Spanish---Not quite a break through day but close enough to be encouraging. I would have preferred staying in today as the constant traveling into and out of Antigua begins to wear you down after a time. However, Don wanted to go in and play the tourist game. He had found that we could take a tourist van out to a Finca (plantation) just outside of Antigua which had a couple of museums as well as a coffee plantation. We located the tour van after our late start leaving the apartment (he did allow for a later take off time as it is Saturday). Our tour group was made up of two Americans, one lady, Jane, from the UK and the rest were stand-off-ish Germans.
At any rate we arrived and were soon met by our guide, a very capable young lady. She spoke Spanish as though she was speaking to a bunch of -----wait for it---------tourists! She was clear and concise and lo and behold both Don and I could understand her Spanish. By that I mean that as she spoke we understood and did not have to do translations in our head before figuring out what was being said! (You loose a lot of the conversation when translations have to be done!) It was so much fun! I was happy that I was not too big of a grump getting started today. We still cannot understand normal conversation (or speed Spanish) because our ears hear too slow and our brain has to translate and we have a lack of vocabulary but we are working on it.
The lady from the UK, Jane, was just passing through Guatemala and it was fun to show her a little of the places and things we have done and seen. Tomorrow she is off on a sleep over Volcano sight seeing trip. She did not know the Mercado was out there and she was as amazed as I still am of the things women (and some men) carry on their heads. Don and I bought fresh vegetables and some fruit. After the tour we shared an appetizer and drank our complimentary glass of wine (given by the tour group) and had a good lunch from it. We had planned to take her to our Comedor (Guatemalan family style restaurant in the Mercado) but found we were no longer hungry. We topped of the meal with an ice cream cone at Pollo Compero. We dashed across the street to the Bodegona and let Don go in to buy the one DVD he needed then we helped her to catch a took-took and we went to catch our bus back to the apartment. We had soup for dinner because we were not starving and that was light enough to end the day. Now there is nothing to watch on TV and not really enough light to read so I am going to call it a day and wish you all a good night.
