s using vocabulary I need to familiarize myself and my weakest point is understanding other people talk. Anyway, more soon! I have to go through Santa Elena every day this week, so I should be able to update soon.
May 23: First work week (if you can call it that) is DONE-ish
In the office, waiting to see if Mirko is going to call to confirm that I can sign up for Spanish classes for the next two weeks. He's super nice and we spoke this morning. The only problem is, he said he'd call back in the afternoon, but with the time difference (he's in Bolivia), it's hard to say if he called during my lunch already or if he's going to call me from home. I don't want to take the risk of going home but I'm the only one in the office so I'm going to have a bit of difficulty if I answer the phone and it ISN'T him. Which is actually pretty likely, since we get a fair number of calls here. Few from English speaking people. Oye.
My Spanish communication is slowly improving. Reading, I'm doing decently with the help of Erin's Costa Rica Spanish Institute textbook. (Plus, her certificate for passing is a perfect thickness for fanning myself in this heat that is over 40 degrees with humidity that is just out of this world.) Orally, it's a bit more difficult. It's hard to practice since my questions to Annie are generally pretty specific so I have no vocabulary. Plus, she's working so I don't want to waste too much of her time babbling on. Joanie really wants to practice her English so that's a lost cause, too. I managed to explain to Tanya, the president of the board, that I'm going to stay and close up the office and she totally understood. Woot. Although all it took was saying “puedo cerrar la puerta”, it was still a bit of an achievement. I've managed to bust out the odd sentence to add to a conversation that I understand, saying I'm allergic to food colouring, my father's name is Melvin and the cat was looking for milk (a kitten was crawling all over me while I was colouring with this adorable 5 year old yesterday, licking everywhere trying to find my secret teat. But the little girl looked at me like I was loco when I said that sentence, so I don't know if it actually made sense, haha).
My understanding is rough because the people here have a ton of accents. They're from a lot of different areas in Guatemala, but they all came together because they were part of the guerilla forces or agree with the philosophy. So instead of being in a rural area with a consistent accent or a city where people speak pretty clearly, I'm trying to grasp all of these totally different accents from different people. Annie and Joanie said they have a hard time, still, sometimes, even though they're both totally fluent and have worked around Latin America before for years.
My first work week basically consisted of studying Spanish, reading information about business plans, and shuttling to Santa Elena/Al Chal to use the internet and get settled. I am now the proud (snort) new owner of extremely ugly red PJ capris (I think they're pyjamas, anyway) with white pinstripes that are thin and relatively comfortable and a plaid Old Navy dress that squishes my boobs and makes them look totally deformed. I apparently paid way too much for them, although Joanie was with me and thought it was fine. Annie tends to get her stuff for 10Q each ($1.30) and I ended up spending 65Q (over $8) on the two things. The pants were 40Q!! I wouldn't have even paid that in Canada but I'm melting so I sucked it up. In future, I'll be cheaper. (I can see Tiana and Jessica nodding from here!)
The weekend should be much better than last weekend, where I was bored and spending more time listening to people speak French than any other language. Saturday, I want to go to Santa Elena by myself, check out the market (market days are Tuesdays and Fridays, but those days are so busy I was advised to head over the next day while stuff is still relatively fresh and crowds are gone. We went Thursday, but stuff was already starting to rot in the heat.) Joanie might take me to Flores, though, to show me around a bit. Either way, I want to park myself on the internet for a while, totally for pleasure (talking to ma baybah, sending off emails, Facebook stalking!). Sunday, the Western group is going to these falls that are around an hour away to go swimming. Mmm. I'm hoping the water is cold there. The lagoona here was disgustingly hot last Saturday and there was no relief for the few people who decided to go swimming.
There's a shallow pool at a hotel restaurant in Santa Elena where they also have wireless. One of those places that I'll need to keep in mind for the days when I feel like I'm going to go nuts! The food isn't crazy expensive, it's clean and they don't mind if you swim and hang out on the internet all day as long as you buy something. I went with Jean Claude and Annie on Monday and the food was decent, too. I'm going to agree with Leslie that the Sprite was much better than Canadian Sprite.
No comments:
Post a Comment