6/4 Bienvenidos a Sayaxche!

Well hello y'all,

   I got put out in the field.. literally it was a field.. well.. actually they dropped me off at the edge of a river and I had to pay a random stranger to take me and my luggage across to where the city and my comp were. I love it here in Sayaxche (sigh-axe-SHAY) and even though its about 100deg. here I'm holding up my own. 

   They're splitting the mission the end of this month and its going to be "Guatemala City East" and "Coban" missions. Guatemala City East is all literally in Guatemala city which is basically a GIANT Stockton but with only Latinos.. (wait that doesn't make sense.. that's all Stockton has anyways.) and the Coban Mission is basically anything that isn't city.. and far from city. If you couldn't tell by the name of my city, I'm in the Coban Mission area so there is little chance I'll make it to a big city.. I'm actually really happy for this cause I DO NOT like the city here. Plus Coban has all the Q'ueqchi areas so I have a WAY bigger chance of learning it too! 

   I'm in the Peten Zone.. this is where a lot of the Mayan ruins are supposedly.. I think we MIGHT get to see them but I'm not sure.

 

   My bus ride out here was fun.. I got off a bus and got my first area assignment.. got on a bus.. got off a bus and on to a bigger bus.. stayed on that bus for 12 hrs (Until 11pm) got off the bus and slept.. got on a microbus (a minivan with 30 people) and spent 2hrs on that and THAT is when they dropped me off at the edge of the river.

   I lucked out cause they started me out in an area with mostly Spanish.. I definitely need to learn Spanish before I start on Q'ueqchi too much. I'm not sure how I'm going to learn anything though cause my memory span has shortened WAY down! Like literally when people speak here I'll understand the words as they're speaking them... but by the time they're done speaking I only remember the last word they said. So it's YAY that I can understand way more Spanish in 5 days but it really stinks cause I have no idea how to reply to people's questions RIGHT after they've asked them.. I don't know if that makes sense.

  
Oh yeah by the way I'm doing good on my Spanish! I'm able to almost completely communicate with my Mexican Comp. It's almost harder to understand his English than his Spanish. He had me pray in Spanish one night and I kept accidentally switching to Spanish in the middle of the prayer. wait.. that doesn't make any sense.. ah.. I mean he had me pray in ENGLISH. Anyways the point is I'm losing my English vocab faster than I'm gaining my Spanish one. Luckily God has allowed me to remember MOST of it for when I email home!

   For fun I like to stop walking for a bit and count how many drips of sweat fall from my arm in 60secs.. so far my record is 10.

   I know exactly 0 people within a 1hr radius that speak English so you all don't have to worry about me being immersed in the language.