First day of school

Hello again, everyone. Well, today we started at Casa de Lingua. It was a busy and tiring morning. We have two instructors; Tony and Diego. Diego will also be our salsa dance instructor. Class was from 8am until 12 noon. We had a brief break about 9:15 in order for one of the administrators to tell us about some of the events that are scheduled and give us a brief tour of the school.

The system is conversationally based. We started with the basics. Soy llame es Melinda. Soy es de Estados Unidos. a, be, ce, de, etc. There are 2 young women in the class besides Eddie and I. They are Canadian and are spending the summer traveling around Cent. Amer. I was very impressed. I don't think I would have had the nerve to do what they are doing at their age. However, I have to say, I think Eddie and I are having an easier time picking up what the teacher is saying and what we are supposed to say. Even with our old brains.

I will talk more about the school and classes later. Yesterday, I described where we are staying. Today I would like to talk about desayuno (breakfast). Casa Familia de Ovalle will serve you either breakfast or breakfast and dinner as part of your cost. We opted to go with just breakfast, but with the option to have occasional dinners here, which we will do tonight.

I don't know how dinner will be, but breakfast has been incredible. Yesterday and again today. There's enough food for 8 people. When we come to the table there are two kinds of breakfast cereal available, a pitcher of fresh, whole milk and a pitcher of orange juice. A large bowl of yogurt with maybe papaya mixed in and I like their yogurt here too, better than that awful stuff they sell in the states. A large bowl of pan (bread), at least 4 different kinds. Strawberry jam that is not too sweet. A small plate of what looks like lunchmeat and American cheese, which we haven't bothered with and another plate of white semi-soft cheese. That's just to keep you until Cristina can fix and serve the bowl of negros refritos (black refried beans) and eggs. Yesterday they were poached (I think) with a green sauce of some kind. Today they were scrambled with tomato. Oh yeah, yesterday there was a plate of tomatos and a plate of papaya. Today there was a plate of sliced pineapples.

It's a good thing we are walking, walking, walking everywhere or I'd end up being 3 times as big as when I left.