Life without spell check

My first family - and the one to which I was initially designated - did not open the door. Despite muchos muchos knocking, Casa de Consuelo was well and truly closed to any business of the Wallace Bowman variety. After a twenty odd hour journey and suffering the after-effects of having consumed a rather large quanity of tranquiliser, this turn of events failed to amuse me quite as much as it perhaps should of done. It is also at this point that I was rapidly, and not a little concernedly, arriving at the conclusion that I could not/cannot speak or understand ANY Spanish at all. Hmm....

Following a few hastily made phonecalls in Espanol - not by me, obviously but my trusty driver Byron (?) - an alternative arrangement was reached and off we set to the second option, the house of Senor Elder and his family.

Senor is a LEGEND. Plainly and simply. There will be more about him later I'm sure but, in a nutshell, he is patient with my blank stares and requests for new ligth bulbs, and he doesn't laugh when I say penis instead of chicken (which, by the way, is easily done).

So, I'm here, in Antigua, Guatemala. Surrounded by volcanoes and comprising a criss cross of cobbled streets, brightly coloured colonial style houses and an unfeasible number of cafes, it truly is a beautiful town.

This week is Holy Week or Semana Santa, something I found out after getting trapped between an 10ft Jesus, a BBQ and many many many people wearing purple outside one the main churches. I took approximately 40.5 billion photos of the fiesta, which included the streets embroided with flowers and mosaics of dyed sawdust which were incredible, trust me, and I'll upload them as it was a spectacle which will surely pale in the telling. Please note, this picture uploading business may take some time, however, as my camera charger is currently on a little journey of it's own, all the way from West End Lane to Avenida Sur, coz I forgot it.

Although I am fairly sure my Spanish teacher 'Gladis', to whom I was introduced this morning, thinks i'm a bit of a tit - a suspicion which was rapidly consolidated by the fact that she spent most of our lesson texting - I definitely feel I am going to really like it here...