dolor de cabeza

After yesterday's Spanish lesson, my head is swimming. It's been a long time since I've put 100% effort into learning something (haha, Mom, don't read that!) - sure I'd gather information from my lessons in college, but I certainly wasn't attempting to retain everything. However, my goal yesterday, as I sat across the sweet Ana Lucia, was to fully comprehend every new word she gave me and make it a part of my vocabulary. Easier said than done. She's a great teacher to have though, working less from the book and more with actual conversation. Also, it helps that a great deal of this is review (at least, the first day was), and I'm just finding myself attempting to tap into my junior year of high school. However, after I leave the internet here, I'm spending the rest of the morning going over flash cards and conjugating verbs...woooo, vacation!

Yesterday was otherwise uneventful. I got know the other students in the house a little better:

* Zack from Springfield, Illinois who is studying Spanish in Guatemala and Costa Rica until December.
* Erica from New Mexico, who is taking a break from working as a Physician's Assistant in Belize.
* Conseca(? I keep forgetting her name :( ) from Japan who is studying Spanish in Antigua for four months because "Spanish gives you the chance to express your emotions, unlike Japanese".

They're all really nice, though I can't help but feel this weird tension between Erica and I - I don't know if it's just an American attitude of needing to get to know a person first before being friendly (Zack was a bit standoffish on Sunday too, but now we've sat around and talked a lot more) or if we're stepping on each other's niche by being the adventurous young white American girl traveling alone. Tonight is ladies night at one of the local bars though, and us three girls have talked about going out, so hopefully any weirdness I'm experiencing/imagining will dissipate.

I'm being fed really well at the house, which I couldn't be happier about. My favorite meal yesterday was lunch, where we had a big piece of chicken that had been stewed with tomatoes, rice, a medley of green beans and bell peppers, and all the thick tortillas you could want. After this week, I'm definitely going to have to move to a smaller town so that I can keep eating like this without paying a lot in town. Antigua is very much the North Beach of Guatemala.

Cesar is really nice, as is his wife Carmen, and because the two make no attempt to speak English, it's great practice sitting around the dinner table with them. Cesar teaches guitar to kids in the town and it was so lovely to hear him playing and singing this morning as I was getting ready for the day - he also said that tonight he was going to perform for us after dinner.

I'm surprised at how much the four hours of class takes away from the rest of the day (between studying, homework, and trying to sleep it off), but unlike the rest of the people in the house, I'm going to try and find a balance between school and discovering Antigua - after all, though I want to know Spanish, I want to use it more.