Hotmail Gems/Life in Antigua: Part I

Okay, so if you're a contact of  mine from my Hotmail account, I must offer you my sincerest apologies. It has been used to spam people three times in as many weeks. I haven't closed it yet, but I did change the password and tighten up some security stuff. I'm hoping that I won't have to close it, because all of my pre-marriage contacts, this blog, Facebook, online shopping accounts, and new job hunting leads are linked to it. Maybe it's time... I mean, I got married almost five years ago, and I've had the account for eight! 


Yesterday I spent a looooong time going through all of my folders and cleaning out old files. It needed to be done anyway, and if I end up closing it, it'll be one less thing I have to do. By the time I crashed into bed, I felt like the last eight years of my life flashed before my eyes in a day. There were old stories from my time abroad in Guatemala, hilarious snippets from my kids' 7th grade journals, long relationship updates to my college friends across the world about various boys, a whole folder dedicated to Nathan (we were long distance, remember?), sweet notes from my mentors, and lots of pictures - which are worth a thousand words each. 


I took quite a ride yesterday. My mind was spinning very late into the night. Processing through all of it was more difficult than I was expecting for some reason. I don't know... My life just feels so different now, and I feel very different from the person who opened that Hotmail account before leaving for a semester abroad in Central America. Such is life.


One benefit of finding all those stories is that I now have some new blog fodder. When the days are slow, as they are now, I can always post a story for you from some crazy adventure I was having. If blogs were around back then, I would have been posting them anyway. 


I have still been applying for jobs using my method (spending hours on each application, making sure all of the details are taken care of and that my cover letter matches everything in the job description), but Nathan has encouraged me to cast a wider net and to just go fast and furious. So, this morning  I applied for about 30 jobs using a generic job searching site. We'll see what happens. 


In the mean time, I think I'll give you a series of seven e-mails from life in Antigua, Guatemala, appropriately titled "Life in Antigua." It starts off fairly slowly, but it gets quite interesting as the semester progresses, I promise. I have no way of contacting any of the characters in this series to ask their permission to put this on the blog, so I've changed some names to protect their privacy. I'm not sure they would mind, but one can never be too careful. For a bit of background, I went to Guatemala to solidify my Spanish. I went to a language school and lived with a local family. My dad dropped me off at the beginning of February, and I was there through May of 2003. Here is Part I. 

________________________________________________

Hey friends and family!


Thanks for your thoughts and prayers while I am here in Guatemala. I LOVE receiving your e-mails. I usually hit "my" internet cafe every other day or so. Although writing mass e-mails is the easiest way to contact all of you at once, I promise to write you individually if you write me first. :)

For starters, the weather here is awesome. It is cooler than I thought it would be, in the 60s and 70s, but I hear that it will warm up in the coming months. I guess February is their winter month. However, I'd love it to stay exactly the way it is right now - nice and warm with no bugs. For those of you in Indiana and further east, I am sorry to hear about your blizzardous weather these past few days. If you could be here with me, I'm sure you would be. :)

The city of Antigua is a touristy one. The streets are made of cobblestone, and all of the buildings are quaint and old-looking. I live on a street with a famous arch [Editor's note: see picture at the bottom of this post]. I haven't figured out its significance yet, but it helps me when I am a bit lost.

The family I'm staying with is absolutely awesome. There is a mom, a dad, and four boys. The dad owns a photo shop across the street from McDonald's, and I haven't quite figured out what the mom does yet. She said that she stays at home and takes care of the house, but she's gone when I leave in the morning and doesn't come back until I'm done with school. Plus, there is a maid that cooks and cleans during the day.

The oldest boy who is 20, Jose, was a little distant with my dad and me, but my dad cracked the tought nut with a little conversation about movies and pop culture in the States. He stays with his grandparents during the day because they live closer to the university. His first question to me was not, "What is your name?" or even "Where are you from?" It was "So, when are we going dancing?"


The next one, Juan, 17, is a nice kid studying electrical stuff. He's helps me with my stumbling Spanish when I need it and seems to be the man of the house when his father is away.

The third boy, Carlos, is 13 and the most akward adolescent you'll ever lay eyes on. He has skinny long legs, shuffles around the house, talks suuuuper slowly, and slurrs all of his words together. He reminds me of Pepe Gonzales, Speedy Gonzales's cousin who sings "La Cucaracha" off key and speaks painfully slowly. "Speeeedy. Wheere are you gooooing?" I think he has a crush on me. When we went to the beach, (more like a waterpark with the beach in the background), he followed me everywhere, stared at me with his slightly crossed eyes, and asked if I had a boyfriend. His affections have since lessened, but I was a little worried about it for a day or so.

The youngest, and by far the cutest is Rodrigo. He will be 11 years old on Sunday and is hoarding his money so he can buy a bike. On our first afternoon, he gave my dad and me a little tour of Antigua. After we bought him a Coke and some fries at McDonald's we became fast friends. He's probably taught me the most Spanish so far. He always speaks clearly and with words I can understand. Great kid! He is a SMART one for being 10 years old. He usually picks on Carlos, the 13 year old. :)

School is going GREAT! I have an awesome teacher named Lidia, who teaches me Spanish for 4 hours a day. We usually talk for the first two hours, take a break for the next 30 minutes, and then study grammar for the last hour and a half. The director and all of the teachers are very nice, but I am convinced that I got the best teacher. :) After only three days, I have noticed that my speaking skills have improved some and my listening skills have improved exponentially. I am hoping that one day I'll wake up and it will all just "click."

Ok - that's all for now because I'm afraid something bad will happen and I'll lose this whole e-mail. More in the next week or so...

 My love to you all!

 Nicole

Yes, Google Images had a picture of the street where I lived. Whoa!