Rip the Bandaid

Guatemala classroom

Our one-room Palapa classroom in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala

We didn’t ease out of the marathons easily and we certainly didn’t ease our way into our next adventure this time but instead jumped right in with no time to spare. We were in Texas on Monday morning beginning our drive from Houston to Cincinnati and at 3 am on Wednesday morning, we were in the car on our way to Detroit to fly to Guatemala City. By the end of the day on Wednesday we were in our new home in San Pedro La Laguna with our new host family and on Thursday morning we were in school for our first Spanish lessons. It’s been a quick change and maybe a bit painful at times, but the quick rip is often the best way.

It’s now Saturday and we’ve settled in a little. Our gimpy legs are recovering and the swelling in our lower legs and feet has finely going down for both of us. We have been pretty sore and when coupling our soreness with the super steep streets of San Pedro, we have quite the time getting around here.

We are also recovering from the sheer fatigue of the past week. We obviously didn’t get much sleep during the 100 miler last weekend and then we had nearly 20 hours of driving and the mad rush to clean up our stuff from the marathons and pack for six weeks in Guatemala. The travel day to Guatemala began at 3 am because we had a 6:45 flight out of Detroit, over 90 minutes from my parent’s home in Findlay. We had six hours of flying with an hour layover in Miami and once we got to Guatemala City and found Lorenzo, he had a sign with our names on it, we had nearly a four hour van ride through hilly, rough streets to get to our new home in San Pedro.

But now we’re recovered. We’ve slept full nights for the past few days and we’ve even had siestas a couple of the days. The Spanish lessons work our brains hard during the day. We are taking four hours a day of one on one lessons at the school plus we have meal time with our host family three times per day which is actually pretty intense Spanish practice time as well. We do take some breaks though and speak in English with our foreign friends.

And thus we embark on another journey and another adventure. We are here for six weeks and plan on staying with our host family and going to the same school for the entirety of our stay. We want to make big strides towards fluency and think this will really help. Already after two days of classes, I feel confident we’ll learn a great deal. We’ll have plenty to share going forward as we continue doing things Guatemalan style for awhile.

Hasta luego.

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