What day is today?

I’ve been in Guatemala for less than a week and the days are starting to blur together. Hard to believe that I’ve only been with my host family for two nights. This morning wasn’t so obscenely early (although early enough). I had my first bucket bath. Dona Dina was kind enough to put hot water on the stove for me early, although I had enough time to heat the water. It was a good enough size bucket to provide warm water for an entire wash and shave. It’s just odd to stand in what could be considered a shower stall and pour warm water over your head. It works well enough though. That’s what I’m looking at for the next three-months and possibly for the next 2 ½ years. This morning was our first day of Spanish class. It’ll be mostly practical oral. We walked around town and talked about a few different topics. At 10:00 our teacher, Don Philippe and I grabbed a snack. It was Atol which is a warm drink with rice and milk and a Tostada. Muy bien. I’m in the Intermediate-Bajo (Low) group and need to be at Intermediate Media (middle) in order to continue after the three months of training. I’ve defiantly improved in the last couple of days so I’m optimistic. This afternoon my technical group got together in a pueblo called Alotenango. Tenango is a native word for place. It was an hour and ½ ride on three different buses. Wasn’t too bad really. Our Spanish teacher took the three of us from my village to show us the way. He’s going to meet us in the morning to make sure we got it down. My technical group consists to 15-people doing the same job--Municipal Development. We’ll see what the entails, but basically I’ll be in a County Planning office attempting to do a wide number of things from mapping to long-term planning, to facilitating grass roots groups. When I got back from Alotenango I played with the kids for a couple of hours before we had dinner. Dinner was a minced meat and green bean dish and corn tortillas (of course). It’s raining cats and dogs at the moment and it’s pretty cool sounding on the metal roof. Kind of reminds me of camping in the trailer growing up. There is a hurricane heading this way, although it looks like it’ll hit land fall closer to Belize. Of my entering group of 33 about ½ of us have to pack a 3-day bag and stay near the Peace Corps training center. It’s a safety precaution based on the proximity to rivers or dangers of mud slides. The house I’m in seems like it’s been standing for a while and I’m certainly not worried, but I understand and appreciate the Peace Corps precaution.