Friday, October 7

We finished our first full week of Spanish school.  Overall, the morning schedule works really well.  We leave the house at 7:40 to walk the mile to school.  They have one-on-one instruction with their teachers for two hours, and then I meet them for their 30 minute break.  Andrew has found a spot up on the roof that he has claimed for himself, where he plants himself down to read a book and be left alone.  He and Chloe bring a snack from the house (chocolate covered graham crackers) and Mason and Katie buy something to eat at school.  The chocobanas run 1 quetzal (13 cents) and the tacos are 3 Q (40 cents).

That means I end up walking to Spanish school, then run a couple of errands, walk home, walk back for snack, do some errands, walk back to pick them up, and then walk home.  I have been averaging around 11 miles a day of running and walking.  I was pretty tired this morning, so I'm feeling it. Especially since a lot of that time I'm hauling things like food and laundry.

Chloe's teacher has a husband that is a private Spanish instructor.  He's going to be Ryan's tutor for any of the weeks he can spare the time to do it. It's the most time efficient way to do it, so we were glad to find someone.  Plus he tries to talk to the people who come in and out of the house, like gardeners and Maria.

It took me about an hour and a half to figure out how to download and order from the Dominos app for Guatemala, and I ended up walking to Dominos to make sure I got my order right before I placed it.  I was afraid it couldn't tell I was in Antigua and was going to deliver the pizza in Guatemala City or something.  But it was all worth it to get 50% off my pizzas by using the app.

Tonight we went to an FHE kind of night at the church that the Young Women's president told me about.  At first we weren't sure how it was going to go.  We were one of the first ones there, and spent some time talking to one of the members.  It totally reminded me of my mission. Then a few more people filtered in and they started the meeting.  There was a short spiritual message and then they had a song and prayer and then played a game.

Finding your place in a new group is always sort of awkward, but tonight was a lot better than Sunday.  We at least know a few people now and tomorrow we will go do a service activity at the church which should help us get to know a few more people. It's hard for our kids to really enjoy a lot of it since they don't speak Spanish very well yet, but they enjoyed the game we played tonight (the frog assassin and the hunter) and could at least have the feeling of being glad they were there.

When we got home, Katie and Chloe found a moth the size of a bird in their room.  Yikes! It took about 5 minutes for us to coax it out. Having the mosquito nets over their beds has been good for all of them, since I think it makes them feel a little more protected from all of the little critters that pop up.  There actually aren't as many as I would think for how much the doors are open to the outside, but it's more than they have at home.