Days 584-590! Get ready for a long one because there’s lots to talk about! I had my first full week in Guatemala and started my second week of language school! I hung out with new friends, went to multiple soccer matches, enjoyed gorgeous views of the surrounding volcanoes and might’ve decided to go on a crazy adventure! I think you’ll enjoy this week’s blog!

I woke up on Thursday, August 7th just before 7am. Today was day two of my first week of Spanish lessons, and I was excited! Yesterday’s lesson was super helpful and a really enjoyable time, so I was looking forward to getting back to it.

If you didn’t read last week’s blog post, I’d highly recommend it!

After breakfast with Savanna and my host family, Savanna and I set out to the garden for our one on one instruction.

Yesterday was a very cloudy day… but today, the sky was clear as can be! This gave an outstanding view of the surrounding volcanoes and truly showed how massive they are.

With lots of rain in this week’s forecast (and the downpour I experienced on night one) I was glad to see a sunny day!

My instructor, Tulio, was waiting for me when I arrived. We kicked off our class by chatting about what I did post class yesterday, what I ate, etc. All simple questions that I could use my knowledge from the day before, plus some extra help from Tulio, to respond pretty much fully in Spanish.

We went over my homework and he corrected a few mistakes I made with gendering vocabulary. I also learned a lot of descriptor words to go along with the vocabulary from the homework. For each word I’d describe it using the new descriptor words I was learning.

That took a big chunk of the first half of class, but we also got into verbs as well.

But first a break to split up the class time. Today I had a tasty tamale (that was like $1 or $2) and chatted with a few other students who all happened to be from the US (North Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts). They all had different travel lengths, jobs, and reasons for being in Antigua. One was there to help his Spanish for teaching English as a second language (like me), another was a (allegedly) rich startup owner and a doctor in molecular science, and the other was just in Antigua for a short time to learn Spanish before going home.

It was nice to meet new people who all have similar interests but also completely different ideas, stories, lives, etc.

Tulio and I got back to business and started working through “Ser vs Estar.” There are different cases of when to use a specific “to be.” Essentially it’s just if something is permanent vs temporary.

This pertained to nationalities, colors, professions, hour of the day, etc. Thus, giving me lots of new vocabulary, questions to ask, and how to properly say this new information. We also slightly touched on the future tense, which looked 10x easier than French.

Speaking of French, I’ve been having some difficulty consistently pronouncing some words since my limited French knowledge is getting in the way!

Class wrapped up and Tulio gave me a small homework assignment. Savanna and I walked back to our homestay, where Odilia and Adolfo were ready for us. We actually had a solid conversation about class and our day. I needed to use some Google translate and aid from Savanna (and Odilia) but inch by inch we’re starting to converse!

There was an event with the school at 3pm, but until then I worked on my homework in my room.

Just before 3pm rolled around, I set out to the school. Savanna was outside listening to music and decided to tag along. Today’s event was a Boda Maya. It ended up being an hour talk about the traditional Guatemalan Mayan wedding.

The talk was all in Spanish, but I honestly understood a majority of it! We learned about the cost, that it’s a large event (maybe 1000 people), what each side of the family provides, the foods that are eaten, and of course, the dress for the husband and wife.

I actually almost volunteered, but I’m glad I didn’t because I wouldn’t have understood what the lecturer was wanting of me. It was a fairly interesting talk and of course there were a few laughs too when the volunteers got all dressed up and “married.”

After the event, I met John and Blaze (two more Americans) who were friends with Savanna. We were all planning on going to the soccer match on Saturday, so it was nice to put names to faces and get to know them!

We all walked back towards our respective home-stays. I went back to do more studying. I decided to make a few mobile flashcard packets of different topics I wanted to start drilling into my head. So far I made verbs ending in AR and ER (just translation not conjugation), useful Spanish words (this will be a huge packet eventually), and one for the descriptor words I learned.

I plan to make more for time, months, days, etc. but I’ll take it day by day.

I made these while sitting outside my homestay and while I was sitting there, I heard a loud buzzing. I turned to my left and by the bright red flowers was the biggest hummingbird I’ve ever seen! I tried to get my phone on my camera app to take a picture but I was too slow. It made me very happy to see one though!

