Spanish Lessons

A friend e-mailed to let me know that she wasn't automatically receiving my blog updates and would have to start checking manually. Nancy, I don't know if that was a subtle hint, but suffice it to say there wasn't a technical problem...

Antigua

Antigua is a beautiful and historical city in Guatemala. The streets are cobbled and the sidewalks run along the walls of the homes and businesses. It is amazing to see what lies beyond the walls in the city. Historically, a house would have been an entire square block, but these have since been divided into numerous homes and businesses.

There is a central park in Antigua which is always busy, particularly on Sundays when all of the families are out. Many businesses and restaurants are near the square, although you can find a restaurant almost anywhere in the city. The streets are full of chicken buses (old American school buses painted bright colours) taking people in and out of nearby towns, cars (both new and barely running), the odd horse drawn carriage, and tuk tuks (little motorized covered vehicles). It is a challenge coming from Canada where the cars stop for pedestrians to Antigua where it appears that some drivers actually speed up if you dare consider stepping off the curb.

I hear that we are nearing the end of the rainy season here in Guatemala. When I first got here, it would rain nearly every day for hours. I am now in the habit of taking a raincoat every time I go out as I found the sky entirely unpredictable. Now it seems to rain every few days, but no longer the pelting rain and not for the same length of time.

The weather here is very nice, although not nearly as hot as I had expected. I would guess that it’s about 22 degrees Celcius most days and hotter if it is sunny. In the evenings and when it is raining, it’s a little bit cool. I was getting a LOT of wear out of my one pair of long pants when it was raining so much and had to go to the market to buy a warm hoodie to supplement my wardrobe. I was jealous of the hot weather at home. I am no longer jealous of the Calgary weather after hearing about the first snow on the weekend!

Every day is a celebration here in Antigua! There is no day that is not worthy of a marching band or two and firecrackers beginning as early as 6:00 a.m. The firecrackers no longer make me take cover, and now meld into the everyday background noise of the city.

School

My knowledge of Spanish proved lacking in Costa Rica when the restaurant I went to was out of chicken and I didn’t recognize anything else on the menu. I am now in my fourth week of Spanish lessons and feel confident that I could ask for beef or ham if I ran into that problem again. I might use the wrong verb, verb tense, and conjugation when asking for it, but I could get my point across. I might even be able to order vegetables with it! As my teacher says, “Poco a poco” (little by little). I’ll have to remind her of that the next time she gives me 45 irregular past tense verbs at once…

My teacher’s name is Aracely and she has been great. I am better at listening than speaking at this point, so I know a lot about her life. When it comes time for me to say more than recounting what I did yesterday, I’ll have to start making things up to keep it interesting!

Home

I’m living with a Guatemalan family—to put it simply. A more detailed account would be that I am living with a retired Guatemalan couple named Elder and Marina, their 26 year old daughter (although I’ve only seen her about 4 times and don’t know her name), their 13 year old niece (whose name I can’t even guess how to spell), three 16 year old Guatemalan school girls, Craig (a 22 year old American from Mississipi), Cristyn (a 23 year old American from the east coast), Jim and his 5 year old grandson Sage (Americans from near a reserve somewhere near Kansas City), and most recently a retired doctor from Japan whose name I doubt I will learn because no one seems to know it. If I get really technical, I’ve heard that Elder and Marina don’t actually sleep at this house now that the Japanese gentleman is here, and that would make sense because I cannot imagine where they would sleep. Apparently they have another house somewhere where they sleep when this house is full. By the time I get up at 6:30 a.m. they are both here and everything is in full swing except for the sleepy foreigners. Oh yes, and Elder and Marina’s son and daughter-in-law are at the house all day everyday with their sons who are 5 and 2. Oh, and there's also Marina's elderly father, who may or may not live at the house. It’s actually almost as crazy as it seems. There are also often random relatives or friends milling about and occasionally eating meals as well. Between Spanish, English, the native American language Jim and his grandson speak, and 3 kids running around crazy, there’s a lot going on. I wear my earplugs a lot.

