More of Xelaju

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I´ve been in Xela for almost three weeks now. They have gone by like a blustery september breeze, maybe more like a mountain wind. Spanish school was on the whole a good experience, and i´m very glad i did it. It was by no means easy, and I have to say that i have never felt more physically and spiritually drained after an intellectual activity. Countless times I got back to my house and ate lunch and just lay down on the bed and zoned out, no clue what to do with my afternoon and no motivation to do anything really. It usually lasted about ten minutes, a semiconscious meditation on nothing. I always found something to do, though, which was fortunate. The first week i spent exploring the city thoroughly, for the most part Zona 3, where i resided. There was plenty to see; two full blown markets, a few parks, and always tons of people. I found out a few interesting things in markets, such as the fact that the leg of a pig costs about four dollars and fifty cents, and that all the clothes that get passed over in thrift shops and donated to charity or sold for nothing end up in minerva. I found the best flannel ever there for a buck twenty five.

By the by, i refuse to have children before the age of thirty. Ok don´t quote me because thats quite a bold statement, but the little kids in my house were more than a handful. It was a double edged sword of shocking ferocity, one minute we would be playing hide and seek in which they told me where to hide and then came to find me, or reading, which consisted of them quickly flipping cardboard kids book pages and suddenly crying out, YA TERMINAMOS! which means already we finnished! Two minutes later they would be hitting each other or tearing apart the house and being carried screaming to their rooms, the apocalipse aproaching, my ears splitting my head in half and my once comfortable seat on the couch or position standing in the kitchen suddenly uncomfortable. Yes, i learned a lot about young children. However, on the other hand, the dad Marlon was a cool guy, lived in the states for eight years and now works for a NGO. He knows how to tell a one liner and works hard all the time, traveling a lot to rural areas to take censuses. I cooked once in a while with Betzebe, the mom, and one night i made dinner for the fam. The indian spinach dish with chipatis turned out alright, but as always (fam, you can agree), it wasn´t a whole ton of food. They whipped out ham sandwiches and i joined in. There were always a ton of relatives in the house, aunts and uncles and an abuelita who followed every sentence with pues, neices and nephews who beat me in soccer although i maintain that Michaelangelo had a goal twice the size of mine. It was easy to start a conversation.

I was a bit cooped up in my spanish school state, always feeling obligated to study and always mentally drained, often taking long exploration walks in xela to get a break from the grind of ackward conversation with my family, but i did take a few day trips. I went to laguna chicabal, a volcanic lake a half hour out of xela, a ten kilometer walk starting in a rural pueblo and winding through milpas where run downhill weathered fathers and there prepubescent sons with bundles of wood strapped on their backs and them asking me the time. there was a small park entrance on a dirt road and many families out for a saturday, and then the path pitched up; it leads to a mirador and a laguna, buty buy the time i goth there in the afternoon it was clouded over, and I found myself walking through a cloud forest and all its dense vegetation. As i was walking around the lake the clouds broke for a moment and i could see the verdant trees that hugged the sandy shore. Byt the time i rushed up to the mirador the clouds had returned. The supposedly vast vista was blanked out by smoky white vapors.

One night I went for a walk and when I heard crowd noise I recalled that the locally beloved futbol team xelaju had a game. I followed the roar to the stadium and somehow stumbled upon an open door and walked in. About five minutes later the game ended in a tie and the crowd left the building a mess of spent wrappers and firecrackers, and I followed them out into packed Zona 3 streets and the street food carts and makeshift beer gardens that lined them, the apathetic aftermath of a tie game felt in the expressions of everybody.

After two weeks I moved back to the hostel. I needed some space and a breather from intense spanish study, but thats not really what I got. I decided to take one hour of class a day and on monday i set out to find a volunteer gig for afternoons. Then I saw i sign on a tienda asking for a panadero. I stepped in and although two other girls who were inquiring laughed their heads off, I assured the owner I was serious, that I had been a baker in the US, and that with a little overview education I could handle the job. I started working that afternoon and Got up at five fifteen the next day to do it again. When we first talked the owner, don Carlos, said that the days were Six am to two pm, but it soon became apparent that he wanted me to work until eight at night. I resisted by constantly citing spanish school, and it worked ok. My co workers were a couple fifteen and sixteen year old kids named Pato and Lagarto, as well as a scruffy guy also named carlos and an old mayan abuelita named paula. I learned quickly to make pan dulce and tostadas and schecas and francais, under the perfectionist eye of lagarto, who i wanted to strike in the face a few times when he said, mas delgado, mas apechado, etc. etc. They also fed me at the panaderia, which was appreciated, and I think they aprectiated the cake and cookies and scones I whipped up in the less than perfect cooking conditions with different ingredients and only basic home baking experience, but they turned out pretty well if i can speak for myself. I think don carlos wanted to test if I really was a baker in Minnesota, and to be honest i´m not sure he was totally convinced, and to be honest he gave me bad vibes and the only reason I came back on friday was to make pato a cake that he wanted to give his novia, don carlos´s daugher, to comemorate there one month aniversary as a couple. It was a vanila cake with chocolate buter cream icing in a heart shape. I finished it, ate some really gamey soup, i mean we´re talking I think there was part of a chicken foot in it, and bid them an adios nos vemos, but I didn´t return today. I feel bad for being such a flakey fake, but there was no way I could think of to tell them I was leaving; i didn´t ask for money, they need the twenty bucks they were going to pay me for a fifty hour week more than I do, and I think i´ll leave an explanatory note one of these days. Also, they were hard core christians, not that thats a bad thing, but I was a little sick of hearing seat of the pants evolution disproofs on the radio every morning. I preffered the christmas music. Nice people and I hope their dough continues to rise as it ought too, but I´m afraid we had to part ways the way we did, suddenly and without explanation.

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