We had dinner, which started just me and Adolfo. I asked Adolfo what his job was and he told me he was a chicken bus driver for 30 years (the cramped public transport buses, repurposed yellow school buses from the USA). He’s a fairly quiet man, so it was nice to get some chit chat out of him. Once I can speak more conversationally, I’ll be chatting the heck out of my host family.

Savanna had the lovely idea of going to a donate basis yoga class 20 minutes away from our homestay. We walked across town together and had a lovely hour long session. My friend Jasmin, from my flight, joined us as well!

The yoga studio was in the more touristy part of town. I honestly didn’t realize how big Antigua was, I thought my area of the town was it. But there were big churches, ruins, fountains, and lots of stores and restaurants. It honestly reminded me a lot like old town Hoi An, Vietnam.

We walked with Jasmine back to her hostel. Originally we had planned to grab a drink somewhere, but we were all exhausted and all had to be up early. So we called it a night with the hopes of seeing each other again at some point!

Savanna and I meandered our way back to our homestay. The town was alive with street vendors, little stalls of trinkets and jewelry, and a fair amount of tourists still. We stopped at a convincente store for a snack, which means it’s time to start trying random cheap Guatemalan snacks!!

I finished up my night making more flashcards and then passed out to get ready for my next day of learning.

I woke up nice and early on Friday, August 8th. It was time for breakfast and more learning! Savanna was dropping off laundry in the morning, so I walked to class by myself. It was another gorgeous day and the views surrounding Antigua are just incredible!

Tulio and I went over my homework and then dove deep into verbs ending in “AR” and how to conjugate them.

There’s a list of a lot of verbs in the first booklet the school gave me, it’s not all inclusive, but it has a lot of useful ones. We went through each one and I said sentences using each present tense conjugation. This was a great exercise to drill in the present tense verb endings and to memorize more vocabulary! Making hundreds of sentences takes a lot of creative juices…

Especially in a new language!

During my break today, I sat with a few other students who were trying to only speak in Spanish. We were all within our first week or so so we were all struggling and helping each other out. It was great!

One of them, Lucio from Switzerland, was also a divemaster on Koh Tao!! At the same time as me too!! So we had some fun chatting about the cool things we saw and the funny stories from our time on the island scuba diving every day.

It was time to head back for more class and the past couple of days, Tulio and I walked back together… but he was nowhere to be found. So I asked one of the other teachers, in Spanish, if they knew where he was and they said he already walked back!

I poked some fun at him when I got back to the table, where he was waiting for me.

We continued on with the verbs and then left the last column of 20 or so verbs for homework (over 100 sentences to write… I guess I signed up for this). He also assigned a few other assignments, like telling time and more “ser” vs “esta.”

Savanna’s lesson ran long, so I again walked by myself back to the homestay for lunch. I had a nice conversation with the family and took a quick nap post lunch. Then it was back to studying!

I spent the next couple of hours at a new cafe. I’m definitely going to use these study sessions as a chance to explore the many cafes of Antigua.

I finished most of my weekend’s homework but had about half of my sentences to go. But, I didn’t have class the rest of the weekend and wanted to make sure I had things to study throughout it.

Around 5pm, Savanna and I headed back to the school for an evening event! The school rents an area with a garden… and a couple pickleball courts! Every Friday, for 50 quetzales ($6.50), there’s 2 hours of pickleball and a beer afterwards.

This was a great way to meet other classmates and a few were the people I met during my break during class today! We played a system where we got paired with random partners every game and played to 11. It was super fun and we played a ton of games over the 2 hours.

The last game we played was a knockout style game where you had to hit the ball and then run to the other side of the court to wait and hit the ball again, if you missed you were out. It was a goofy and fun variation on the knockout basketball game I played in school.

After pickleball we all had a beer and chatted. It was my first Guatemalan cerveza! Gallo (chicken) is a popular Guatemalan beer. I found it interesting that it was a beer with an animal as a logo… this is very common in SE Asia as well.

I left early and hurried back to the homestay for dinner. Odilia and Adolfo were kind enough to push dinner back for me since pickleball ran past our usual dinner time of 6pm.

I ate, then showered, and then met back up with a few of my new friends to enjoy my first night out on the town.

Isabella (from North Carolina), Gray (from Texas), Maya (from London), Lucio, and I found a cool local bar called El Illegal to start off our night. Here I tried another Guatemalan beer called Cabro. It tasted pretty similar to Gallo.