In theory my Spanish should be improving because I am using it at home as well as learning it at school, however in reality we foreigners are served our meals together and end up speaking English for the most part. When Craig, Cristyn, and I speak in Spanish we can only get one sentence out at a time before dissecting it and losing our train of thought entirely. Sage doesn’t speak Spanish at all and at times I wonder if he speaks English as he has a habit of withdrawing and just staring when you speak to him (that could have something to do with the fact that he's 5 and learning his third language.) He also prefaces everything that he says with "maybe", so we're not sure about anything he tells us. Maybe he has a brother, maybe he has a cat, maybe the cat lives under the house. You get the picture. The Japanese man seems to speak pretty much only Japanese, so we have had a few very stilted conversations in English with the odd Spanish word.

The one person that I regularly speak with in Spanish is Rex, the pharmacist whose store I have only seen closed once. His store is a couple of doors down from ours and we pass it everytime we go out. He consistently comes out of the store to kiss me on the head at the beginning and end of our conversation and gives me many words of encouragement for my attempts at Spanish. Every day he speaks to me rapidly in Spanish and I have to remind him to slow down and use smaller words. One day he said, “I me like you eye green” to me in English and I was reminded of how I sound in Spanish!

Church

Soon after I arrived in Antigua I attended a church service at one of the many beautiful churches here. It was a Catholic service, but I think I was forgiven for not knowing the sign of the cross since I was the only foreigner in the church and clearly didn’t understand anything that was going on. Craig and I met my teacher and her family at an evangelical church service one night the next week. The service was very enthusiastic, however at the end Craig had to explain to me that it was about Ruth and Naomi. Apparently that was why the pastor kept shouting, “AAAAArut!” Hmmm. The church is near the market in a pretty shady area of town. To get to the entrance you have to walk to the dodgy area of town, down a dark ally, and through a pitch black field or something (it was that dark!) When we were leaving after the service, Craig said that he had been warned about being places like that after dark and I couldn’t have agreed more. We practically ran until we got to an area where we felt safer. Since then, I’ve been going to a bilingual church on Sunday mornings. The entire service is done in both Spanish and English, so it covers the mandatory 2 hour minimum for services without losing its American flavor. :)

Health

I’ve had to develop a vocabulary regarding health issues since I’ve been here. My neck was in spasms for a week causing a migraine headache that would not go away no matter what I took (remember my friend the pharmacist.) I was referred to an American physiotherapist near the end of that week and am now back to normal. More recently, I spent Friday night with some sort of food poisoning/flu bug/bacterial infection. Need I say more? At one point in the night, I was laying face down on the tile floor. On a normal day, I literally roll my pants up so they don’t touch the floor when I use the toilet (recall the number of people living in my house and the number of boys/men--no offence intended.) It was a new low for me. I am slowly recuperating and even celebrated my returning hunger tonight with an ice-cream bar, which was admittedly, not the best idea.

Critters

I don't remember ever being as jumpy about insects as I have been on this trip. I stayed at an eco-hostel (read: 5 minutes of warm water for your shower) outside of Antigua near the beginning of my trip. My hostel room was a treehouse the width of a queen-sized bed. There was room at the end for my pack and then a wall of windows looking out over a beautiful valley. It was an amazing place to stay, but the bugs were big and many of them were pinging off of my headlamp as I read in the evening. I got really jumpy when I saw some big spiders crawling on my bed and dreamed of insects attacking me. I also had an experience at my house with a very large orange cockroach in my garbage can. I was relieved to see it was only a cockroach as it was making so much noise in the plastic bag that I thought it was a small animal. Speaking of which, while Cristyn and I were on our way home from church on Sunday we passed a rat belly-up on the cobblestone street. Where am I--in Swift Current?? Just kidding Cass and Sam! :)

Plans for the Future

I am literally been making plans week by week, so I have no idea how long I’ll be here in Antigua. I am going to start volunteering at an NGO outside of Antigua called Casa Jackson on Thursday. The center houses and feeds children who are suffering from malnutrition. I am really looking forward to starting and learning more about the project.

This TravelBlog

Reviewing this blog entry for typos, I notice that it sounds incredibly self-absorbed. I hope it comes across as more interesting than obsessive, but if not, feel free to delete yourself from the list. No offence taken! :)

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