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Published: August 25th 2002
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My second (and now third) week in Xela has been a lot of fun. The friendships I had made in the first week carried on into the second and I now have a new brother, Patrick, from Dallas, Texas. Patrick has been living in Xela for around 6 months volunteering at a local school, teaching English, the first English teacher that they have ever had at the school - and travelling around central America. He's a few years older than me, I guess that makes him my big brother. Having Patrick around has helped with my Spanish as he is "mas o menos" - more or less, fluent it means that an instant translation of the difficult words is available. The amount of conversation at the table has increased, my limited vocabulary was holding things back in the first week.
Two of my Danish friends (Lisette and Christian) have their own apartment, which is cool - I've gone from being 14 to 18 now with the first of my friends getting their own place. We've (the crowd from the school) have spent all lot of time at the apartment, for pre-party parties, and games nights. The cheapest way to have
a good night in Xela is to buy rum and drink it before going on to a club or bar, similar to back home.
After the second week of intensive Spanish lessons I can now communicate in more than pigeon Spanish, I have a huge amount to learn but can now say what I am doing, have done and am going to do. I can also extend that to what other people are doing, done and are going to do given sufficient time.
The other thing I have learnt during my stay in Xela is how to salsa, I've been going to salsa lessons every weekday with Lisette. I'm now at the stage where I can put together 6 or 7 spins and turns without missing too many beats, and usually end up on time. A local club - La Frata on Wednesdays has a salsa night
The local cinema costs £1, before anyone gets excited it's basically a room with a TV and a video player. I have seen a few movies there - Raising Arizona and Fargo, both were really funny, and Agua del Chocolate - a Mexican movie. The best thing about it is
that you can sit and have a beer whilst watching the movie, the worst thing about it is that the chairs and sofas are rejects from peoples homes and are damn uncomfortable after around 30 minutes.
The highlight of my third week has been the worst food poisoning I have ever had the misfortune to have. So bad that when running to the toilet I didn't know which end to approach it with first. It's only lasted about 24 hours and caused me to miss a day of school and salsa night at La Frata. I will never eat frijoles or pig skin again. Eating some kind of bean and pork scratching soup caused the illness. Today I am better, am avoiding Guatemalan cuisine and eating only cake and bread. Yesterday I slept was sick, slept, sick, etc.
My time in Xela has been really fun, loads of stories to tell and not enough time to tell them. It's probably enough to say in the school everyone on leaving puts a handprint on the wall, together with their name. Somehow I've been roped into putting an arse print on the wall tomorrow morning... I blame Sharon.
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