Marching Bands and Machetes

Our final days in Xela were spent celebrating the "Independence" of Guatemala. This traditionally involves rioting in the streets. The Xelaites enjoy on average seven parades per day. Each has a different theme, but the kids spend approximately six months of school in marching band practice, rather than learning to read or write. Different priorities. Maggie and I watched the cutest parade, with the four year olds dressed up. Some have toy drums, some have kazoos, some just wander around with bags of juice. Otherwise, it seems that people become extremely intoxicated. My house is one story and would be very easy to break into, if it weren't for the broken glass glued to the roof. On Saturday of the holiday weekend, I was napping in preparation for that night's soccer game (Xela vs the capital) and our hike up Volcan Santa Maria. However, as it sounded like a robber was breaking into our house, I found it rather difficult to fall asleep. The noise on my roof and stomping around the courtyard outside of my room were frightening, so I remained as still as possible, until the robber started washing his hands for an excessive period of time. It then occurred to me that I was imagining things. A cat was on the roof, and now a member of my family was probably wandering around the courtyard. Then someone knocked on my door. This had never happened before. I opened the door to find my host brother standing outside, looking like he was about to collapse, with blood pouring out from his hand and deep cuts on his face. Can you help me? Of course, I'm thinking he was just in some sort of gang fight, and he wants me to hide him from his gang enemies. Instead, it quickly became apparent that he was extremely intoxicated, and had cut his hands on the roof protection, trying to break into his own house, when I could have easily opened the door for him. I tried to help him out a bit, and while I tried to convince him otherwise, he went to the store to buy more beer, which they sold to him in spite of his blood drenched clothing. He proceeded to sing to me, until I ran away from the house to the futbol game, where they shoot fireworks from the stands towards the opposing goalie. I´m not really sure where I was safer.

From Xela, we traveled on the most packed bus, ever, to Lake Atitlan. As is the rule on chicken buses, everyone sits three to a seat, and then you stand wherever there is room. I was standing in the last row, between 6 people sitting, and there were four full grown men behind me. I don't understand how. The lake was lovely. Our friends from language school are basically running a bed and breakfast, set amongst a gorgeous garden with lake views. They have avocado, banana, papaya, mango and coffee trees. It's a good job. The best part is that this property is owned by the heir to PBR. We wanted to hike up a volcano, and so our friends set us up with the gardener. He suggested one hike that our guide book said, "Only go with a very experienced guide. The trail is notoriously difficult to follow and robberies occur frequently." The gardener told us that he hadn't been there in five years, so it would be perfect! No hay problema. The hike was actually awesome, for a while. It was challenging to communicate, because he speaks limited Spanish, as most people in his town of Santiago speak only a more traditional tongue. Rather than learn all of the conjugations, he had the brilliant idea of sticking with the nosotros (we) form. So he told us, "We rob the village frequently. But we are trying to stop this." etc. It was entertaining. The hike fell apart when he lost the trail and was macheting through the forest, where he claimed a great view was just ahead. We don't think it was.

We next traveled to Antigua, the nice city of Guatemala. It was weird. Everything worked and was clean. They sold bagels and spoke English. We left. We journey to the capital, then to Rio Dulce and up the river to Livingston. We then bid our goodbyes to Guatemala and arrived on paradise island, Utila in Honduras. Utila was very different from Guatemala. In Guatemala, we could understand people´s Spanish. Here, it seems that people are too lazy to finish their words and drift off mid sentence. This makes comprehension difficult. In Xela, we worried about being out late at night for fear of muggings. Here, we fear the enormous crabs who colonize the streets. Finally, in Xela, I was huge. Here, I can´t even get into the top bunk of my bed. I literally need Maggie to lift me in. While we had no real intention to before arriving, we signed up for a SCUBA certification. It was glorious. Refer to Planet Earth-Shallow Seas for what we saw. David Attenborough´s voice was in my head through every dive. Although one drawback is that I am now, hopefully temporarily, deaf. The good news is that the SCUBA course teaches underwater sign language, so I am completely ready to sign to anyone on the streets that I am out of breath. Could they possibly offer me their alternate air source? We are currently in Granada, Nicaragua, and are planning on travelling today to the Proyecto Ecologico for Spanish classes at a biological research station on el Lago de Apoyo. Both of us feel that we have reached certain competencies in Spanish, as I acted as a translator for a tourist in Antigua, and Maggie argued down a hostile Honduran taxi driver, who called in the police to mediate the situation.

