First Few Days in Guatemala

Well, I have officially been in Guatemala for almost three days now! I am really enjoying it. We hit the ground running on Thursday with the bus picking us up to take us to orientation at 6:45 am. After having lots of information thrown at us all day, I met with a real estate agent on Thursday to go look for apartments. My school puts us up in a hotel for up to a month while we look for a place to live. I saw some really nice places but there wasn't really anything that was within the price range and the location that I was look for. So I was a little frustrated. There was one building that I really liked but the apartment was three bedrooms (much bigger than I need) and it was too expensive! But I really liked the building, so I had asked if there was anything smaller in that building. She said no. It was a very long day and I finally arrived back home around 7:30 with a splitting headache, hungry, and tired! So I just went to sleep and got a good night's rest to be ready for the next day! Friday again we had meetings all day. We got to meet with our middle school team which was nice and got a little bit of time to be in our classrooms. We also had a "safety" talk and went over some tips on how to be safe in Guatemala. It was good to hear some of those things and just to have some things to be sure to think about as I am out in the city! I feel like most of the things are things that I do in general, after living in NY/CT and then in Korea and traveling around to various Asian countries, but it was still a nice reminder. After school on Friday, the real estate agent showed up again and she said she had another apartment, a smaller one, in the building that I liked. So I went with her again and she showed that apartment and I really liked it. I made an offer on it and I will find out on Monday morning if I got it or not. It will take about three weeks for the paperwork to go through after that before I can move in. I am definitely ready to get settled in to my apartment, but at least the hotel is very nice and spacious and comfortable for the time being! It could definitely be a LOT worse! The only bad thing really is that we are farther from school than I would like so the bus will have to pick us up fairly early for school. Last night we went out with some other teachers from school and hung out. Today (Saturday) we took a little trip up the old city of Antigua. It is so beautiful up there. It was really fun to get to explore and see a little bit of Guatemala! The school took us up there and we did kind of a little scavenger hunt but it was really just more of a way to get us out and let us explore. It was really fun! So tomorrow the high school principal is taking a few of us to go grocery shopping and get some other stuff. I will post some pictures next of Antigua!!