What Not To Say In Spanish

Adriane: We are winding up week two. The first day or two upon arrival in Antigua I felt somewhat homesick. I was like what did I get myself into. Now, I'm feeling sad that I only have 4 weeks left. I love it here. If employment weren't an issue, I could easily live here. It would be difficult being so far away for family, but I think I could do it short term.

I'm becoming more confident in my use of Spanish. I'm by no means proficient. However, I have been inspired to continue my spanish language studies upon return to the USA. Por ejemplo, ayer, Yo decí mi hermana es a chihuahua. In other words, I said, "My sister is a chihuahua". Instead of saying, she has a chihuahua. Well, actually, I almost said this, but I caught my mistake. It didn't matter though because I had said enough to make my host family laugh...with me of course and not at me : )

Cathy and I braved the waters and volunteered to be the first to administer our first assessment with two spanish speaking individuals today at Hogar Maria. For our fellow OT's, you guys remember the COPM which is the instrument we used. For the non-OTers, this assessment determines which activities/occupations are important to the individual and whether or not they are having any difficulties participating in them. Very client-centered! And, in case you are wondering, we did not speak to them completely in Espanol. We are not that good....yet! We have an anthropologist on our team who is also fluent in Spanish and she interpreted. Thank God! She is awesome. I think we all want to be her when we grow up. She is only a few years older than Cathy and I and we are hoping to meet up with her tonight. It is Friday night afterall!

This evening we met up with our group at Cafe Rainbow. Every night they have live music. After chatting for a bit, most of us went to eat a late dinner at a restaurant owned by a host family where our friends Abby and Kaithlin are residing. Unfortunately, the food was not good...no bueno. The carne asada was extremely chewy and the horchata tasted very processed. It didn't taste like the restaurant made it. But, when you are starving, you aren't that picky, right? The bad news....I (Adriane) felt pretty sick afterwards. My sweet friend Sola rubbed my back though until I felt better. Good guy for sure!

After arriving home from dinner, I (Adriane) unlocked the door to my room, entered, and then saw a HUGE spider on the wall next to my bed. NO BUENO!!!!!!!!!!! I quickly went to Caithlin's room to ask for help. She was just as terrified of the prospect of getting anywhere near the spider, but agreed to kill it for me. However, she couldn't do it unless she listened to her ipod. She needed the music to build up her strength. The chosen song was "Have You Ever" by Incubus. LOL Afterwards, I could not fall asleep. I was paranoid that there may be more of them. Actually, I ended up killing 2 more really small spiders. But, as you can tell, I survived the night and was not carried off by any spiders.

Cathy: So, I have to admit Adriane has been doing the majority of the initiating when it comes to blog postings. So, I want to back track and give a little of the observations I made upon our first arrival. First I'm absolutely in love with the cobble-stone roads--at least the way they look, not necessarily when I have to walk on them...lol...I've come close to spraining my ankle like 3x's so far! Next, there are no rules of the road! Seriously! Here drivers don't stop for pedestrians, if the person in front is driving too slow, the next driver will just drive around them even if it's on a very tight road. They have no dea what tailgaiting is. Needless to say, all the cars have dents and scrapes, etc. Another major surprise was the motorcycles...not only do the drivers not have to wear helmets, but it is rather common to see a man driving, a woman on the back, a small child in between them, and a baby in her arms...yes, that's right. VERY different!

As for my Spanish instruction, I'm not so pleased with my progress, however I guess I should be because today when we went to drop our laundry off to be washed the lady running the business gave me applause (literally) for how fluent I was. That did make me happy! At the Spanish school, I met a friend named Benny, officially Benyel which means "son of God". He is from Israel and practices the Jewish religion. He invited me to participate in a shabat yesterday. Apparently this takes place on Friday evenings at sunset. Two of my profesoras are staying in the same place and are also Jewish. There was a lighting of the candles accompanied by a prayer from one of my profesoras, then there was a prayer read by my friend Benny over the wine, and a prayer said by my other profesora over the bread. I took this to be similar to the act of communion in my own religion. It was a first for me and I enjoyed the experience.

Today, I wanted to take in more of Antigua, study my Espanol, and write some postcards, however Adriane insisted I join her and some of the others for a hike at Volcan de Pacaya, so we are off to do that...until the next time, Adios!