We sat and chatted for a while and after we finished our drinks we headed to another bar across town, La Taverna. Here we enjoyed another beer. The bar also had a guitar which Gray and I passed back and forth a bit.

We ended the night walking through an iconic archway near the city center. It always amazes me and makes me so happy how easy it is to connect on a deep level with new people while on the road.

We did speak a lot of English while we were together, but we did try to speak Spanish as well. Little by little I’ll get to fluency, but the more I practice the better!

Saturday, August 9th was my first day off from classes. Wednesday-Friday were my first 3 days, so Monday and Tuesday would round out my first week of Spanish lessons.

But today, I was on my own for more learning.

Even though there weren’t lessons today, breakfast was still at 7am (apparently it’s usually at 7:30am on Saturdays, but for some reason they wanted it 30 minutes earlier… so Savanna showed up late. Which meant I was chatting with the parents alone for a while). After I ate, I took a stroll to a nearby laundry service. It was a beautiful, sunny morning!

For 5lbs of laundry, it was 45 quetzales or just under $6. I was told to come back and pick up my laundry around 3pm. I headed back home for an hour nap and then set back out to a cafe to do more of my homework.

I went back to Siena Luz cafe, the vibe is just really nice in the outdoor garden section. I drank a banana and strawberry smoothie while I worked and got a fair amount done… but I still had plenty of sentences left to write. Lunch time rolled around and I headed back to the homestay for that.

I decided to sit outside the homestay to continue working. While I was sitting outside, the son-in-law, Melvin, started chatting with me. We actually ended up chatting for like 20 minutes or so and had a nice conversation! I asked about his job and we talked about traveling amongst other things. It’s still blowing my mind that I can hold any conversation at all with my limited Spanish knowledge.

I was glad I got to chat with him and practice… but I didn’t get any work done on my sentences. He went to take a nap and I was about to start working, and then it started to rain.

I scurried inside and kept chugging along in my room. It was a grind but I finally got it done!

It was pouring really hard outside and I needed to still get my laundry, which I really didn’t want my dry laundry to get soaked. I waited until a break in the storm and made an attempt to go and get it before the rain started again.

I was semi successful in my attempt to not get my clean, dry clothes wet… but I got sprinkled on a bit. However, I had clean clothes for the week!

I went on a little walk before dinner around a part of the town I hadn’t been to yet. There’s a soccer stadium nearby and I wanted to check it out and see how easy the walk was… because after dinner, my friends and I were going to watch an Antigua FC football match!

We had dinner at 6pm, which was perfect because the game started at 7pm. Savanna and I met up with our friends, who happen to be staying right down the road from us, and we walked to the stadium.

We were told we could buy tickets at the stadium, but the people working the gate said we HAD to buy them online. So after a process of telling all of our banks we were in fact not getting scammed, we got tickets. But the tickets were for a different gate, so we walked to the correct one.

On our walk we saw a ticket counter… so the next time we go, we know where to go to get a ticket…

Antigua FC is a part of the National League of Guatemala. They’re also currently competing in the Concacaf Central American Cup. Today’s game was just a regular season game, but they usually end in the top 3 teams of the league, so we were in for a treat!

The stadium wasn’t very full (I’m assuming because it wasn’t a major game) but it was still a fun environment. Green smoke was billowing through the stands, obscene phrases were being thrown at the refs and players, and… they were selling Taco Bell and delivering it straight to you at the stadium!?

I restrained myself, but we all had 5 quetzales chocolate covered bananas, which was sweet and tasty.

The game ended 2-0 with Antigua FC winning the match. The first goal was a powerful shot off one of the opposing team’s defenders and the second goal was a penalty kick!

All around, it was a fun game and I hope to go to another one! But comparatively to the matches I saw in London with my dad, the soccer level was much lower.

The night wasn’t over yet. We made our way to Antigua Brewing Co., a local brewery in town. I had a beer with chili in it, which was quite strange but I still enjoyed it. There was a great live band playing and we had some more fun conversations. It started drizzling a bit while we were there, but thankfully, it stopped fairly quickly and was done for the rest of the night.

We finished our beers and walked to the bar El Illegal for one more. We chatted for a bit longer and then called it a night! It was my latest night out so far, but luckily I didn’t have to wake up early the following morning.

I finally slept in on Sunday, August 10th! On Sundays, the host family doesn’t feed us, so we’re on our own.

