Thursday, May 16th 2019
The past two days have been amazing. We’ve started both days with 4 hours of Spanish class. My teacher is named Alma and she has been teaching Spanish in Xela for over 20 years. She likes to play basketball and football (aka soccer for the Americans) and she attends her church group twice a week. I have always struggled speaking conversationally in Spanish, but after even one day a lot has come back to me. For our snack break we went to the local market.
There is a shop inside where a lady sells empanadas and other snacks for only 5Q ($1=7.5Q). The chicken empanadas are pretty tasty. We went on a tour of Xela yesterday and took some photos. Zone 3 reminded me a lot of the streets and markets of Hanoi; small crowded markets with freshly butchered meat adjacent to a store selling knock-off Nikes.
Today after lunch, we watched a film titled “When the Mountains Tremble”. It was about the 36 year long civil war in Guatemala and was eye-opening. I had no idea of America’s involvement and instigation of the problems in this country. We then had a nice discussion about everyones first impressions of Guatemala. For some, it was their first time out of the country.
Guat's Up 