Guatemala : During Part I

I was in Guatemala for about a week during over the Thanksgiving Holiday. In that time, I improved my Spanish skills (through just interacting with citizens and through help from my Spanish tutor), visited several tourist spots (including Mayan ruins and a volcano), painted a mural at a child-care center, and explored the city of Antigua. What initially caught me off guard was the language barrier, as I had somewhat expected it would. It was my first real time being immersed in another culture where English was not the first language and communicating even basic things became all the more difficult and all the more important. Example: when I got locked out of my room three times because I forgot my key. The first time I just climbed in through the window, which is not sketchy right? The second time I just waited till my roommate got back and tail-gated in with her. By the third time however, I mustered up the courage and the minimal language confidence I had to ask the manager of the hotel for the spare key. It was nerve racking, but I was very glad I went ahead and asked. The manager was very sweet and from that simple interaction, I gained a lot more confidence to speak to others during the trip. This helped me later when I spoke to the tour guides at the Mayan ruins in Tikal National Park and at the Pacaya Volcano. I was able to learn a lot more about the Mayan civilization and the Volcano, which had a profound effect on me because I was simply able to be there and stand next to these massive things that contained so much history and I knew beyond a doubt that they were real. The simple experience of being in a place where these things were real was so incredible. I could truly see then how diverse, exciting, and frankly cool the world is. This excitement about being in Guatemala remained with me and continued to grow far after I returned home =^. .^=