I unfortunately didn’t sleep in as long as I would’ve liked… but I didn’t really get out of bed until 9 or so!

I started my day with an interesting conundrum… I clogged the toilet! Whoops! The family was having a nice breakfast together and I interrupted (in Spanish) and told them the toilet was clogged and asked if they had a plunger I could use.

They said yes and got me one, but asked if I was putting the toilet paper in the toilet (their septic systems aren’t built for anything that isn’t natural). I said no and had to tell them (again, in Spanish) that it was because I took a big poop… or a caca in Spanish. This got a good laugh from the family.

It was a quick job, but definitely an embarrassing way to start the day!

Since the host family wasn’t cooking breakfast, it was time to try a restaurant in the town. My friend Jason, who had been in Guatemala before, gave me a suggestion and I decided to go check it out.

It was a gorgeous morning! On my walk, I ran into my friend Isabella, who had just finished up mass at one of the many churches in the town. She told me that there was a big celebration happening and a bunch of marching bands were parading around the center of town.

I redirected my walk to take me past the bands.

It reminded me of the parades I had to do while I was in marching band. It was fun to watch them play and see everyone having a good time early in the day.

I eventually made it to the place I was going to eat my first meal of the day, Rincóncito Antigüeño.

It was a cheap and very local restaurant with lots of good options to choose from. I ended up going with some spicy eggs, beans, tortillas, and plantains. It was a great, filling, breakfast.

While I was eating, my friend Lucio showed up, then later my friend Isabella showed up, and then finally my friend Maya showed up to! We ended up hanging around the restaurant for a bit as we all took our turn eating. Then we walked back towards our homestay.

The bands were still going strong and we stopped to watch a big drum line and a band with color guard play as well. We also meandered through a pop up book sale and I decided that I’d get a book or two later in the day! I felt like it’d definitely help my Spanish if I got a children’s book… I’m essentially a little kid learning his first words.

We had about an hour or so before our next outing. Our friend Rosemary found a farm that did a farm to table style meal. So we set out on a nice long walk across the entire town to this place.

It was about a 30 minute walk to Caoba Farms Restaurant. They had some vendors selling jewelry, soaps, and other natural products, a little convenience shop, and the restaurant.

It was definitely more expensive then I’d like to do while traveling, but it wasn’t toooo bad either. I spent about 90 quetzales on my meal, but Savanna paid for 35 of it since she owed me for the football ticket the day before.

I don’t have any pictures of the place, but it was an artsy and pretty place. The food was decent too.

I ran into another student from the Spanish academy and chatted with him for a little on our way out. We then walked back to our homestays and immediately headed back out to study.

On our way to the Starbucks, where we were meeting to study, Gray and I stopped by the book market. We found two copies of the little prince for 25 quetzales each!

I actually read this book in French 4 in high school… so it might be a little early for me to be reading this book in Spanish, but it was cheap and I remember enjoying the book. Also, I’m game to slowly make my way through it! I might buy another, more kids level, book in the next couple days for more practice as well.

I worked on adding more verbs to my flash card set and also continued memorizing them as well. While studying, a Guatemalan man started chatting with us. I ended up chatting with him a bit and it turned out he worked in some part of the political system in Guatemala City. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t really slow down his talking after I asked him to.

I still held my own though in the conversation!

There was also live music in the Starbucks and a beautiful outdoor area, where we were sitting for the most part.

We studied for a few hours before calling it quits and heading to a little market where they were selling crepes!

These weren’t nearly as cheap as they were in Thailand, 25 quetzales for one, but they were super tasty!

We called it a night and started our walk back to our homestays. Tomorrow was time for some more Spanish lessons, so I needed to make sure I was rested and ready!

Monday, August 11th, I was back to class with my teacher Tulio!

I finally got a picture with him so you all can know what he looks like. He’s a very nice and funny local, and he’s also a great teacher!

In class, we worked on verbs and their conjugations for the present tense and past tense. We also went over my homework from the weekend (we didn’t read through all of the sentences I wrote, but we read a lot of them).

We also touched on the verb “to like” which has some special properties to it. Mainly you have to use a form of reflexive identification along with it and there’s only two conjugations for the past and present tenses.

After class, I headed back to my host families house for lunch and a short nap.

