Lunes y Martes en La Escuela

The past two days have been similar, and I expect them to continue to be. I get up at 6:30 to shower and get my things together; breakfast is around 7:15; Alyssa and I leave for Proyecto Lingüístico Franciso Marroquín (PLFM) around 7:40 in order to arrive a little before 8:00. It usually takes 10 – 15 minutes to walk there, depending on traffic. Everything in the city is accessible on foot, nor do I think I would risk driving even if I had the opportunity!

On Monday I began with a brief orientation lasting 20 minutes, I was assigned my instructor for the week, and we jumped right into it. (Side note – Backstreet Boys en Español is on the radio as I write this!)

I feel totally overwhelmed. I don’t know any Spanish besides the few words I picked up from listening to audio CDs. My instructor is a very nice lady who doesn’t know any English. It is total immersion and then some! I try to smile through my exasperation because I can tell she isn’t sure how to teach me. We’ve been looking through lists of vocab and she has me write them in a notebook to study. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it’s frustrating hearing Spanish all around me while only rarely being able to pick out random words. Sometimes identifying pictures is too easy for me; other times she will try to have a broken conversation with me and I am at a complete loss. I can only hope it gets better!

We study from 8:00 – 10:00, 10:30 – 12:00, 2:00 – 3:30, and 4:00 – 5:00. The half hour breaks give me a chance to quickly check my e-mail, and the two hour break is the midday siesta when I come back to la casa de mi familia guatemalteca (the house of my Guatemalan family) for lunch and a much-needed brain break. I know it’s only day two, but I’m really starting to doubt the chances of being semi-fluent when I return to the States. (I hear that the Dominican dialect is even harder to understand.)

After class on Monday I went to the ATM and then the supermarket to buy index cards. Interestingly, all the office supplies are behind a counter and you have to ask for them. The first lady didn’t understand me at all, but thankfully the second lady did and I got a couple packets. They didn’t have actual index cards, but something similar. It’s interesting what things you take for granted until you’re in a foreign country.

Walking back from the supermarket to the house took about half an hour, and it sprinkled almost the entire way. I should have bought an umbrella while I was at it…

Monday evening I tried to study, but my brain quickly became exhausted, so I ended up going to bed before 9:00, which is very unlike me! (It’s probably a good thing, because Tuesday is proving to be just as difficult.)

A lot of the time there are clouds that hug the mountains and volcanos, but Tuesday morning Fuego (one of the two active volcanos) was fairly visible. We could see steam rising off of the side of the mountain, and a cloud of steam above it. I’ll try to get a picture sometime, but it is so far in the distance that I don’t know if it will turn up very well.

Tuesday afternoon we began at 2:00 as expected, but then we stopped suddenly so we could watch a movie with a group of other people. I would have rather kept studying one-on-one because the movie was very depressing. It was about several Colombian girls who were trafficking illegal drugs into New York. The movie was in Spanish with English subtitles, so I wasn’t really getting too much out of it linguistically.

I’ll keep trying to battle my pessimism! I shouldn't expect to be fluent in a day.

“But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.”

Psalm 52:8