Day Three, Antigua

Casa Herrera Students, Milady, and Dr. David Stuart at Casa Herrera

On Monday Gloria and I had our first breakfast with our host family. We had eggs and black beans, with warm bread and a bowl of fruit. At breakfast we talked with Cesar and Rosa about ourselves and our plans here in Antigua. Our hosts are very nice and very patient with me in particular; Gloria is fluent in Spanish and I need a lot of work.
After breakfast we had a meeting at Casa Herrera at 9am, so Gloria and I walk over together. The meeting was an orientation to help us get settled with the way things were going to go this semester, particularly with regards to field trips. A lot of the information was the same that we got at the orientations back in the states, but  going over the information again when we can reference what we are being told with what we are actually seeing going on around us was very helpful. We have several free weekends this semester to plan individual and group trips so it was important to go over safety issues with regards to travel and places.
After the meeting Gloria and I went back to our host family for lunch at 12:30. Lunch was a beef broth with potatoes and rice on the side, we also had tortillas, the staple food of Guatemala. During lunch we continued talking to our hosts and got to know them better.
After lunch Gloria and I went in search of the Antigua Gym. We wandered and looked at the city as we walked and eventually found the gym. The gym is a lovely little house with the strangest entry way I have seen thus far in Antigua. The walls are painted with male torsos in Andy Warhol style design and colors. the inside of the gym (we got to look around when we got there) is a large courtyard with a dome cloth cover to block rain and several small rooms around the sides. Ringing the courtyard are exercise machines and in the rooms are more machines and spaces for stretching and yoga. The gym only costs $34 for a monthly membership which includes all the classes they offer. Gloria and I decided to go a head and sign up.
After we signed up at the gym for a monthly membership each, we started wandering around Antigua again. Our orientation to language school was at 3pm that day so we wandered around looking for a cafe I frequented while I was in Antigua back in March. It turns out it is right near the language school so Gloria and I stopped there for some snacks before class.
We meet the rest of the students at PLFM and watched a video in the schools lecture room. Once all the students arrived we were introduced to the staff at PLFM and then assigned to our language teachers. I am in a group with three other students: Anny, Casey, and Jon. Our teacher is Maria, and she is extremely nice. Our first day the teachers took us on a tour of some of the places in Antigua we may need or frequent. We went by several Farmacias (pharmacies) and the Mercado (food market) that comes to Antigua on Monday's, Thursday's, and Saturday's.   
During the tour the four f us talked to our teacher and practiced some of the Spanish we have learned so far. Our teacher made sure we understood where we were and what she was showing us. She also told us a little about herself. When we got back to PLFM we stood and talked some more, laughing and making jokes as well as telling our teacher more about ourselves. At 5pm we said good bye and Gloria and I walked back to our home stay for dinner.
After dinner Gloria and I went to the Antigua Gym for our first try at working there. The gym is in a nice area in Antigua about 15 minutes away from our home stay. We walked there even though it was already dark at 7 but we got a taxi back to our home stay when we left the gym because we were warned to not walk around Antigua alone or even in pairs after 8:30/9:00pm. We were given the numbers of certain taxi drivers who Milady recommended and trusts who also know who we are and why we are here. We called one of the numbers we had and got a taxi sent our way in under ten minutes. The experience prepared us for what our night excursions to the gym will be like and how we want to handle them in the future.