Exploring the city

I am pretty much loving Xela as a city. Yesterday in the afternoon the group walked through Zone 3 in the north of the city. Theres a huge market there with lots of cheap fruit, meats, clothing (great for gifts, yay!) and there´s even a supermarket owned by Walmart. So not only is their great shopping and wonderful people, there´s plenty of conveniences here in the city as well. In fact, Im in a really nice internet cafe as well. Some of the pictures here are of the market. There´s also pictures of the ¨central park¨ which has some great stores, restaurants, the house of the mayor ¨the municipality¨and a beautiful church. The other students and I meet here often already to walk around. It´s only a ten minute walk from most of our houses.

The other great part of this program is how much we´re learning. Im learning a ton of Spanish with a private tutor for four hours a day. He´s so funny too! His name is Jose Carlos and he´s the husband of the program´s director. In addition to a ton of vocabulary and grammar, he teaches me useful phrases like to make a poo poo and to fart (tocarse el pedo), haha. His teaching is so fun and it´s an amazing learning experience as well.

Our group also has a lot of afternoon activities. Tuesday we watched an amazing movie about the dumpster in Guatemala city called ¨Recycled Life.¨ It was so eye opening to the environmental issues in Latin America and frankly, in the rest of the world. The issues are just more obvious in Latin America. Tonight we have a seminar with the group on the basic history of Guatemala and a discussion about being a culturally sensitive doctor. We read some great articles and I´m looking forward to talking to everyone about our initial impressions of Guatemala.

Hasta luego. ¡Que tenga un buen dia! (See you later, I hope you have a good day)

Pictures below...the market in the north part of the city, the city cemetary, an old theater where there are a lot of cultural events that still go on. I´m planning on going to some later during my stay.

You also see some of the market in the north part of the city and the central park. Last is the municipality (building for the office of the mayor inside and out). Enjoy!