Santa Catarina Barahona

May 8, 2010

First official week of training and living with my host family. I am living in Santa Catarina Barahona, a small town about 20 minutes outside of Antigua. This is where I will be living for the next 10 weeks. I am really enjoying it here. Guatemala is a very beautiful country. I can see three different volcanoes from where I live and the landscape is breathtaking. My host family is wonderful! Extremely nice and very concerned about my well being. I actually got sick my first night with them. Don’t recall ever being so sick in the past, but it was over and done with in about 24 hours.
The Peace Corps keeps us really busy during our training. Not a lot of downtime, but they do make sure we get to spend enough time with our host families for meals and Spanish conversation. I really like the way our Spanish lessons are structured. It’s all community based learning, where the teachers come to us (5 per group) and we have classes at each other’s homes. I think it’s the fastest and easiest way to grasp the language; interactive and fun also.
A little bit about the food of Guatemala... I love it!! Homemade tortillas with every meal, very common to see black beans at every meal also. Yes, I have had a day or two where I saw black beans and tortillas 3 times during that day. I have fallen in love with, and already crave each day, pan dulce and choco bananos. Pan dulce is a sweet bread typically dipped in coffee or atól de mush (they’re version of oatmeal, and quite delicious); lots of different types. Choco banano is a frozen banana dipped in chocolate; common also with peanuts. I have also tried atól de plátano: basically, plantain juice served warm. Their tamales are very good as well; very different from typical tamales eaten in the states, but same concept. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and homemade fruit juice.