I headed right back into town and took a nice long walk to the public library! One of my friends told me the library is a great spot to study… and they weren’t lying. This has to be one of the prettiest libraries I’ve ever been to!

Also, it’s free!

A few of my friends joined me eventually as well. I hung around studying for just about 3 hours! Spanish is a lot of work. We had a nice reward post studying though.

My friends and I walked through the drizzling rain to a nearby shop… in the back of the shop was…

A salsa studio!

I unfortunately don’t have any pictures, but I can tell you, it was a BLAST!

At New Sensations salsa studio, they host a few salsa lessons every week! My friends and I decided to go this week and it was so much fun. We started off in a bunch of lines learning the basic steps (periodically swapping positions throughout). I was smiling and sweating the entire time.

Then we switched to dancing with partners! Every so often we’d change partners and move down the line, but we learned some good moves throughout the lesson. It was an awesome judgement free space to learn and express ourselves through dancing. Also the instructors were very good salsa dancers and were very helpful in making sure we were figuring it out.

The hour passed by in a blink of an eye… I’ll definitely be doing more salsa while I’m in Central America!

I wandered back home for dinner and then had a nice catch up with my parents over FaceTime.

It’s great that we are basically on the same time zone. It makes FaceTimes much easier. But I have a busy schedule at the moment, so we were a day late!

After my FaceTime, I actually went over to my friend’s homestay to hangout for a little bit. There’s 4 of them in the same homestay and every night they play cards together… and I wanted to join! They asked their host mom and she said yes, so for the rest of the night I played cards with my friends.

Tuesday, August 12th was yet another early morning for Spanish class! It was also my house mate Savanna’s last day of classes before she would head off to her volunteering mission work in a nearby town.

Today, Tulio and I went over my homework and then dove into more learning. We touched on how to use indirect objects and went deep into verbs that are irregular… of course it can’t be easy. We also worked more on Ser vs Estar and played a little flash card game to decide when to use each based on the description/picture on the card…

Today was my first day where I felt like my Spanish wasn’t “Spanishing.” In the morning my brain wasn’t firing at breakfast and I kept making a lot of mistakes in class… but it’s part of the learning process, so I’ll keep pressing on!

After class I did my regular lunch and nap routine, which was much needed today. I met up with my friends afterwards and walked towards the same part of town as the library. We were checking out a new cafe to study at and it was a really pretty one. The upstairs was all outdoors but covered, which was important since it rained heavily while we were there.

It was also directly next to a church and every 15 minutes a guy would come out and manually play the bells on top of the church.

My friend Lucio asked me the day before if I wanted to hike the volcano, Acatenango with him and I told him I’d sleep on it.

Acatenango is a very popular and intense hike up the 3rd largest volcano in Guatemala. It stands at a height of 13,045ft (3,976m) and is home to some incredible views of its neighbor volcano, Fugeo, which is currently active (with its last major explosion being 5 years ago). It’s a very rigorous and steep hike with an overnight on the volcano (you hike to the summit the following morning for sunrise).

It’s been raining a ton here and I’m not the most avid hiker… so I was on the fence on spending $100 on it… but, I also never had really rode a motorbike before and pushed through some really challenging rides along the way. So why should I pass up this amazing opportunity!

So I said yes and we bought our spots on a tour that my friend, Corey (an old friend from college and former roommate), recommended to me!

Even if it rains and there’s no views… it’ll be a great and challenging adventure that probably will lead to more hiking in the future.

I looked down at my phone and it was almost time for dinner. I hurried home and on my way, I actually ran into Savanna, who was making her way back home from a walk as well.

It’s too bad Savanna is leaving and I’ll be losing my translator for when I don’t know or forget words. But I’m looking forward to trying more myself and having even more one on one time practicing Spanish with my host family! I’m so glad she was here though because she did really help bridge the gap between me, the host family, and the town.

We had dinner and then I relaxed a bit in my room practicing some definitions of common Spanish verbs. And then… it was time for another Antigua FC soccer match (football match for those in the UK).

Tonight, Antigua was playing Panama in the CONCACAF tournament. The CONCACAF is a tournament of teams all across Central America and this game was the second to last group stage game, so it was a big deal.

We could immediately tell the difference in intensity with this game vs the last one we went to. There were double the fans, the players were playing scrappier, and the emotion from the fan base was insane!

