Being a Student

When my boyfriend said I never mentioned to him that I had homework as a student in Xela, I was offended. Why? Because, did I HAVE homework.

Here is a nut-shell of a day in the life of Miriam, the Spanish student in Xela, Guatemala:

I don't know why, but for the three months I was in Guatemala, I only slept past 5:30am a handful of times.

The mornings were by far my favorite time of the day for many reasons. Safety probably being the biggest. The birds, incredible sun, fresh air, and relaxing walks being the others.

So, 5:30 I was up...usually finishing homework, then blog posting while eating breakfast, then going for a walk on the way to school, which was from 8am-1pm. I generally wanted to eat my arm off by the time class was over while my ability to focus disappeared around 11am.  

Although my hunger dug at my, I generally headed to the gym after class while eating a small snack on the 15 minute walk.

By the way, the gym was new, the cleanest place I've ever been to and had state of the art equipment. The third floor was a huge, wood-floor class area. It also had a fourth floor loft area with a smoothie and snack restaurant. 

After the gym, I cooked lunch at home, showered (yes, in that order), then headed out to some coffee shop to study and try to cram more vocab and conjugations into my brain. I generally had one to two hours of homework a night, never mind actually studying.

Language immersion is exhausting. I went from drinking no coffee, to three cups a day. I was shoving over so much in my brain to fit in the new language that when I did speak English it came out grammatically incorrect and sloppy. It was a process of letting go and staying open. 

I have never done so much walking in my everyday life...and besides the time it was raining side-ways, I loved it. It's the kind of life I could get used to.