Quetzaltenango, Monday

1833 Just got back to hotel.

Woke up about 0630 in a blind panic, the usual trapped sense of despair. Went back to sleep and woke up feeling OK maybe an hour later, before dozing half awake and snoozing on my alarm until about it 0725. Got ready OK and got to the school 5 mins early.

Felt strangely off-balance and was ushered almost straight away into courtyard to meet my teacher, who told me his name and I had forgotten it within ten minutes. Although we discussed more politics than I would like the first 2.5h flew by and then we had a break for half an hour. That was socially awkward; I didn't expect to be immediately best mates with anyone but I was hanging around with that 'at a party not knowing anyone' feeling a lot. I did chat with a couple of Japanese students but I can't remember their names either; I maybe have slightly more of an excuse with Japanese names (even though I did repeat their names when they told me) but I'd have forgotten if it was anything more exotic than John - the one name, of a guy I exchanged about five words with, I can remember. Got to work on this.

Anyway, remaining 2h of class was OK, a bit awkward and grammatical and "what do you want to study?" ish but OK on the whole.

I paid during the break, because I had the bills folded in my pocket and handed them over folded my intention to have the torn corner of one bill unnoticed failed. Much discussion over this but school director told me to take it to a bank and they'd change it.

I left the school and went to the recommended bank only to find it was closed; security guard told me it only opened from 9-1. All the other banks seemed shut too.

Went back to hotel feeling a bit peeved - though of course, to be strictly fair the torn note was not the school's fault - and did my homework. Then went out with intention of having a coffee at LV, albeit feeling generally a bit unhappy not chuffed.

Spotted a branch of Banco Azteca lurking at the back of a big white goods shop and queued up in there and although the cashier didn't understand what I was saying at first, she replaced the note without any fuss, which was a relief.

I then ended up having a phone call (I can receive but not call out) with my mum while standing out on the street opposite; she told me my brother's cat had unexpectedly had a massive heart attack at midnightish last night and had to be put down after a trip to the vet in the early hours of the morning. Perhaps this small tragedy put things in perspective, or maybe getting the torn bill off my hands helped, but by this point I felt pretty OK if not actually all that chipper.

I figured I'd take advantage of the decent mobile reception (unlike my hotel room) and relative privacy (unlike the street) at LV to live chat with Three about my inability to make calls while I had a coffee and another form of bread roll I asked the name of twice (it didn't have a label) and was completely unable to catch. It took a while and they didn't sort me out, but they seem to have given me £10 free credit and they are escalating the issue and will get back to me. Considering I expected them to just blame my phone I was impressed; I still wonder if ultimately they will say that, but if I really have got a free tenner that's not bad compensation for being unable to make calls when everything else works.

I then went for a bit of a walk, maybe 45 mins, and ended up at Palacio de los Jugos for a small steak, with soup, rice, tortillas, potatoes, spring onions, tomato and cucumber for Q20, oh that with an included blackberry juice, followed by a Q5 coffee and made it Q40 with tip. Then came back here via supermarket; tempted to buy some snacks but I just got a gallon (3.78 litres) of purified water - I hoped this was going to be Q1.5 based on sign on shelf but that was too good to be true, turned out to be IIRC 7.8. So I didn't have enough change out and had to fumble around at checkout. Meh, it's still cheap.

Plan for tonight is just to bum around in hotel room, maybe read a bit, do a bit of laundry and perhaps force myself to do some Spanish vocabulary study on Memrise.

2334 Bed. Didn't do any Memrise. Meh. Not exactly tired but felt might as well go to bed. Got to be up at 0630 feeling shit, right? :-)