5am – My alarm goes off. Looking out the window I can see it is already getting bright outside. I can hear sounds of stirring throughout the house. La familia es mostly despierto and starting to get ready for the day. On Lunes, I didn’t get up until 6:30 and realized that the familia had started their day more than una hora before. I asked Señor Victor when he “generalmente” woke up and he told me “cinco.” Since then, I’ve tried to get up earlier and eat breakfast with la familia rather than after they had all eaten and started working.
7am – By this time I’ve completed my routine de mañana: we’ve eaten breakfast, I’ve packed my bags for la dia, done some studying, and am listo ir. Señor Victor leaves for work about this tiempo and Maria José, the 12 year old hija, has left for eschuela about thirty minutes ago. Señora Olga is in the kitchen and is about to begin the laundry. yo no tengo figured out what the older hijos, Mauricio y Karla, do during the day. So far, the seem to come in and out randomly. Around this time, we set out to walk to eschuela.
8am – Classes begin at 8am sharp. We’ve usually been there about half an hour where we can access the internet and/or talk to our fellow students (again, unfortunately most choose to speak in English rather than practice español). Our professor greets us and we go over homework. After that, the standard schedule seems to be we play some sort of game based on that homework. On the day we memorized numbers, we played BINGO. On the day we memorized verbs, we played charades of “guess the verbos.” Afterwards, el professor teaches new concepts and we drill based on those; we complete worksheets and draw flashcards to use the verb in a sentence. As the class comes to an end, we are assigned new homework and spend the last part of the class just practicing conversation and learning new vocabulary (as opposed to solo verbos).
12pm – We did have a short 20 minutos break from classes at 10am, pero aside from that nosotros vamos straight to 12pm. At 12pm or 2:30pm, activities start. (Different activities start at different times.) Ayer there was a clase de bailar. How there was a clase de cocina. At other points, there are tours and trips that leave from campus. A few people went bungee jumping today y Noah wants to go to a coffee plantation this weekend. After any activities, I try to get online, post on my blog, and catch up with anything that needs attention.
2-3pm – Sometime around here, I try to start walking home. It generally rains in the afternoon and ayer I learned not to walk home in the rain, even if you have an umbrella and it starts out light. When I get home around 2:30-3:30, I start working on mí tarea. It usually does not take mas que dos horas. After which, I review my notes from clase, read the dictionary, and look up words I had wanted to say that day but didn’t know how. The familia starts trickling home around 4-5ish and we hang out talking until dinner.
6:30ish – The familia eats dinner, y we hang around a talk a bit more when we’ve finished. After dinner, I have a dos hora limit before I can have mi malaria pills and 30 minutos after that before I can get to bed. I have a target bedtime of about 9:30pm and from the end of dinner to that time, we hang out on the front porch, I prepare for the next day by setting out everything I will need, I take a shower, brush my teeth, prepare for bed, etc., and I write my blog post until I can go to sleep.
9:30pm – Oops, still writing.
Some ambigious time between 9:30 y 10pm – Ah...es finished. Buenas noches!
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