Today, I got hit by a car. Don’t worry (Mom), I’m ok, but it was an interesting experience. I was walking home from school on the sidewalk, when a car that was trying to park bumped into me. Really, it barely knock me off balance and I’m just being dramatic, but really, have many people can say that they were hit by a car and somewhat enjoyed it? Anyway, it was good for a laugh. Hopefully this gives you a little picture of what the streets of Antigua are like. The sidewalks are barely three feet wide in some places and are incredible uneven. There are hazards everywhere- open holes, drains, and random dips and protruding pieces of, well, I’m not really sure what. All the streets are cobblestone, built who knows how many hundreds of years ago. The city doesn’t want to pave the streets or make other modern adjustments, because they want it to seem antigua (old) to attract tourists. They also are an unfortunate number of places where people and animals have left little “presents”. You definitely have to watch where you’re walking at all times. Yesterday, my Spanish teacher was telling me stories about the perils of walking in Antigua: earlier that week, her daughter fell and hurt herself so bad that she couldn’t get up or walk for awhile, several of her students have bruised their faces and various body parts or broken fingers, and even she broke her ankle. Luckily I’ve only gotten hit by a car so far, but I’ve narrowly escaped worse fate a few times (I’ve also hit my shoulders several times on the concrete windows that protrude about a foot into an already crowded sidewalk, but so far not my face).
Apart from this, language school has been going well. Studying eight hours a day has been challenging, but beneficial. Usually by dinnertime, my brain hurts so much that it’s hard to form sentences when talking to my host mother. I’ve been learning a lot of idiomatic phrases and reviewing things that I’ve been struggling with since the first time that I came. It’s interesting and somewhat encouraging to think about where I was at 9 months ago when I started language school the first time. I still have a long way to go though.
Words of the day:
Tener choques (ten- air cho- ks)- to have an accident (between cars or between cars and people). This can also describe two people that are in an argument.
Banqueta (bahn- k- tah)- sidewalk
1 comment:
Who gets hit by cars? Honestly :P
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