First set of pictures, and my first week here
Greg Malivuk
instructions on looking at them are at the end of this email.
This week has been pretty uneventful. For one thing, it's too hot and
humid to do anything that requires more than a bare minimum of
physical exertion. I've spent most of it wandering around Playa or
sitting on the playa (or "beach", for you gringos), familiarizing
myself with the place. I'm not brushing up as much as I'd hoped on my
Spanish skills, since most of the locals I've come into contact with
know more English than the amount of Spanish I remember from high
school, and rather than waiting for me to figure out how to say what I
want to say, they usually immediately switch to English when they
figure out I'm American.
I've also been sampling some of the cheaper places to eat, and decided
to cancel the meal plan I'd originally gotten with lodging for the
duration of the course. There are a few places pretty much right on
the way between the residence and the school where I can eat a decent
amount for quite a bit less than the meal plan would cost me. While I
could eat even cheaper than that if I made my own meals, doing so
would be pretty time consuming during an intensive course, and I'm not
a person who uses cooking as a way to relax.
Other students taking the CELTA course are starting to arrive, and so
some of us are probably going to try to meet tomorrow and do
something. (One was supposed to stop in and say hi when she got here
tonight, but she didn't. I know she's from the UK, and so arriving at
9pm felt like 3am to her, so I can understand just wanting to sleep
off the jet lag instead.)
That's pretty much all there is to report at this point. I know some
of you (*coughallisoncough*) no doubt want to hear about any cultural
observations I've made, but I'll save that for another time (and
perhaps only post it in my livejournal, which is
gmalivuk.livejournal.com).
-greg
--
Read about my travels at http://groups.google.com/group/gmalivuktravel.
To see pictures, go to http://mail.google.com and login as
"gmalivuktravel.pics" with password "newzealand".
(Just sending them there as email attachments will be about the
easiest way for me to do it.)