Sunday - stroll and cell phones

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Sunday was truly a day of rest for us. Even though we don't have any real workload, we easily get tired after just walking around, trying to figure stuff out with our very basic Spanish.

On Sunday morning we decided to get a better sense of our little SW corner of Antigua. We wanted to check out a few locations, in particular find places for us to swim some day. We first found the Gymnasium, and later the beautiful Porta Hotel Antigua. There we saw the lovely pool and grounds, filled with lots of families enjoying Sunday brunch.

As we strolled homeward, we happened upon El Bucaro, a little bakery/cafe in a fountain courtyard. This going to be a favorite coffee place! They make an excellent loaf of banana or corn bread, along with creamy lattes.

Later that day we ventured back to La Bodegona to get ourselves a couple of cell phones. Here you buy the phone outright and then just add minutes. While I was shopping for dinner groceries, Steve went to the phone counter there and asked for 2 of the cheapest phones. We walked away with some cute little Motorolas and instruction books in Spanish only. But how hard can it be to figure out how to turn on a cell phone anyway? As it turns out, that part is easy, but FINDING YOUR OWN CELL NUMBER is harder than it looks! Despite everthing in the handbooks, for the life of us we couldn't figure that part out. I have a picture here of Steve and the kids, manual and translators on the tablel, trying to work it out. We actually had the phones working well enough to MAKE calls, but of course didn't have our own numbers to give to each other so that we could test our little communication system. (We ended up making a few prank calls in the process)

We made a nice Sunday dinner, with outgoing cell capabilities, and a new favorite cafe. Cell saga continues on Monday.

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Photos

El Bucaro
Gooooood breads and lattes!

Setting up the cell phones
How many gringos does it take to find your own cell number?

A fine Sunday dinner at home
The groceries required for this dinner almost whupped out Lucas and me in buying them without looking too idiotic.

Comments

[Lynn Beebe]

Glad to see you on travelblog! Your house looks wonderful...we know that part of town, and re envious to think you all living there..although LaConner Wa is pretty wonderful today... It took us awhile to get used to the big grocery store too....the market is great fun too...have you been there yet? Another thing I forgot to tell you in previous advice: it is very expensive to mail packages to the States...wish we had known before buying a bunch of textiles, that I then carried with us for the next two months! Looking forward to more blogs, Lynn

[Marissa]

Thinking and dreaming in foreign languages
Thinking in a foreign language is VERY tiring! When my cousins from Mexico came to stay in San Antonio and Seattle, they both talked about how tired they were at the end of the day even if they weren't really doing things one might consider tiring. Just having to be on so much listening and translating, then forming the answer using words you know inthe foreign language--very tiring. They were glad to come home at the end of the day and have my parents and aunt with whom they could speak Spanish and relax! I never had that tired experience in Mexico, probably because I had grown up hearing Spanish around me all the time. Unfortunately I ended up ignoring most of what was said around me. I did have it when engaged in business in Asia, but not so much when wandering the locales there and in Europe. Guess the ability to tune out the language part I did not understand helped. The downside was my wandering was more directive and less exploratory. Guess I need to aim for total mental exhaustion on my next trip! The true test of approaching bilingualism will be when you start having dreams in Spanish--and you understand them. When I lived in Mexico, I used to have dreams where other people were speaking Spanish, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. I did not stay long enough to make the understanding transition, but I had a friend in college who did during his year abroad.