Julie es bilingual!!!

Howdy folks!!

We have been in Quetzaltenango (nickname-Xela) now for a week and a half and will be here until the 11th. Xela is Guatmala´s second largest city. Its an old colonial city, pretty high up in the mountains and has a large indigenous population. It also has a lot of great Spanish schools without feeling very touristy at all. Thats why we´re here!

We both took classes last week and just Julie will be taking classes this week and next week. Classes are 1 on 1 for 4 hours a day so they´re pretty intense! We have homework and everything. Julie is doing awesome with her espanol! Its a tough, long process but she is coming right along and isn´t ever afraid to jump right in with what she knows, which is so very important in learning a language. I mean this professionally, not just as a sappy husband :)

Before or after our classes we´ve been volunteering at a clinic which serves underpriviledged and indigenous communities. Last week were were taking classes in the morning and volunteering in the afternoon. This wasn´t too great because the clinic normally has the vast majority of their patients in the morning and is pretty dead in the afternoon. We offered to help out with anything we could, which pretty much consisted of playing with the doctors´ and pharmacists kids´ and dusting the storage room. Also Julie tutored me on pretty much every drug in the pharmacy. Fot the remaining two weeks we´ve had the class schedule switched so that we can go to the clinic in the morning. This morning was much better, Julie helped out in the lab looking at blood samples and entering information and I asked patients a bunch of questions for a survey the clinic is doing to try to improve services. I asked a lot of questions and got a whole lot of who-the-heck-is-this white-guy looks. We´re looking forward to getting more of those and helping out over the next few weeks!

In other news, I haven´t wasted any time getting some Latin American sickness. I´ve had plenty of bacteria and even a parasite before, but this is my first time getting some kind of stomach fungus. Its not been too bad though, could be lot worse (bring it on lacking disinfectant system!!). I´ve just been really dizzy and not eating too much. A couple of times I´ve been stuck in bed and Julie has ventured out and used her Spanish (some fun medical and potty vocabulary) in some ways I´m sure she wasn´t expecting to so soon.

Also, today is our 1 month anniversary, so holler to that!!

Thanks so much for your support and for your emails! We appreciate them!

Love,
Julie and Joe