the countdown begins...

only a few days left! i realized what happened with my alarm clock on sat. i programmed it for mon-fri, and what i did was change the time to 5:30 but for weekdays only. good job. apparently i missed a very eventful day. the bus driver and another student almost drowned from an undercurrent and had to be rescued by lifeguards. the 9-yr-old daughter of one of the students who is a father vomited on the way there, and one student got salsa in her eye. to make up for missing the beach, i decided to eat seafood and ate shrimp ceviche at a place my host family recommended me to. ate all by my lonesome, but it was nice. read a little and enjoyed the me-time. also made time to shop around. went to mercado democracia to what they had. needed to get a guatemala nation team jersey. bought one, but later realized it wasn't the official one. ARGH! what a good fake. i should have done my research to see what a real one looked like. but it was my bad too cuz i didn't even bother to ask if it was the official one. oh well, it works for me. also bought books and resources for my classroom and self.

on sunday, i decided to go forth with the traveling alone. i got on the microbus to the main bus terminal, got on the bus to chichicastenango (chichi for short, hehee! i´m immature) for their sunday marketplace. 3-hour bus ride. on the way, i talked it up with two italians sitting behind me. yes, i initiated conversation! i never do that with strangers. we talked about all kinds of things, including, naturally, the world cup final and the insanity that occurred in their country when they won. arrived in chichi around 1, asked when the last bus to return to xela would come, and took on the challenge of making my way through the maze of the marketplace. walked through the marketplace and realized everything was really not cheaper, but in fact more expensive. apparently the marketplace is geared towards tourists. argh. came away with a few things for a good deal. when finished, i got on the bus at 3, and got home around 6... safe and sound! so proud of myself! yay me!

ok, but i am kind of frustrated with my level of spanish. i think i expected a huge leap of improvement, but really it´s not that much growth in terms of speaking. my understanding of the language, grammatical structure and all this other stuff is much more clear in my head, and i have a larger vocab... but i guess i don´t know what i´m using as a measure of growth. i think i'll have to make plans to come back here again to study more! i´m feeling the nearness of my departure. getting kind of nostalgic already.