not enough time to study ? what?

so... a little less philosophical, and a little more reality for those that were asking.

normal day: get up voluntarily between 6 and 7 (uh.... what??? clearly this is novel). breakfast with my host family for the week (it changes every sunday) at 7:30. class at 8 until 12. brain is exhausted. lunch with the fam at 12:30. afternoons include reading books, studying, dancing around my bedroom because that´s my only form of exercise, playing with or reading to kids down the street, eating delicious galletas, group discussions about relevant political and sociopolitical topics, etc. dinner with the fam at 5:30. wednesday nights are noches culturales where we play games with the local kids of the community , thursday nights we have cooking classes where i learn to make delicious food that causes me to gain weight..... otherwise more reading, studying, chatting about sociopolitical stuff, and... sleeping often before 10 (ummm.... hello? um.... hi?). interestingly enough i feel like i straight up don´t have enough time to study what i want to study. CRAZY.

some other realities.... the families in the local communities are really poor. i spent the afternoon with a family in the community of santo domingo down the road and i think there are 7 people (an essentially single mother of 6 kids because the father of the kids, or some of them, drinks a lot and wanders around town) living in a one room house. dirt floor, two beds, one little armoir thing, and that´s it. they have a sort of kitchen outside in back, and a sort of bathroom out there too. but we had a great time reading a few books, playing the equivalent of ´oh-bo-shanotentatan..´the gibberish hand game that we always played growing up, and then taking absurd numbers of photos with my camera. i´ll try to upload a couple here.

last saturday we went on a hike to this nearby waterfall- the best. i think i´m going again tomorrow with the new crew of people. the first week we only had 3 students (which is BAD for the communities- these people depend on the school being full) but this past week we had 8. hopefully even more full next week. anyway, the waterfall was stunning, but let´s be honest, it´s stunning here regardless. now that the rain is starting to taper off a bit, we´ve actually had a couple of sunsets.... needless to say, it´s beautiful.

i´m gonna try and get a couple photos to load.... looking forward to hearing from all of you. miss you all.