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Towards the end of our intensive Spanish program, we put our español to the test by taking a Red Cross certification program (Saturday mornings) covering emergency first-aid, trauma and CPR.  Obviously everything in the course was in español (including the final written test!) but we did it.  Our instructor, Fernando, was an excellent teacher who spoke clearly, methodically and patiently for us.  We snapped pictures of every PowerPoint slide which had a lot of new medical terminology we needed to memorize, plus used Google translate on our phones during class if we stumbled on a particular word.

And we just got our certification diplomas!  It took a couple of weeks to get all the signatures.

Our language school sponsors a kind of academic “Boys and Girls” club after school.  On Friday afternoons we volunteer at the little one room “schoolhouse” for neighborhood kids.  The room is filled with kids ranging from 5 year olds to middle teens.

Here’s what it looks like!

Xela is in a valley at about 7,500′, but the club is way up the mountain side overlooking the city. This is the view from the club with the afternoon thunderstorm starting to roll in from the north…

We’re way past due for updating our blog! 3+ months ago we started a formal academic program of Spanish in Xela.

It’s a program designed for university students who want immersion Spanish and credit for 2 years (4 semesters) of Spanish.  It’s 5 hours a day, one-on-one with your teacher across a small desk.  Exhausting, but excellent.  Afternoons and weekends were spent memorizing, memorizing and more memorizing of verb conjugations in multiple tenses, grammar forms and lots of new vocabulary.

At the end, the school had a “graduation” ceremony for us which we appreciated! We got our diplomas and a letter describing the program for our records.

Leslie with Aury – not only her teacher for 3+ months, but a good friend as well!

Don with his teacher Judith.  And proof of our course completions!

We needed to make a “border run” a month ago and that need coincided with the opportunity to help my brother-in-law Toby and his wife in northern California prepare for a move to the Bay area. So we traveled “down the mountain” from Xela to Guatemala City (about 4 hours of constant hair-pin turns, from about 8,000′ to about 5,000′) and spent a night at a guest house for our early morning flight.

Sitting on the roof in that balmy twilight we witnessed the continuing eruption of the Fuego volcano outside the city.  In slow motion, great belches erupted and it was fun watching the ash blow across the setting sunset. We spent a weekend in our city of Ventura then traveled north for about 3 weeks to pack up lots of “stuff” for Toby that we moved into the garage in preparation for their move.

We came back to Xela this past weekend and started our intensive Spanish classes again (5 hours a day, one on one with our teachers) on Monday.  Then yesterday morning before class, glancing outside our patio, I noticed a huge cloud in the sky.  A local volcano about 5 miles south from us (on the other side of the hill) was erupting again – fun to watch!

If you’d love to see volcanoes, come to Guatemala!

Guatemala is known for volcanoes – it’s a big tourist draw for hikers.

A little over a week ago Santiaguito had an eruption sending smoke and ash up over a mile and is still smoking, but this week the wind shifted a bit and we’ve been getting a light sprinkling of ash.  Santiaguito is just about 5 miles or so south of us.  Yesterday, coming back from grocery shopping, we asked our taxista Manuel to drive us south of town a bit so I could get a photo.  He was willing to drive us right up to it for an up close and personal shot but I declined…!

This is a Google satellite view of the volcano just south of our city of Xela.

If you’d love to get up close and personal with volcanoes, Guatemala is the place to visit!