Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Antiqua Guatemala UPDATED W-PHOTOS

Anna's Entry

We arrived and enrolled right away into an intense Spanish language program for two weeks. Antigua is world famous for its Spanish language instruction. The guy who owns a school is not the most honest person, however my instructor is great, and for the first week, I’ve learnt A LOT. I have absolutely no training in Spanish, so I started from zero. I’m taking 5 hours per day (with a teacher one on one), and after the first week, I’m actually able to communicate. It’s a LOT of work; I’m spending my all day and night studying!
In addition, we’re staying with a Guatemalan family (who are related to the owner of the school but it’s another story); the mother of the family Maria is a good cook, but not a very nice person. I’ll be upfront about it- I don’t like her, and she does not like me. She doesn’t like me because even though I’ve been married for 10 years, I don’t have kids yet. In her opinion, I should already have at least five of them (for the record, a woman in Guatemala has an average of six kids). I don’t like her because of her simplistic views, ignorance, and overall ‘non-Guatemalan’ character. So far, people I’ve met on the buses, in markets, on the street, etc. have been very polite, friendly, and I’m very surprised that she’s all but none of these things. Ah well…. it's her loss….
We have one more week of Spanish instruction, after that we should be heading out for Honduras. I’m really glad we are getting training in Spanish now- we will need it in the next months of travel. Oh, I also decided to type up my homework in Spanish- describing our time here in Antigua. It’s written in not-complicated Spanish, but, hey- at least I know now more than just ‘thank you’ in Spanish.


Mi esposo Roberto y yo estudiamos en la escuela de Espanol en Antigua por dos semanos. Nosotros vivimos con una familia en la casa cerca de la escuela. Hay cuatro estudiantes en la casa. Una chica es de Japan, y un chico es de Suiza. Todos los estudiantes comen con la familia. La comida es tipica de Guatemala. Nuestra escuela empieza a las ocho de la manana, y termina a la una de la tarde, pero yo tengo mi clase a la una y media de la tardeel martes y el juevez. Es muy importante estudiar y practicar Espanol por cinco horas cada dia porque nosotros tenemos que salir a Honduras en ocho dias. Vamos a visitar las islas en el Atlantico, y nosotros esperamos aprender a bucear. Cuando no tenemos la escuela, nosotros visitamos el mercado, el parque central, el museo y la plaza. Antigua es muy historica, y hay muchas partes interesantes. Pero la ciudad no es muy grande, y es facil caminar al centro. Esta semana es la fiesta de Navidad en el parque central con los fuegos y el concierto.Generalmente, nos gusta la experencia en Guatemala.

Some pictures from a recent fiesta (Guadalupe). The blurry one (2) was taken while walking (a bit on-the-sly, actually they all were somewhat discretely) as there are sometimes issues with photographing children.


















This image was something we ran into the other day, not sure what it is beyond entertainment.





Dogs where we are living while going to school.













Antigua at night.

















The dish-washing sink.














View over Antigua.

posted by Rob and Anna @ 11:50 AM