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From Panajachel we decided to go for a shuttle to
Quetzaltenango (Xela) , rather than the local buses. Soft, I know, but the price was reasonable, and it was just a bit easier. We met some nice Americans on the shuttle who were off to Chichi for the markets (we'd decided to skip the markets – oh, how disappointing!). Asked where they were from they replied San Francisco. This was pretty the normal response, we had discovered. Not only were most Americans we had met from the west coast, they always responded to the question with the city or state, whereas other countries always simply said their country.
Arriving in Xela we found it to be a reasonable sized city with around 150,000 people. For some reason the taxi driver told us it had 3 million – I looked it up later and not even the entire province had that many, so I had no idea what he was talking about. The place we had booked to stay for the week started on the monday, so we found a cheap hostel for the night – Don Diego Hostal. Cheap being the operative word.
We wandered down the street to
have a look at where we would spend the week. It was indeed a cultural centre with a couple of rooms attached – not a hostel as such. That day there was a tattoo show on, but we rocked up a bit late and it was mostly over, so I didn't get a chance to see it.
Up early for the school the following morning, and the temperature was in single figures, with a light fog shrouding the streets – not a scene that springs to mind when Tropical Central America is mentioned. But we were at 3000m or so, so the fog and 4 degrees came as no particular surprise when we emerged from the basic hostel at 7am for our first day of school. The hostel had been fine for one night. We got private rooms, but the thin sheet of ply between us the the noisy shaggers in the room next door didn't have a lot of soundproofing properties. And they kept it up for ages, too. I mean, more power to them for taking their time, but there came a point at which at least one of them was clearly in need of some advice
as to what goes where.
The school – El Quetzal – was small, only 14 students. There was one other student that was starting the same day, but she was going to be there for the next ten weeks. The teaching was one on one, and the allocation of teachers was a little strange. They put Mum with the most experienced teacher there, and Dad got put with a newbie – possibly reversing what would have been intelligent. They put Klaire with a young girl who wasn't too bad, and they put me with a young student, Alma, who turned out to be quite good, and, I must admit, attractive. She began by going through the alphabet, then determined that perhaps we didn't need to start there. We skipped forward to compound tenses, and we sort of chatted in between each new form, with her guiding the conversation so I was forced to use the verb forms.
I found out that she's scared of driving, likes Linkin Park and other types of terrible music, was studying IT at uni, had a boyfriend that works in a call centre and studies business, and didn't like American football (this last
came up because the Superbowl had been on the day before). So, we had one thing in common, then.
Alma was also keen to get a tattoo of the kanji for 'soul' which is what her name means in Spanish. Part of my homework became to give her some decent music, and the correct kanji for 'tamashii'.
The five hours of school went very quickly, and we headed back to check in properly to the place we were staying. Los Chocoyos – and it turned out to be great. After figuring out what door to go through (a challenge in itself) we found ourselves in a psychedelically painted bar area.
I called out a hesitant “Hola?”, and was answered by a crazily enthusiastic “Hola muchachos!”from a short, skinny happy young bloke, one of the guys that works there. He spotted my tattoo and grabbed me, ripping my sleeve up to take a look. He was a tattoo artist and very enthusiastic about, well, everything.
The place itself seemed to be a hangout for arty types, but they weren't as wanky as those types can be. Dancing, film types, music, painting, tattooing – it was a pretty
good cultural centre.
The centre had a well appointed kitchen, even if at times it was much like a share house kitchen with too many blokes. Generally there was a a huge mess from the night before, and the sole employee (a very nice lady) would have to come in and clean up the next day.
Also, sitting there in the hostel, it was a lot like sitting in your own bar. A large room, with a smaller front bar. There, a cool looking bloke there painting a mural on the wall. Sitting there writing a blog post the sounds of the band rehearsing sort of Latin influenced dub reggae in the back room mixed nicely with the burnt rope aroma of university cigarettes wafting quietly through the room. It was as though a bunch of young blokes had got together and bought a place so they would have a place to practice their music and hang out where they wouldn't bother anyone.
