Advertisement
Published: August 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post
As I write it is absolutely tipping it down outside and pretty has been since Friday night. After no rain for nearly a week it is certainly making up for it now, apart from 4 hours of sun yesterday morning it has rained non stop....more about later.
This week I had my first full week in the school and it was great. I taught a lesson about the world giving the childrena world map to fill in and showed them where the continents were along with the UK, Guatemala and other countries too and all this in spanish!! It´s amazing what you can make be understood if you really have to or want to. The next day we made mobiles with the children using shapes (cube, cone, pyramid and rectangular cube!) There was one moment though where my colleague was getting the kids to say what shape they thought it was and I was looking up the words in the dictionary. It´s great being there all the time as you can get much more involved.
Yesterday morning when it was sunny I wandered round the market of Antigua for a couple of hours. The market is always there but Thursdays and
Saturdays are the main market days when it extends. It was amazing, I walked from one end to the other going through all the stalls, there was a massive area under cover full of fruit, veg, fish and meat stalls with the vendors all shouting their deals! The vendors´ ages ranged from 10 years to women in their 70´s and the range of produce was incredible with massive watermelons, papayas, pineapples, all vegetables and some produce that I didn´t know. I still find it amazing when I see women carrying big bags of rice on their heads carrying their children on their backs chatting away to their friends with the bag of rice showing absolutely no sign of falling off, years of practice I guess.
After that it was back home to have lunch with my host parents plus one of their daughters with her husband and son so the spanish head was really having to concentrate. It was really nice and I now find that although my spanish is still not great I am much more confident about trying to speak and not worried about making mistakes.
At 2pm we got a pick up (yes literally a pick up
truck) which took us to our hotel for one night in the hills surrounding Antigua. After about 10 mins I started to feel little drops of rain and then a minute later those drops turned into a rainstorm. The driver of the pickup stopped and promptly pulled a black tarparlin which we put over us, this was slightly counterproductive as the water just rolled down the plastic and onto my jeans, but to make this journey even more fun we then started hearing funny noises from under the pickup and then there was a sound that sounded like something falling off the truck! The driver then stopped, turned around and drove us back to Antigua where we then had to stand in the by this time TORRENTIAL rain and wait for the second pickup. After about 1 hour we eventually arrived at the top of a dirt track which led us to our destination "The Earth Lodge" which is an eco run hotel set in the depths of the hills of Antigua.
The Earth Lodge is run by an American called Brianna and her Canadian husband Drew and is amazing. There were 6 of us and we stayed in the
dormitory which is 4 bunkbeds basically made out of trees, there is no electricity in the dormitory so it was torches out in the nightime. After settling in we made our way back up to the main house which is for everyone and is like a big sitting room equipped with lots of books, games, internet if you wanted it and tables to just sit and chat at. For drinks etc it works on a tab and trust system, there is a book and whatever you have you write it down in the book and settle up when you leave. Supper is eaten all together around a big table and last night was a BBQ and I had plaice, chunky mashed potatos, fried lentils, salad, garlic bread finished off with some home made cake for dessert. It was lovely!! Afterwards we all sat around the camp fire and chatted for a while before making our way to the electricity free dormitory for bed. This morning I awoke to a much brighter day with a great hill top view of Antigua and had a wholesome breakie before settling down to some serious reading in the hammocks for a few hours, very
relaxing!! Around midday the low humming of a tatooists pen started and I looked over to see one of the guests having a tatoo done by the resident tatooist. By the time we left at 4ish it was still only half finished and looked very painful. For the way back to Antigua we wandered back up the dirt track and waited for the pick up at the local laundrette in the rain again. This time we made it back to Antigua in one go and in a bit less time. I absolutely loved being at the Earth Lodge and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants one or two nights away from it all.
That´s all for now, will write soon xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 9; qc: 45; dbt: 0.024s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ellen Around the World
Ellen
Hey!
Hey Sall - Great blog! Good to see you get on the bandwagon! Ellen xo