Antigua actually started up 1-0 but quickly fell 1-5 not long after… but even with poor defense, the second half was electric with Antigua bringing it back to 3-5 with multiple attempts to score again and equalize… but with no luck.

The amount of new phrases I heard and learned over the course of the 90 minute match was even more than the last game. Many fans at one point even rushed the fence and started banging and pulling on it out of frustration with the refs (who definitely felt biased). There were lots of chants about CONCACAF being corrupt, the refs being paid off, etc. Which apparently have some merit since there’s a fair amount of corruption in Central America and the Guatemala government specifically (allegedly).

Even with a loss, it was a great time! Lots of yelling, practicing our new words/phrases, and singing along to the many chants of the super fans.

One of the songs:

¡VAMOS, VAMOS ANTIGUA QUE ESTA NOCHE TENEMOS QUE GANAR!

I went to bed a bit later than usual Tuesday night, so I woke up a bit tired on Wednesday, August 13th. I ate breakfast, said see you later to Savanna, and headed off to class. She said she might visit Honduras while I’m there, so theres a chance our paths cross again.

Class today started off with a nice conversation about the soccer match. We also just chatted about random subjects for the first bit which was a nice breather from the bombardment of verb practice. But, I did sign up for the bombardment… so there was of course more verb practice.

We went deeper into the irregular present tense verbs and just like the past week, we’d go on random side tangents about something related to what we were talking about.

We also talked a bit about some of the phrases I heard doing the football match yesterday, which was a very fun conversation!

After class, I had lunch with just the family, Savanna had already left. I did alright holding my own with the conversations. It feels like they’ll ask me some questions, but if I don’t talk then they won’t talk a ton. So I might just have to ask questions and start conversations if I want the practice.

I worked on my blog post a bit post lunch and then set out for an errand, which was paying for my second week of classes. I pulled out my wad of cash from the ATM and ended up owing 1880 quetzales. I think outside of the school, I spent around $100 for the week, which mostly was spent on fun activities since the rest of my needs are sorted through the school. So even with being a tourist town, Antigua is pretty dang affordable!

I went straight to the library afterwards to work on my homework. Today’s assignment was writing sentences pertaining to the verb conocer (to know, a place or a person not necessarily knowing like intelligence) and writing sentences for the irregular verbs I know so far. Lots and lots of writing!

There was a security guard at the library this time around and he made me put my backpack into a locker. So that’s good to know for the future! I finished up my homework and set out to meet up with my friends who were studying at a cafe.

I stopped at two music stores along the way and asked about their guitar pricing. The first one said, “ciento y cinco” which is 105 quetzales… but I didn’t think that could be correct and got a bit flustered with my Spanish speaking and said hasta luego (I’ll see you soon).

I’ll definitely go back and double check that pricing though. If it’s actually 105 quetzales I would have found an insane deal for a guitar! I was hoping to find a used one, but I haven’t found one yet.

The second shop was more along the price I was expecting, 1,177 quetzales ($150 ish). I chatted with the person behind the counter a bit and then headed on a walk in the rain to my friends.

My friends were at the same group of bars/restaurants that we went to our first night out together. There was a chocolate cafe and they were enjoying some sweet treats while studying. I studied for a bit, but got a bit Spanished out, so I walked into a nearby bar. I remembered from last time that they had a guitar, and I asked if I could borrow it for a bit and they said yes!

So I serenaded my friends as they practiced their Spanish. Dinner time rolled around and I was met with a feast when I got home.

I had a tamale, two mini quesadillas, a fried rolled tortilla, and they also gave me pan (bread) too. Guatemalans love their carbs!

I was very full after the meal and had another nice conversation alone with the family. I excused myself and went into my room to make up for the time I didn’t study at the cafe. I also FaceTimed my friend from college Maddi. Maddi and I were mascots together and it was really nice to catch up!

After I got off the phone, I went to Casa Claudia to play cards with my friends. We had intentions on going to a beer garden to play cards, but it was torrentially down pouring, so I just went to their house.

It was a wonderful full week in Guatemala! I have a solid friend group who’s down to explore, study, and hang. I’m also really enjoying learning Spanish and enjoying the Guatemalan lifestyle! I’m looking forward to the adventure of hiking a volcano and I’m very much looking forward to how my Spanish progresses over the next couple of weeks!

I’ll see you next week with some fun updates!

– Elie