Day One, Antigua

Casa Herrera, Antigua. The inner courtyard.

When we arrived in Antigua each of us was dropped off at our home stays. I was the last of the three of us to be dropped off but all of us were nervous. My host family lives on a lovely residential road in northern Antigua. When the driver rang the doorbell an older gentleman opened the door and helped carry in my luggage. His name is Cesar and his wife is Rosa. Both were very nice and Cesar even helped me by carrying my suitcase up the stone steps to the second floor, where my room is. The house is lovely; you walk into an open air courtyard where the couple has potted plants and their two cars. On the left side is a covered hallway with doors to individual rooms. They have a library/office, their bedroom, a guest room, and the dining room on the left of the hallway, and a bathroom and the kitchen on the right side past the courtyard. On the right side of the courtyard is a stone staircase leading to the upstairs where there are two bedrooms, one full bathroom, and a lovely deck area with a table and chairs. When I arrived at the house Cesar had me in one of the two bedrooms upstairs with a twin bed, dresser, and desk. Gloria was downstairs in a larger room with a full size bed, dresser, side table, and desk. Cesar offered us a second choice as well; the second bedroom on the second floor was the largest of the three rooms and had two beds and two dressers for two people to share. Gloria and I decided to take the double and share a room for our stay, that way we were more like roommates and we would share a bathroom so that Gloria wasn’t sharing the downstairs bathroom with the host couple. We moved in fairly quickly. I took the twin bed and a really cool dresser which is fake grand piano lifted up on the wall. Gloria took the full size and the standing dresser which is closer to the door to the room. We only have one desk so we are going to switch off or one of us will use the desk in the smaller room upstairs. We also used the smaller room to store our suitcases, but we will be able to move them back into our room if the family ends up hosting some other tourists during our stay.

After we got settled in our room the driver came to pick us up for our tour of the Casa and dinner. After we picked up everyone we met Milady at the Casa along with Prof. David Stuart and his son. The first thing we did was get a tour of the Casa and an explanation of who we are going to use the rooms. One of the rooms is a conference room, another is a classroom, and we have our own lounge. Another room is fairly empty but has copies of the San Bartolo murals on the walls. There is another room that we are going to be able to use as a studio space to continue our practice during this semester. There is a kitchen, an outer garden, and a lovely roof deck with a view of Antigua. After our tour we got a packet from Milady with a magazine about Antigua, two maps, and the syllabi for the first two classes of the semester.  

We left the Casa and went to dinner at a beautiful restaurant called “Angie, Angie.” We had ordered our dinners on Friday to make sure that the restaurant would be able to handle our large group. We all sat around a large table and chatted while we were given drinks, appetizers, and then our dinners and desserts. I got the chicken dinner and the strawberries for dessert. Being able to talk to the other students was really helpful to get to know them and get a feel for the dynamics of the group. Dinner took a very long time. In Guatemala time is much slower; meals come in an hour or more, meals last longer, people aren’t regularly on time, etc. Our meals took quite a long time to get to us. Some of the students seemed uncomfortable and some seemed a little upset. I have been here before so I was expecting for meals to take a long time, but for the first dinner I was still rather taken aback about how long it took for the food to show. The appetizers were helpful to tide us over at least.

After dinner we all got rides back to our home stays and Gloria and I were dropped off first. We went up to our room and started discussing shower time and sleeping habits. We both are quite comfortable sharing a room and our shower schedules are perfect; Gloria showers at night and I shower in the morning.

The first night was a little rough on me; it took me a long time to fall asleep and I woke up a lot during the night. Every time I woke up I had to shift around on the bed. At one point I was too hot and threw the covers off and at another I was too cold and pulled them back up on the bed. I also woke up really early in the morning, 6am, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself. I tried to go back to sleep and did get up at 9am and took a shower before Gloria got up. Gloria says she slept perfectly fine, so I think I am just too use to sleeping in a busy part of Boston where it is really loud all through the night. Here is very quiet and very dark all through the night. I hope to get use to it soon.