Well, here we are!

Hello, everyone -

We are here-Antigua, Guatemala. My nervousness about this whole adventure has diminished somewhat now that we have arrived and settled in. I'm sure it will start up again when we start class Monday morning.

The flights here were uneventful and I even managed to snag a emergency exit row on the long leg from Atlanta to Guatemala City. Loads of room for my legs, which made the trip so much less an endurance trial.

I was impressed almost immediately after getting thru customs with the fact that the luggage carts were free. I guess the airport authority hasn't figured out how to gouge the tourists yet by nickle and dime-ing them for every small thing.

We found our driver with no problem, but managed to somehow pick up a couple of helpers with our carts on the way to our car. Even though I said "No, Gracias", they stepped right in to "help" put the luggage in the car. They were disappointed though, since I didn't ask for assistance, I didn't feel any obligation to tip. I suppose that's a little "Ugly American" of me, but I find that sort of thing annoying. If I had needed and requested their help, I would have been glad to give them a few bucks.

So, after the airport adventure, we got to have the driving to Antigua adventure, which was mostly an adventure getting out of Guatemala City and a bit more exciting arriving into Antigua. The middle part was not too bad. We think drivers in Lexington and our urban areas are bad, but American drivers have nothing on the rest of the world. Cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, if they want to come into the lane you are occupying, they just start over and hope you let them in or they force their way in. We almost rear-ended several different vehicles and came very close to wiping out a young man on a motorcycle. Fortunately, he changed his mind at the last minute and decided we were too close even for his comfort. I'm always surprised when I don't see any accidents, but there never seems to be any. I guess when everyone drives crazy, it balances out and everybody manages to stay out of everybody else's way.

It took about an hour to get to our casa. The Casa de Familia Ovalle is where we will call home for the next 4 weeks and I'll be a not-so-swinging single for 5 more. It's an interesting house. Somethings I like about it and somethings I'm not crazy about.

You come into a roofed over foyer right off the sidewalk. Beyond that is an open courtyard with a covered hallway along the left. Our room and 1 other are right off of this hallway. Straight ahead from the courtyard with the doorway off the hallway to the right is the sitting room, which has the wireless router in it and where I will probably be doing most of my computer stuff. While the Casa does have this wireless, unfortunately they have placed the router on the floor in the corner, so it doesn't broadcast very far. We're hoping after we get to know our hostess, Maria Elena, a little better, we can suggest and offer to help get the router mounted up in the corner of the room.

Anyway, more about the Casa, right behind the sitting room as you move back into the house is the dining room. It is an ok size, but very dark. Behind that is the kitchen. As you come to the kitchen door, the hallway once again opens up to another open air courtyard with some wood slat chairs and a table. I tried to sit there this am to work on the computer but no signal. Too bad as it's a very pleasant spot. There is another room beyond the kitchen which is a small guest room, but it is very dark with only 1 window which looks out on the courtyard. There are stairs off this courtyard on the left.

The stairs curve around to the right and at the landing there is the laundry room. You continue up and right before the top is the room of our live-in caretaker, Cristina. She takes care of our room and cooks our breakfast. Since she speaks no English, it has been very interesting communicating so far. But I'm sure as our Spanish improves, that will become easier. At the top of the stairs is a rooftop patio, with a covered seating area. It overlooks 1 of the 3 volcanos surrounding Antigua. I've already spent a lot of time up there. It is very comfortable.

The house is very nice and fairly comfortable. Right now, we are the only guests so it feels like our home. My only serious complaint is that our room is kinda dark with the only windown looking out to the hallway. It also has a curtain over it that doesn't provide much privacy when our light is on. I'm going to shop today for an attractive cloth that I can put up to fix that. We need to see whether we can fix one of the bedside lamps so that we can have some light other than overhead spots, which are pretty glaring.

Our only other window is in the bathroom and it looks out into the second courtyard, so we can slide the window partially open a tiny bit for ventilation but too much and anyone coming down the stairs can see into our bath.

Our room doesn't have a dresser but does have a gigantic closet with tons of shelving, so we can make that work. We also have our own small refrigerator that we can keep some things in. However, it takes more that 24 hours for ice to freeze even in tiny ice cube trays. They're just not too big on ice most places outside the US.

That's it for now. I'll tell you later about the huge breakfast we just ate. And the coffee is incredible!