As befitting a student town, Xela had more than it's fair share of trendy little bars and clubs, so we decided it would be remiss of us not to visit a few. We found a
great little bar at the end of the street – live music, cozy atmosphere, cheap drinks, and probably all the hipsters in Guatemala packed into the one room. Still, a good night out.
Spanish school consisted of 5 hours a day on one on one instruction, generally followed by optional excursions and activities. As we were only there a week, we took advantage of all the options, including visits to nearby villages, and an afternoon teaching some locals English.
The trip to the village nearby, though, was probably the highlight. Our bit was basically to hang out with the kids. The women of the town have started a collective to teach the kids while the others work. One interesting thing was the divide between the town kids, who we hung out with first, and the the children of the potato farmers, who came next. They were nervous and shy, but loosened up after a bit. There was also a bit of tension between the two groups.
There was one kid that was sullen the whole time. Eventually I asked him what he wanted to do. When I suggested we buy a football and have a game he
was ecstatic. I spent the next hour and a bit playing a game with the kids, most of whom I would kill to get on our futsal team.
To be honest, we felt a bit uncomfortable taking photos of the kids, even though they were keen to have their photos taken, so we simply gave the kids the cameras. The resulting shots were fantastic, to say the least, as they got up in the faces of everyone. There was one girl that had Klaire's camera, and, based on the resulting shots, she had quite the crush on a couple of older kids that I had been playing football with.
The game itself was a little challenging. In a poor community like this one you had to make do with what you have. If there's one football court, and three groups of kid that want to play a game, well, you simply play three games at once. Or one game with three balls. At times it was hard to tell.
And the kids had no problem taking a few ankle taps or hard tackles when the opportunity beckoned, concrete surface notwithstanding.
I gathered that a lot of Americans
come to this school, and a lot of them could care less about football. As such, one of the teachers that accompanied us to the village was a little surprised that we were so keen to play. He turned out to be a hardcore member of the Xelaju MC supporters club, and invited us to join him at a game with him and his crazy mates who called themselves La Curva after the curvy bit of the stadium that was theirs.
Holy crap, what a night. By Saturday I had become much more confident speaking Spanish, and could now hold a pretty decent conversation, but the game taught us a whole lot more words that we were never going to learn at school. I must admit that I drank a little too much aguardiente at the pre-game gathering, and the giant beers didn't help, but by half time I was basically sober due to the shouting and chanting and dancing and jumping ands swearing.
Some of the chants were quite complicated and interesting, but as the game wore on and the alcohol flowed, and the tonsils started to bleed most people fell back on the most common song:
La le Xelaaaaaa,
La le la le Xelaaaa,
la le la Xelaaaa,
La le la le Xeeeee...laaaaaaa” All to the tune of “It's a Heartache”.
We arrived back at the hostel to find the concert in full swing, and sold out. This proved a problem. For a moment it looked like we would need to by a ticket to get into our own place. We had to push to the front of the line, earning the ire of the massive queue.
Ignoring the shouts of “Ay, puta, que pasa?”, I managed to convince the bouncer that we belonged. Well, not so much convinced as yelled and pushed past (Guatemalans not being the biggest blokes around – I wouldn't try it in Samoa).
Then we had to negotiate the next door – it turned out that the front room was effectively a holding room for the gig in the back room. Another bouncer – this time bigger – and we just managed to talk our way past him. Once we finally got in it was great. We were able to fight our way through the crowd and into our rooms, which were oases of calm. A quick
freshen up then back out to join the party.
The music was actually excellent – sort of a funkier, rockier Manu Chao. Think maybe Cat Empire but good. We spent some time chatting with some of the nutso guys from the support that worked there, then just enjoyed the show.
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Sarah
non-member comment
So...
how'd you go getting that kanji for tamashii then?