Mi primero día de escuela, pero estoy muy triste

What a sad day it is here. Rescuers are still finding bodies in numerous mudslides in different sections of the Interamerican highway. I believe the highest death toll is from the camioneta accident near Nahuala, which is just outside Xela. My school planned a trip to a neighboring town today which was cancelled primarily due to road blockage but also because of the potential danger. The school also advised us that it will continue to be extremely cautious about running trips outside of Xela.

The weather is really unpredictable here. Today the sun was shining bright all afternoon and at exactly 5pm, torrential downpours soaked todas las calles. I will continue to be careful about any travel I do outside of Xela, which I don’t think my current schedule will permit much else besides studying and working. 

Despite the somber mood, my first day of class was extremely successful. I should be writing en español en este momento and my teacher, Miriam, would be very upset if she knew I was blogging en inglés, but I’ll study en mi casa esta noche, después de la cena. Speaking of food, I had a yummy breakfast of eggs, beans, tamalitos and warm-up conversation with mi familia. And for lunch, I had Guatemalan raviolis, which were kind of like manicotti filled with chopped meat. Yummmm. Okay, back to school. I really like my teacher. Even though I did horribly on the assessment test (those damn verbos preterito y imperfecto!), she still placed me somewhere between beginner and intermediate. Soy begmediate (pronounced beg-MEE-dee-ah-tay). 

Anyway, I understood most of what she was saying and she actually told me a sort of chiste soucio, and I got it! I was more impressed with that than she was. She told me another joke that I understood, but didn’t really get. I don’t even really get jokes in English. And I never remember them. We worked on verbs mostly today, because that really is my trouble area, but we were conversing in Spanish more than anything else, which I guess I’m better at than I think I am. We talked about her other job, where we grew up, what I studied, how we both don’t want to work anymore and where we can find rich husbands. Really looking forward to mañana. The activity today was rollerskating, and since I didn’t think that would really improve my Spanish and would most likely just improve my chances of ending up in a Guatemalan hospital, I skipped it and went to work instead, where I looked at more pictures of clowns and mimes. I just have two more years of archives to look through! I really understand the narrative of each performance just from looking at the photos and can’t wait to start designing pages.

I still can’t upload pics from my camera. Going to try something new tomorrow. Okay, the rain finally stopped and it’s almost time for dinner, wonder what we’re having…

¡Buenos noches amigos!  Hasta mañana.