There ends that adventure. Now, onto the next!

Yesterday was my last day taking Spanish classes at my, now beloved, Spanish school. Although I'm sad to not be able to hang out with all the students at break time anymore, I'm so happy to be done with my 5-hour classes 5 days a week! My teacher was excellent and taught me pretty much all the grammar and a ton (a TON!!!) of verbs and different ways they're used, but she also drove me crazy everyday for at least the last week of classes...I think that tends to happen when you're talking to only one other person for 5 hours straight (except for the 30-minute break in the middle) and they're interrupting you every other sentence to correct some mistake you've made. But I did learn so much from her and I'm so glad I had the chance to study with her!
In addition to finishing up my classes yesterday, I also moved! I'm now renting a room on the third floor of a building that's a block away from the central park. There are 5 rooms up here and we all have our own bathrooms, but we share a kitchen and a pretty sweet balcony (I'm just going to say right now that I'll be spending a lot of time on the balcony reading/chillaxing). The room is kinda small, but I don't have that much stuff so it's all good. I now also have to make all my own food (I think I was spoiled the last 4 weeks by having all my food made for me by my host family), so tomorrow I've got to go to the street market and get a bunch of fruits and veggies and probably some chicken. So far all I have to eat is fruit, peanut butter, and yogurt...somehow I don't think that will sustain me for the next few months.

Today I went with some students from the Spanish school to climb the Santa Maria Volcano....I'm so glad I did it, but I'm never doing it again. We met at the school at 5AM so that we could get started on the climb by 5:30 because apparently you get better views if you're there earlier in the day. Well the volcano is a little over 1000m higher than Xela and it was pretty steep the whole time. Our guide (a.k.a. Jorge, one of the teachers at the school) said it'd be 3-ish hours to get to the top. I'd heard 4 from multiple people beforehand so I was pleasantly surprised. It took me 4.5 hours to get to the top, but in my defense, I don't even do hikes in Washington where the elevation is pretty close to sea level, this was much higher. But up top it was so pretty!! We were on the same level/above the clouds and it was so cool to just look out and see a carpet of clouds in front of me. We were supposed to be able to see another volcano that has little eruptions every hour or so, but it was too cloudy to see it. Bummer. Anyways, it was gorgeous! It's one of those things that I highly recommend, but I won't accompany you if you go.

Monday marks the beginning of my "new adventures." I'll be going outdoor climbing with a tour group called Quetzaltrekkers at this place called La Muela (it means "the molar") and I'll begin impatiently waiting for a local English school to call me and tell me that they have a student for me. I gave my information to the school on Thursday and the lady said she'd call me as soon as she had a student for me...I don't really know what that means. But I hope it's soon! She said they just re-opened since Christmas and New Years so they should be getting students soon. But until I hear from her I think I'll be exploring Xela a bit more since I've really only seen the areas between my homestay house and my school, plus a couple other places. So here I go, off on some new exploring adventures! :)