Yesterday during my Spanish class, I went to the big market in San Francisco that happens every Friday. I went with another student and our two teachers and we had to take a chicken bus! Chicken buses are old school buses from the US and they use them down here as public transportation. They make a lot of stops on the way picking up tons of people. There´s also some people that come on and off the bus selling things or trying to get money. One man came on and passed out these little cards and on the back they said ¨I can´t hear, I can´t speak. I sell these for 1Q to support myself.¨ 1Q is like twelve cents. It was so sad to see! Also, my teacher was telling me that usually theres like three people to a seat and then some standing up and that theres often chickens and pigs on the racks above your head. Thankfully, the buses we went on were not that busy.
The market was huge! There were tons of animals and clothes and meats and vegetables. There were so many cute little baby pigs and there was a man forcing one of the pigs mouths open and making him squeal so loudly. My teacher said they do that to check the color of their mouths or something to see if they´re healthy or not before someone buys it. Its so sad to think that they´re all just going to be eaten. I like bacon and everything, but cute little baby pigs! I wanted to buy them all and set them free :) There was also an area where they were selling all these animals parts. I don´t really know what a person would do with cow heads and chicken feet but it was definitely interesting to see. While we wandered around the market we went into a Catholic church thats about 300 yrs old I think. It had beautiful domed ceilings that used to have murals painted on them but they were mostly worn off. My teacher said that it took 100 yrs to build and they put animal bones in the walls to reinforce them and make them stronger! After the market we walked to a nearby Mayan holy place. It was on the side of a mountain and the view was amazing. People go there daily to see the preistess and make sacrifices to their Mayan gods for health, money, etc. They sacrfice things like candles and insense usually but sometimes they´ll sacrifice chicken blood too I guess. They have to pay the preistess there in order to sacrifice their stuff and she communicates with the gods for them or something. It was kind of interesting to see but also sad to see that these people think that these ¨gods¨ are actually going to help them and bless them and make their lives better.
Because I was at the market all during my class, I got out of taking my weekly test :) But I actually kind of wanted to take it because I wanted to see how much I had learned. I´m still only learning the present tense but its new stuff because we´re going a lot more in depth then I ever did in high school. Sometimes I feel like shes teaching me too many words and I´ll never remember them all. And for a lot of the words I already know other words that mean the same thing, so why do I need to learn more? But I guess if I want to be able to understand other peoples Spanish then it´s important. I feel like I can understand a lot more Spanish now then before but I don´t know if my speaking has really gotten any better. I can´t believe my first week here is already over!
Last night all of the students and teachers had dinner together at the school. Each student had to bring a dish to pass. I just made a salad. But, it was probably the best meal I´ve had since getting here because it was a lot of American foods. We had garlic bread, pasta, fruit salad and lots of other stuff. I love the fruit here, but my host family never eats any fruit! The food they serve isn´t bad, its just really different. I´ve been feeling a little sick-ish the past few days. Probably because my body is adjusting to all these changes-the food, the climate, the walking everywhere, etc. I hope it doesn´t end up being anything worse then that. The other student that lives in the same house as me is a med student and he keeps trying to convince me that I have some kind of parasite haha. But, every time I´ve come here before I´ve felt the same way so I´m sure I´ll be fine. At the dinner, the five students that were ¨graduating¨ from Miguel Angel Asturias gave speeches and one sang a really funny song that he wrote in Spanish. It was a good time hanging out with everyone and eating good food.
This morning I went on a hike up a mountain with the school. The mountain is called Baul, which in Spanish means trunk or chest. I guess the story is that there was a family that had a lot of money and either they didn´t want it to get stolen or the money they had they got by stealing it (there are still holes in my understanding of Spanish haha), anyways they hid it in a chest and buried it in the mountain supposedly. So it was about a 30 min hike to the top and there was a park up there. There was a tall Mayan monument and one of the students with us climbed to the top. He´s crazy. There was also a bunch of long cement slides that a bunch of the guys went down on. I didn´t try it cause I didn´t want to hurt my butt haha. The hike down was much easier, which I appreciated.
I don´t really have much planned for the rest of the weekend, except that I´m going to go out to lunch tomorrow with some of my friends from school. I kind of just want to relax and rest so that I don´t get any sicker and so that I´ll be refreshed for another week here.
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