First Week in Antigua, Guatemala

By: Artis H. – Guestblogger from Antigua
In Antigua, mornings are brisk this time of year. For my first day of Spanish classes at the language school, I bundled against the cold and hurried down the narrow, cobbled streets. The smell of Guatemalan coffee drifted from an open shop window and blended with the aroma of baking banana bread from the panderia next door. My stomach growled, even after the breakfast of sliced bananas and papayas with my host family that morning.
I climbed a flight of stairs to the office and lounge area of the school, then another flight to the open-air classroom above. Work stations were spread across the patio, with tables, chairs, and blackboards at each mini-classroom. Though the air still held a hint of morning chill, I was thrilled to start learning Spanish. My class schedule began at 8:00 a.m. and ran until noon, with a 20 minute break in between. I shared a professor with one other student.
Every day of this first week has been packed with activities. After four hours of classes in the morning, the students headed back to our homestays for lunch. In the afternoons, we sampled the excursions in and around Antigua offered by the school. On Tuesday, we visited the former church and convent of the Capuchinian nuns in Antigua and on Wednesday, we learned how to make tomalitos at the school. Everyone had a chance to dip their hands into the sticky maize mixture and roll out their own tomalito before wrapping the ball in a corn husk to be boiled. Mildly flavored with a hint of the spinach-like chipilin leaves we rolled into the flour, the results were delicious. On Thursday, we visited a local village known for their hand-woven fabrics. After we watched the women weave, we had another cooking lesson: tortillas. We learned how to pat the dough between our hands and toss the thin disks onto the griddle. We then sat down to a traditional Guatemalan feast of pepilon with our own hand-crafted tortillas.
The perfect end to such a full first week? A weekend at the beach. A group of students from the school decided to search out the surf camp at Paredon, three hours from Antigua along Guatemala's Pacific coastline. And so my first week in Guatemala ended with the beginning of another adventure.