One week since leaving Australia

Well we have finished our fourth day of Spanish lessons and know a lot more than before. Still can’t carry a conversation but know a lot more words and can read simple sentences. The school is quite small with only one other student when we started. Another one started today. It’s one-on-one study with the teachers. Sarah’s teacher is easy going and fun but mine is a bit anti-social and serious. Sarah is in the sunny* courtyard and I am sitting in a dark classroom with my grumpy teacher hearing the laughing from outside.

(*when it’s not raining which is every afternoon and second morning!)

www.inepas.org

On Monday afternoon after class we watched a video called Daughter of the Puma which was a story of a young woman in Guatemala during the civil war. Her village was massacred by the army in 1982 and after a year in a refugee camp in Mexico she travelled to Guatemala city to search for her missing brother. It was a pretty horrific movie really but good to get an idea of the terrible things that happened here during the civil war which ran for 36 years until 1994.

Tuesday afternoon was supposed to be a visit to a village north of Xela called Salcaja which has the oldest Catholic church in Central America, built in 1486. Because it was raining though we stayed in Xela and went to the old train station which had a museum.
The train station was a massive building which was the terminal for an electric train system which went from Xela to Retalhuleu and was completed in 1930. The display was mainly photos but it was in impressive scheme with a purpose built hydro-electric dam to supply power and some amazing bridges through the mountains. All the information was in Spanish and the teacher Fernando who was guiding us was no help at all with questions. Apart from our limited grasp of each others primary language, he didn’t seem to know anything about the Train system. I commented about how amazing it was that Guatemala had an electric train system in 1930 and he insisted that it wasn’t electric! I pointed out the hydro-electric dam photos at the start of the display, the electric lines running above the trains in every photo and the contacts on top of the trains connecting to the wires….. “only for the lights” was the response. From what I could figure out, the system was damaged by an earthquake in 1934 and dismantled!

http://www.tramz.com/gt/q.html

Wednesday afternoon we had free and when class finished at 1pm Sarah came into the class as I took a minute to pack my bag. I then went to the bathroom while she waited in the courtyard of the school and when we went to leave a couple of minutes later we found we were LOCKED IN! The teachers and facilitator had locked up shop and left us there! The front door was deadlocked so no way we were getting out there. Sarah was a bit worried we would be spending the night but there was a back entrance out of a storeroom we were able to escape through. Not happy Jan!


It’s been really mentally exhausting doing 5 hours of lessons each day starting at 8am. Monday and Tuesday we went to bed really early because we were so tired but then woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. Last night it seemed like sleep patterns were getting back to normal.




The walk to school is 1.55km from the apartment and we have been coming home for lunch before going back for the afternoon activities so we have been getting lots of exercise walking over 6 km a day.
The altitude doesn’t seem to be bothering me anymore either which is good. Xela is at 2340m which is higher than the tallest mountain in Australia, Mount Kosciusko.



We have been shopping at the local supermarket which has reasonable range of food but not much in the way of fruit and veg. Sarah was excited that you can buy mayonnaise by the bag though. Thanks for the Rain Jacket Steph! It’s been very useful.
The nearby markets have a big range and we have bought a few things from there. Quite different to the shiny, blemish-free stuff we demand in the Supermarkets in Australia though.


We did get a pumpkin to make soup for dinner and when I opened it the inside was a disgusting rotting grey colour! It still smelled like pumpkin and we decided it must just be a different type which normally looks like it’s rotten. Still couldn’t bring ourselves to eat it though…..