more Guatemala chatter

I keep going back and forth between loving this trip and wondering what I´m getting out of it. I think this is probably related to coping with homesickness. Over the last two weeks, I´ve certainly vacillated between rage, bargaining, and acceptance. Every other day I´ve found something to be bitchy about. WAH! I don´t wanna do homestay anymore! I´m a big girl and I don´t wanna have a semi-official curfew! Or, WAH! There are too many students here now - I wanna talk to patients instead of teaching the newbies! WAH! WAH!!!!!!

And today my lesson was a field trip to the huge market in Chichicastenango, which was kind of awesome. The town itself was far more touristy than Xela - prices in restaurants were prety high, the gringo population was pretty substantial and pretty multinational, not just US folks, and the vendors were aggressive. More so than I´ve seen anywhere else in this country.

Taking my lesson out of the classroom was an excellent idea. Class is helpful, but I´d rather practice in the streets than sit head-to-head and both spend a lot of time daydreaming and staring out the window. Oh, and learning verb tenses. Yeah, that too.

I think I´m benefitting from this trip overall. A good test will be tomorrow´s clinic - I´m slated to work triage, which is an excellent test of both my comprehension and conversational skills. Yesterday there was a moment in which I forgot a word in English and tried to say it in Spanish instead, which was a pretty good sign for my language acquisition process.

Still, I do have an eye on the calendar and am pretty happy about reaching the near-halfway point in my trip. I´ll be ready to go home in 2 weeks. I no longer want to go home earlier than that, but I´ll be happy to see May 30th. I also think that´s a nice testament to the fact that my life at home is pretty awesome - friends, running, pending school newness - and I´ll be happy to get back to it knowing now how badly I miss it.