The Famous First - May 13

Summer in Antigua

I have moved into my new summer house. It is in a bakery. The family here consists of Margoth, my new den mother and her husband Oracio, whom I call Señor. Their son Tito is here as well. I’m not sure how old he is, anywhere from 20 to 30, but since men here rarely leave their parent’s house before they are married and also end up looking much older than their years, I probably will never have an actual number. There are two other children, Giovani and Rita, with families of their own. I have not met them yet. I get the feeling that Margoth will be my primary point of contact. There is also another student here, a woman named Robin who is learning spanish before beginning a 4 year missionary trip into an orphanage in Honduras. She seems quite nice and I have a feeling we’ll get along well.

The house also has a few other inhabitants. Claudio is the old rooster who lives on the roof. He has no grass to scratch, no hens to shuffle about, and generally nothing to do but crow at 5:30 am. In this respect I imagine he is very much like many of the men here. There is also a sweet little cat named Mischel. I’m not sure if Mischel is a boy or girl, but I’m quite certain that at times, Mischel is not a cat. During meals (which we take in the bakery, dinner time is spent with Robin and Margoth watching a telenovela called Bellas Candidades, or something) Mischel meows and jumps up, begging for food. I haven’t given him any, but that’s ok since Margoth just told me that he only eats meat. I shall test this later when I have some meat to give.



My teacher’s name is Olga and she is very sweet. We have spent the first few days going over the many many tenses of Ser and Estar and if this is the pace I’m expected to keep, I shall be pleasantly surprised if I don’t end up with a stroke. Everyone else here talks about their “book level,” but I still have not been assigned one. Nor has Olga talked about giving me an exam. I am a little apprehensive, but we’ll see.

Henry, Stephen, Rachel and I all tend to hang out together so far. Dad and Mom left on Tuesday to go back to GC, Dad’s flight in on Wednesday morning and Mom will stay with the family for another week while Henry and Stephen travel up to Lancin. Rach and I are mostly just tooling around Antigua. I do my classes in the morning at CSA which is happily directly across the street from Jungle Party. Curing morning break I go over to say hello to them, then after I get out of class I go over again and we decide on a day’s course of action. We are not very specific about our course of action, so often it means wandering around the streets trying to find a specific building that may or may not actually exist.

The whole having the family here is lovely, and I’m happy to get to spend time with them. However it has slightly alienated me from my host family. I don’t know them too well at this point, but I’m not very worried. There’s plenty of time for that later. Meanwhile, we’ve all been eating very well, (too well! my pocketbook is floating away) and generally having a relaxing first week in Antigua. Shortly though, the bros will leave and then Rach and I will head up to Xela to deposit her in her Medical Spanish school. I shall be sad that she’s gone, as it’s so nice having a “real friend” to travel with, rather than meeting people and making 24 hour friendships. Strangely though, I did this recently in Nashville, and the fast acquaintance (more like one week rather than 24 hours) has been fairly lasting for me. We’ll see how lasting it really is.

Meanwhile, my time here in Guatemala has just begun. The days feel long and the nights feel very short. Claudio wakes me up early, which is just as well since the room heats up quickly. By noontime I am usually ready for a nap, and feel like an entire day has gone by already. At this pace I’ll be into 72 hour days. I miss Nashville and all the friends there. I hope our little city is recovering from the flooding, but I’m very proud to see that everyone responded to the 500 year flood with admirable traits, even though there was some idiotic water wastage. On the whole though, I think we performed well.

Good Job Tennessee! and I’ll see you soon.
MRM