¡Estoy aquí!

I can´t believe it´s only Wednesday - I feel like I´ve been here forever. I have to be honest, the first couple of days were pretty tough. Saturday night I stayed in a hotel by myself (my school is closed on Saturdays) and I was petrified to go anywhere, considering my sense of direction is close to nonexistant. To make matters worse, when I went to leave Sunday morning to meet my host family, I found that I was locked inside the hotel. I don´t know where the owner was but I had to wait an hour for them to come back. However, that was the last of the mishaps (so far), and everyday I feel more and more at home. I am living with a host family and I love them so much! I am living with a host mom, grandma and two little sisters who are about 6 and 12. They are so sweet and made me feel like a part of their family after 10 minutes. One thing I´ve loved about Guatemala is that everything is so cheap compared to the states. To buy a cellphone with minutes was equivalent to $15 (100 quetzales) and my daily bus to work is 2 Q each way, which is about $0.50 in total. Despite the laid-back attitude of Guatemala, I have a fairly hectic routine. It consists of walking to El Calvario, where my bus is at 7:45am, from which I take the ¨chicken bus¨ (an old, dilapidated school bus that´s painted and decorated) to work, taking it back to town around 1pm for lunch a mi casa before I head to class at 2pm. The classes are 4 or 5 hours long so I get home just in time for dinner, and then I relax with my host family or do my homework, go to bed and repeat. It´s pretty exhausting but it hasn´t been that bad this week because there is not much to do at work. My job is in the Children´s Health Program, but the local schools are on vacation this week so there are no children for us to teach. Today, we took a machette to the overgrown weeds and grass on the side of the building (photos to come) and I made an advertising poster for the clinic. I´m excited for next week when I get to go into the schools and teach. Although I have a busy schedule, I am definitely making time for travel. On Sunday I am going to hike a dormant volcano about an hour outside of Xela with a friend from work, and there are a million other organized trips that the schools plan for students that I want to take advantage of. The only things I´m having trouble adjusting to are the food and no hot showers (they´re luke warm at best). The food is a lot of refried beans, plantains and tamalitas (a kind of dense bread made of corn) and some processed meat. I like that the food is for the most part local and fresh, but I just need to get used to the new tastes. Guatemala is an interesting juxstaposition of awe-inspiring landscape and poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Both are beautiful in their own way, and I am eager to explore what the natural environment and the local community have to offer. ¡Hasta luego!