March 9

I wish it was possible to sleep in peacefully here! Maybe I will eventually get used to the noise…but man oh man is it a drag on the sleep department. I was supposed to wake up at 6 today, and instead was woken up at 5. I kept trying to go back to sleep, but I was inevitably jolted by some sort of street noise about every 10 minutes. So I ended up getting up at about quarter to I think.

The bus never came…abandoned again! Lol, just kidding. Jo, an elementary teacher who is a family friend and apparently lives nearby came with a taxi. Jo and I will be riding the school bus together every morning – that is, as long as it decides to come! Supposedly there was a new driver this morning or something.

My CT neglected to tell me that during the hours that we don’t have classes, our room is occupied by another teacher with other classes. Haha, I about made a fool out of myself this morning by almost walking straight into the class without looking. So, at this point I had no idea where to go or where my CT was. Abandoned again…lol

Anyway, she did eventually show up and I basically found out that we hang out in the teachers’ lounge all morning on Mondays Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This gave me the opportunity to take care of my emails and start both of my blogs

Today was especially good because during this time I was also able to cam chat with Adam multiple times! It was sooo good to see him and hear his voice! I think that seeing how things are going to go for the next two months made me feel a lot more settled and optimistic.

I also met Yanet today – the woman who was responsible for my being stranded at the airport. Yea…I still don’t like her. She barely apologized, and talked about how our communication was “mismatched” towards the end. In my head I couldn’t help but scream “no no NO lady, our communication was never mismatched, yours was just nonexistent! We do not share the blame here, it was entirely your fault and you admitting that would make it a lot better!” But did she?...no.

I’m a pretty big fan of my new CT – she’s funny, personable, matter-of-fact, and she bought my ice cream; what’s not to love!?!? She also told me that we need to plan a trip to the beach soon, yay! I can already tell that she has a great relationship with her students – they all joke around with each other, they talk to her about unrelated life happenings, and it seems like they would do practically anything for one of her “love stickers.”

I started p90x today. I'm so glad I brought it! I'm going to have so much extra time on my hands with not having to do as much work teaching that I need something to keep me busy. Not to mention the fact that I'm never going to lose any weight here with the way that my host parents keep wanting me to eat more! lol I'm going to try to sit outside in the sunshine more too so that I can start working on my tan!

I went out with Maria, her best friend and her cousin for about a hour or so last night to a nearby restaurant/bar. It was nice, but at the same time disappointing. I realized that when they are talking at full speed, I probably only understand about 1/3 of what they say lol. My Spanish has a long way to go I guess. Part of it too is that I’m sure they were using a lot more slang words than what I know, and they were talking about people I don’t know, so I just kind of tuned out from time to time. It can be exhausting sometimes to try to keep up with the conversations. I have to put so much effort into listening to make sure I understand things that I don’t really end up talking very much. People here probably think I’m too quiet. Haha, which we all know I’m not! I’m sure it will get better with time…