1/3 complete

Hola Friends!

Well, we have reached the 1/3 mark. I've been here for three weeks today, and it has been quite the experience. I want to first thank everyone who has been reading my blog and praying for me over these past three weeks. The prayers have truly been a blessing, and please know of my prayers for you!  In these three weeks I have had over 500 page views on my blog, American pizza 3 times, 4 spiders in my room (3 in my bed), seen movies in the theater twice, visited the Cathedral twice, had two days without rain, been in class for aproximaldamente 42 hours, and learned countless new words in Spanish!  I guess that was a small 3 week stat review :)

The past few days have been pretty good aqui. My teacher started cookin' with gas en mis clases. Some of the concepts have been very challenging, but once I master them it will make my spanish much better.  We also started going over the past tense today. Let me tell you, things make a lot more sense knowing some words in the past tense. My homework the past couple dias has been to write stories in español using only the present tense. I was amazed at now much I was able to write!  I look forward over the next six weeks learning more and more so I can become much better with the language.

As I mentioned in my stats review, I have seen movies in the theaters twice. They have been in English which is nice, but have Spanish subtitles which helps.  My seminarian brother John and I went to the centro commercial aqui en Quetzaltenago today to have lunch and watch a movie. We were able to have a good Spanish conversation, and we also talked to some kids in Spanish waiting outside the theater.  Plus I can't beat the price for a movie here. 15 quetzals. That's just over $2!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when we play the seminarians in basketball again. Thursday is probably one of my favorite dias aqui. We have Mass at 9am (instead of 5:45am) and then play basketball after lunch. Last time we beat the seminarians, and I hope we win again tomorrow.

Also in my stats I mentioned American pizza. Pizza is my favorite food, with steak and Portillo's right behind it.  Well last Friday we made American pizza for all the monks and seminarians. It turned out perfect!  It was really well received and tasted great. Fr. Juan Francisco asked if we wanted to make it again this Sunday. We are going to let another Spanish student cook something he knows this Sunday, but I will be cooking again soon!

Speaking of food makes me think of dinner. Speaking of dinner makes me think of when I said in an earlier post I will share some traditions. So here is one of them. For dinner every night in the monastery, it starts off in silence. When the bell rings one of the priests leads a prayer. After the prayer one of the Benedictines reads from the rule of St. Benedict. After the reading we are allowed to sit down, get our food, and begin eating. Breakfast also is in silence everyday here. As some of you know, (and I know those who do know are about to laugh ) I'm not a morning person. 5:45am for Mass and breakfast at 7:30am is an early beginning for me, so I welcome the silence in the morning. It's a great way to just start off the day peacefully with our Lord and to prepare for classes.

I hope everyone is well back home. I'm thinking about all of you. Please know of my prayers and we will talk soon.

-Cristobal

Ps. I want to share some photos, so eventually I will be making an online photo album and I'll post a link so everyone can see them.