Back in Antigua, we headed over to the school to meet the rest of our group and start the trip proper. Vacation had been great, but it was time to get serious. We were there to learn Spanish and get to know something about the culture. This started out with an orientation walk around town (something my friend and I had already done, but found it interesting anyway as there was commentary and context this time around). Then we were escorted to our homestay families, introduced, welcomed into their homes, and left to get acquainted.
Our family was wonderful. They had a relatively large house, and made additional cash by renting rooms out to visiting students like ourselves. We quickly discovered there were three other students staying at the house, all from different language schools and all from different countries. Apparently, the school we were attending frowned on this as they wanted us to be the focus of the family’s evening attention, ensuring that we spoke Spanish at night. But we didn’t care. The only common language around the table was Spanish, so we were getting the practice anyway, and having other students in the house made dinner a large, loud affair where (in the beginning) no one understood each other and there was lots of laughter.
We were quickly indoctrinated into the rules of the house. Water is scarce, and expensive, in Antigua, so we were allowed a five minute shower each day. Longer than this, and our host mother would worry and bang on the door. My friend and I found it impossible to get clean in just five minutes, so we worked out a rotation where we shared our minutes- each day we swapped time. So I got a ten minute shower one day, and she got it the next. We found creative ways to fix our hair on our non-shower days, and wound up going through more deodorant than usual. But I discovered something in myself- I could actually go an entire day without showering. A week before, the thought would have been hideous.
I laugh now at my obsessive need to be clean. America in general has an attitude that a daily shower is necessary, and we think the rest of the world agrees. But the reality is that much of the rest of the world doesn’t have the resources for this, and they get by as they can. While I’m still a big fan of the shower, that trip to Guatemala helped me to understand and appreciate the fact that I can shower each day, and for a full ten minutes (longer than that and I start to feel guilty for wasting the world’s diminishing water resources). 
Another rule that was hard to adjust to was the ‘toilet paper rule’. When Antigua was first built, someone thought it would be a good idea to use tile to line the sewer system. I’m sure it worked great for at least a few years. But then the tile started to fall and lean into the pipes, which started clogging things up. And when flushed paper got caught on a protruding tile, things got backed up in a hurry. So the city passed a decree that paper could no longer go into the sewers. What to do? Bag it. All toilet paper was to be thrown into the garbage can. This rule was particularly difficult to get used to for two reasons: one, habit is hard to break, and two, it was gross. But it was our host mother who had to deal with the bathroom garbage at the end of each day, so I really shouldn’t complain. And by then end of our three weeks in Antigua, I didn’t find it weird anymore. It’s funny what we as humans can adjust to.

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