Our Week in Antigua...

Settling into our new home in Antigua, we've made the decision to stay here for the rest of the week till after Christmas, and study Spanish during the day while we tour the area.

Our Hostel is costing us about $7.00 per day each, for a room and a shared bathroom, and we've got the bikes safely parked inside.

Our friend Ryan, who we hadn't seen since La Paz, Baja Mexico, showed up today.. he ended up in Antigua too, and was walking by our Hostel and saw our bikes… what an awesome surprise.

He's moved in with us as well with his girlfriend Donna, who is also down here studying Spanish.

Our Spanish school is fun. I haven't been in "class" in such a long time, it's been kind of fun to get my books together and then walk the 4 blocks to school each day.

It's one on one study, my teacher's name is Irma, and Cory's teacher is Maria Marta.

Cory and Maria Marta

My teacher Irma

  They both take the "chicken bus" in to work each day, just for us (we are their only students).

Each day we decide when we want to do our 4 hours of study, and then we agree on a time.

Tim learning Spanish from Irma

Our course is outlined in a booklet that we get, which has examples of the things we are learning, but we are encouraged to modify the course for whatever we feel is important.

Maria Marta and Cory

So for us, we are practicing things like:

How much for a room for two people for one night?

How far to the next town?

Is there a grocery store this way?

Things we can come up against all the time.

We had our school christmas party today.  There was a Piñata, the students brought the drinks, and the teachers provided the meal.  We sat in the courtyard and enjoyed our Christmas lunch.  

Cory and Troy eating lunch

Some of the teachers and students.

Troy had a small bike issue, so we took it into Guatemala city yesterday to get it fixed.  Turned out to be a small problem (a spring) which took them 2 hours to open the engine up and replace.  Back home, it would have been at least $250.00 for this much labour, but here it was $40.  His bike was ready today, so Cory and Troy went in and picked it up.  

On the way back, they noticed that one of the local volcano's that dominates the sky here was erupting.  It was blowing out billowing black clouds of smoke.  We asked the locals why no one was worried, and were told that it does this all the time.  

Of course, a little over a year ago it was doing this: