Salsa Dancing

el 20 de junio 2011

I woke up at 7:15, got dressed, and had breakfast (oatmeal with cooked platanos). I was a bit concerned because these are the same platanos that have been sitting cold on the stove since Saturday. I finished getting ready and left for school at 7:50. My school is just two blocks from my apartment, so it didn’t take long to get there. I was one of the first students there. I chatted with other people while I waited for everyone to arrive.

The director, Olga, had a little meeting in which we all introduced ourselves and she went over the activities for the week. There are about 12 students studying during the morning and a group from Canada is studying in the afternoon. As I saw the activities, I felt a bit disappointed that I would not be able to attend most of them if I work in the orphanage.

When the meeting was over, Carolina and I went upstairs to our same table from Friday. Went over perifrasis, which are the connecting prepositions that go began certain verbs and we reviewed the imperfect tense. I felt like we did too much review. It seems like the problem is we spend too much time on what I already have mastered. After lots of practice, during which Carolina mostly gave me example sentences, I suggested that we move on to something else. We comprised by me doing one more exercise. I read some short stories aloud and retold them to Carolina. During the pausa (break) I checked my email to see if Andrea had emailed me about volunteering in the orphanage. She hadn’t. I got some tea and went back up to read some more of my Isabel Allende book. When the half hour break was over at 11, Carolina and I studied more and we talked a lot. She also taught me three Spanish children´s songs. Some of them are games that are played in a circle. I hope my kids next year are excited to learn Spanish!

After school, I checked my email again and I had a message from Andrea saying that we can’t volunteer in the orphanage. I was disappointed but also relieved because I feel like I have a lot going on, and I want to be able to participate in the school activities. I had lunch with Gabby (which consisted of some curry rice with vegetables, potato salad, and half of an avocado) and then I went down to talk to the people in the office of the apartments to get some info for Jenny. It is very cheap to live here… $100 a month for one person and that includes electricity, water, gas, internet, and cleaning, as well. Someone cleans the apt every day and your room (including fresh sheets) every week. I then went to meet Andrea and Holly in the Café La Luna. They had finished eating, so we sat and chatted for a few minutes before we headed out. We stopped by EntreMundos to see about Holly finding a place to volunteer, but no one was there. We went to my building to show Holly my terrace and then we went to a taco place so Andrea could get more food (the servings were really small at La Luna). She had gringas al pastor and ending up only eating two so I ate the other one. Then we headed back toward their place and I went to find Sandy’s school to ask her if we were going to eat dinner together. She said that we were at eight, which was perfect for me since I had dance class at seven at my school. I walked by a museum and decided to go since it was only Q6. I had read in the guidebook that the museum is not that great, but I figured it would be somewhat interesting. The lower level had lots of old documents and old typewriters and telephones. Something I thought was funny is that all of the objects had a tag attached that told what year they were donated to the museum, but they didn’t say what year they were made. However, the upper level was much more interesting. There were lots of old Mayan pots and photographs of Guatemala from the 1930s, which were fun to look at because I know some of those places. The very best part was the section of stuffed animals. There were many stuffed birds, including a quetzal. The funny thing is that they had really fake google eyes on the birds. It was cool to be able to see the birds up close. The next room had animals. It was quite a strange collection including a whale skull, a two-headed calf, an eight-legged goat (I think), some big cats, a Chow Chow, snakes, and a collection of fetuses in jars. There were kitten, puppy, rat, bird, fish, cow, and even human fetuses (eight weeks and four months). Very unusual!

After the museum, I went to XelaPan to get a snack since I would be eating dinner late. They didn’t have any Shecas con frijol so I got one long tostada with sugar and two anise rolls. I stopped at a shop and bought some postcards of Guatemala. Then I munched on my bread while I walked home. When I got back, I talked with Kristen for an hour and we looked for transportation options to get to Antigua. Andrea is sure that she saw an option to take a first class bus to Antigua from Xela. I don’t know of this option but would much prefer it as I hate traveling in shuttles. We tried to look some up online but several of the bus companies surprisingly do not have websites. We decided that we would go to the Galgos bus station some afternoon and ask because they might have one that goes to Antigua. I went and got my computer and tried to post some pictures. For some reason, the internet appeared to be working fine, but I could not get photos to post. Finally I got three to post, but it took each one about 20 minutes to upload! You might just have to wait until I get back to see more pictures! Maybe I’ll try facebook to see if that is faster.

Soon it was time for me to leave for my dance class. I walked the two blocks to my school. The four New York girls were there and Bernadette and some guys, including two male teachers who were leading the class. We moved all the tables and chairs out of the room and then we decided to move to a different classroom (mine) that is bigger so we had to move all the chairs and tables out of that one. Most girls were dancing barefoot but some were in socks. I wore socks and let me tell you, I did a nice job of cleaning their floor. When we finished, the bottoms of my socks were nearly black. They were so dirty I took them off before putting on my shoes! I guess I know which socks I will wear if we have dance class next week! The class was really fun. We reviewed the basic steps and then danced together as a group. Then after a half hour, we began to dance in partners. We had two too many girls, so we took turns having one pair of girls dance together. It was fun and all too soon, it was time to go. We finished about 8:15. I quickly put some chairs back and then I hurried home for dinner. No one came to open the door of the apartment building for about five minutes, but finally a girl was coming out and I slipped in.

Sandy had dinner waiting for me: an egg fried on top of a tortilla and a vegetable stir-fry with green beans, red peppers, carrots, and tons of onion. It was good, but later in the evening my stomach began to hurt a little, I think from too many nearly-raw onions. After dinner, the rest of the people in my apartment were going to a bar to listen to someone they knew sing. I was really tired, so I wrote a composition for class tomorrow and finished reading my story from Cuentos de Eva Luna. Then I went to bed around 10:30. I was too tired and cold to shower tonight.