How to Learn a Language in 10 Days

I´ve now been studying Spanish for ten days and have progressed past the present, preterite and imperfect, into the future tense. This strikes me as ridiculous. I´m pretty certain that I did not hit the future in French class until at least my fourth year of language study (although my favorite teacher of all time, Madame McAndrews may be partially responsible for the delay). Again, it is lovely to be able to express more complex thoughts than I sit. The capacity to explain that I sat, and that I plan on sitting is simply marvelous.

I have graduated from Mario (who was interestingly enough my merengue partner at the disco last night) to a far superior teacher, Ana. I was very excited for class on Monday, so walked in and confidently asked how she was. In a devastated voice, she responded triste, because her uncle died the day before. She went on to explain the elaborate story of his death, which possibly involved diabetes, gangrene, and or stomach cancer. I am terrible at consoling people in English, and we haven´t yet hit the chapter ¨At the funeral home¨so I struggled a bit with that vocabulary.

Last Thursday during the lunch hour, Flori (mi madre here) and I were discussing afternoon plans. I wanted to take advantage of my first free afternoon to venture into a coffee shop and resolve my internal problems related to the instant coffee served to me every morning, but Flori became very excited in describing someplace. I caught the words beautiful and outside of town, so agreed to go with her on an adventure to what I envisioned as a neighboring mountain town´s market.
We went to Guatemalan Wallmart instead.
Hyper Pais, as it is called here, is on the outskirts of town, and apparently contains many beautiful things, which Flori enjoyed showing off to me. My favorite were the flaptop computers, as she called them. I described how I wanted to buy something for Katie´s soon to be baby, meaning traditional Guatemalan clothes, but Flori took me to the equivalent of BabyGap. The afternoon was actually wonderful, as an opportunity to spend more time speaking with Flori. I also was able to escort her like a boyscout, arm in arm through the aisles and across the roads. It was adorable.

I´m still enjoying the other students here. Last Friday night, we had an enormous international dinner, featuring Snitzel, Danish meatballs, Swedish pancakes, pasta with pesto, vegan banana chocolate chip pancakes, Guatemalan comida tipica and I threw in some roasted vegetable to elevate the nutritional value of the meal. However, the pesto crew stole my extra virgin olive oil. It was a disaster. Everyone was like, just use vegetable oil. I was like, are you crazy??? On roasted vegetables? Of course, everyone thought that I was the crazy one, as so frequently seems to happen when I cook around others.

Saturday morning, Maggie and I, and our new Dannish friend Ennie, journeyed to the opposite of Hyper Pais, the small, traditional village of Todos Santos Cuchumatán. We drove through gorgeous, green mountains and found a town very different from Xela. The views were superb, and the air was clean. As well, every single man, whether he be 80 or 16 was wearing the exact same outfit. Red and white striped pants, a white stripped shirt with blue collars and cuffs, and a white hat with purple ribbons. It was a bit like being in a Where´s Waldo scene. We also were discriminated against by the Guatemalan children. It was like Flight of the Concords. They refused to sell us bread, and hid and probably made fun of us in mam, the local language.
I find that when I meet people from my guide book, I feel like I´m talking to a celebrity. Will you sign my Let´s Go? Todos Santos is known for great hiking, and our guide book suggested a Swiss named Roman as a good resource for treks. There is absolutely no information about how to find Roman. We wandered to the hostel we wanted to stay out, but a little girl told us it was closed, but if wanted to we could stay at her house. This didn´t seem like a great idea, but then she introduced us to her Papi, Roman, who then took us to his homemade Swiss chalet, complete with composting toilet featuring a heart shaped cut out for your mountain view, and elaborate garden. There were strawberries. It was paradise. We took a hike the next morning to the neighboring tiny town of San Juan Atitan, where instead of hiding from us, every single child (again, wearing identical outfits) came running for us, demanding to be photographed. The hike was amazing. There were lambs, wandering locals, perfect views, echoing evangelical songs, and a Sunday futbol game. Pictures work better than descriptions, no?

