First days of school are better when there’s a (dormant) volcano in the background.

Today was a good day. But that discomfort I talked about? It’s real. Even though I speak Spanish, have been to Antigua three times, and am an obsessive planner there are always tricky things. Yesterday and today it was food and internet.

Our house is great – a big four bedroom house with a wonderful courtyard in the middle. A rooftop view of the city, comfy couches, there’s even a piano.

But. The internet is not great. That threw a wrench into my work plans for the morning. But fortunately I had a backup plan and headed to a coworking space across town that had great internet and spent the morning on video calls. There were lots of “Ummm, is that an avocado tree behind you?!” I still haven’t quite figured out the rhythms of working from here yet. I’m worried I didn’t dial back enough what I’m trying to accomplish while I’m here and only working half days, but at least the internet works?

As, for food challenges. Food wouldn’t be that big a deal, except of course the plan is to cook for ourselves and not eat out all the time. Since we are here for three weeks it would get expensive to eat out every day for all our meals. So last night after dinner out for our first night in Antigua I went to the grocery store and found myself tired, wandering around a grocery store that was just foreign enough to be disorienting. Figuring out breakfast shouldn’t be that hard. I’ll spare you the gory details (including the florescent pink “strawberry” yogurt), but tonight we finally had some success. Pasta and tomato sauce, roasted broccoli and chocolate milk for dinner. Bonus was the cookies for desert that taste just like chips ahoy and the setting up on our rooftop.

Challenges included, it was a great first day in our new town. Maggie enjoyed school, we did some daddy-daughter salsa dancing at the free salsa lessons, and grabbed some cotton candy in parque central. But I’ll let Maggie tell those stories when she hopefully blogs soon.

A few bonus photos from this weekend in Lago de Atitlan.