Frijoles y flashcards

I arrived in Guatemala last Tuesday, and promptly fled the capital city for Xela, the second largest city in Guatemala. I joined up with Maggie's familia. In her house live three sisters. Based on research published in 1983 by Roald Dahl, at least two of these sisters are witches. They have boils, wear pointy shoes, and speak in incomprehensible tongues. One sister, who is Maggie's pretend mother, is actually quite nice and a lovely cook. After a few days of guarding my back from the sinister sisters, I moved out so that I could better practice my spanish away from my own incredibly bilingual sister.

I now live in this turqoise house with a wonderful mommy, Flori. Standing next to Flori, I am able to practice one of my favorite words, gigante. Because for the first time in my life, I am gigante. She cannot measure in at more than 4'9". Flori is quite adorable. She wears all traditional Guatemalan clothing and is an excellent luncheon cook. Dinner is typically less exciting. In Guatemala, lunch is the most important meal of the day, with dinner frequently being a lower priority. I eat eggs and beans for every breakfast and dinner, 7 days a week. There was one exception. On Sunday night, Flori prepared for me a ham sandwich (one slice of ham) on the Guatemalan equivalent of wonderbread, which here is called Bimbo bread, with ketchup and mayonaise. Quite the Sunday feast. I can't actually complain though, as lunches are outstanding. Today I had guacamole. Life is good.

As was the case during my other adventures, my Irish face is quite noticable and I spend much of my day avoiding stares. This has perhaps been accentuated by the fact that I purchased a new type of face wash before leaving home, and I believe that the primary ingredients are sparkles. It literally looks like I put on the shimmer gel that was popular when I was in 6th grade.

I'm attending a great language school, ICA. The teachers seem great, and they do a wonderful job of organizing activities. The other students are a really cool crowd from around the world. I have been here for less than a week, but have hit up some hot pools in the mountains, visited a coffee farm, gone swimming on the Pacific coast, taken Merengue lessons, played futbol and been to a chocolate factory (or a small grinding machine in someone's house). We also watched a movie together, that was kind of like Bend it Like Beckham. In this documentary, a group of prositutes form a soccer team to raise awareness of police descrimination and the problems they face. Ok, so not really that much like Bend it Like Beckham. I really recommend it: Estrellas de la Linea. We also traveled to a house that to me represented the ultimate example of sustainable development. We traveled by a chicken bus that was most artfully decorated with stickers of the Tasmanian Devil, Bart Simpson and Jesus. At the house, they grow all of their own food, have chickens, cows and sheep, even turkeys. They are a family of weavers. They shear the sheep, spin the wool, dye the wool with natural materials, and then weave on looms they built themselves. They also served us the most delicious tortillas of the trip. They grow their own corn, made the flour and then cooked them up fresh for us over a wood burning fire. They were accompanied by amazing queso fresco from their cows. It was perfect. Now when our families give us the store bought tortillas, they taste horrible.

Class is going well. My first teacher was phenomenol and made it very simple for me to understand and to speak right off the bat. We switch teachers at the start of each week, and my new maestro looks like the ultimate stereotypical 20 year old latino dude. He has a slicked back ponytail, professes his love for the 80s, and rides a scooter. I like him less, but I'm definitely still learned very quickly. On Monday, the past tense entered my vocab, which has severely improved the quality of my stories. Before, my family was always like cuando? Hoy? at the end of each sentence. My bed is currently covered with approximately one grillion flashcards (which are really just tiny shredded bits of paper) to test me on the 130 new verbs introduced into my vocabulary every day. I also try to supplement my speaking with reading and watching TV. I asked Flori for something to read, and she passed me magazine from the Jehovah's witnesses. If the occassion arises, I am completely prepared to quote in spanish from the Bible. Sarah Palin should hire me to pick up some of the religious hispanic vote. Xela is preparing for the big Independence Day celebration on September 15. Part of this involves selecting the equivalent of a May Queen from the local 12 year olds. Flori and I spent an evening watching public access television document one night of the selection process. Imagine American Idol meets the local Christmas pagent. Each nominated girl would give a speech about Guatemala and then dance as part of the story of Guatemala. The dance was the best part, as the stage was filled with both kids performing traditional dance in logical costumes (Mayan princesses, dangerous animals) and every once in a while, a tiny child standing on the middle of the stage dressed like a gorilla or a bumblebee. This is a perhaps representative of Xela. Old meets new. Buses everywhere filled with women in traditional Guatemalan dress carrying newspapers on top of their heads. We like it.