Poco a Poco

In sitting down to write this entry, I realized that in my previous post I omitted a vital detail regarding mi madre Hilda: she has a hunchbacked servant. Moving on...

Ryan arrived at around 10 p.m. and we went out to grab some dinner and to see some of the sights I’d scouted earlier in the day. We came home and unpacked. Before I went to bed, I took a shower and made use of the facilities. Now, many of you have heard me spin tales of the toilet in my glamorous apartment on 109th street and the diagonal approach required for its use. I say this now: I miss it so. I long for a toilet with the gusto and heart required to flush toilet paper. This whole paper-in-the-wastebasket thing is une poco loco. We went to bed early because tomorrow was to be our first day of class and breakfast would be on the table at 7:00.

I retired to my bedroom to find it filled with one of the grossest odors I’ve ever encountered (I’m breathing it in right now, by the way...mmmm). It turns out that our neighbor is a tanner so the sweet fragrance of decomposing beast flesh fills the humid streets surrounding our casa. It’s difficult to describe, but if I were forced I’d have to call it a cross between burning rubber and diarrhea. One of the worst odors I've ever smelled. You kind of get used to it, but it hits me anew each time I return home.

The next morning we were up at 7 for breakfast where we met Hilda’s three other guests. Tamoko is around 30 years old, from Louisville, Kentucky, and an employee of Honda, who’s been here for three months already and sounds pretty fluent in Spanish. Her cryptic and relatively unsatisfying answer to why she took a four month break from work to live in Guatemala: “I want to be trilingual.” Don’t we all, Tomoko. Don’t we all. Angie and Sherri are teachers from some other part of Kentucky (Kentucky confluence coincidental. Alliteration intentional) who are essentially traveling buddies. They’re very nice, if possibly psychotically Christian (unsubstantiated assumption about Red staters plus slightly suggestive reference to the “power” of visiting Bethlehem), and gave us some tips about internet cafes and international phone spots with good rates. Hilda made us pancakes, which was kind of surprisingly familiar, and there were fresh mangoes too. We packed up our notebooks and Spanish dictionaries and tra-la-la skipped off to our first day of school. Here's the view of Agua from our walk to school. I think it looks like Mount Olympus should look.



The first two hours of the morning were spent milling around waiting to pay and then sitting through a kind of orientation. While waiting, Ryan and I befriended an Australian named Chris and his kiwi ladyfriend Aja who are kicking off a six-month Central American adventure with a month in Antigua learning Spanish. They’re a nice couple and we’ve hung out with them since then. The school grounds are incredible. It’s all outdoors. One wall is the ruined exterior of an old church. Nestled under overhangs in that wall and scattered around in little, open, outdoor booths (kind of cabana-like) are tables with a pair of chairs at which students sit with their teachers during class. It’s very pretty with the nearest volcano visible from the garden, and there is free coffee and tea.





Class is held from 8 a.m. to 12 and then from 2 until 4:30. There’s a half-hour break in the morning during which local women sell us incredible chuchitos (kind of like less greasy tamales with pork inside), tacos, and tostadas with homemade guacamole and salsa picante. Basically, break is the best thing ever. Food pictures to come.

My first teacher (we switch every week) is named Claudia. She’s around 30, local, and is super nice. She speaks essentially no English. We spent the first day working on basic vocabulary, which was complicated by her non-English speaking. It took me ten minutes to ask “How do you say ‘how do you say…’?”. (Paul, how the hell do I punctuate this?) In the afternoon, Claudia took me to see el mercado, a large, outdoor market where indigenous Guatemalans (essentially Mayans) sell things. We walked around pointing at things and learning the words for them. I know many fruit words. I also picked up some shower sandals, which are a necessity that I neglected to pack. We walked back to the school, went over some grammatical rules, and finished up. Though initially frustrating, we pretty quickly got the hang of communicating and made quick progress throughout the day. It’s crazy how much I learned just in that first day, to be honest. I left school very optimistic and confident that much Spanish would be learned this summer. Little by little.

After school, Ryan and I walked around seeing the sights and getting excited about Antigua. Our friend Luke from school was somewhere in town and we were aiming to meet up with him but we couldn’t find him where we thought he’d be (this would become a pattern, as yet unbroken). We found some cool places including a really sweet hookah bar with fantastic hummus. After that, we came home to do our homework (ouch) and get to bed early.

Meal update: for lunch, we generally come home to Hilda. She made us Guatemalanized hamburgers the first day (served in fresh tortillas with homemade salsa picante). For dinner, we had hot dogs and mashed potatoes. Hilda fare is surprisingly non-ethnic so far. Hopefully this will change. We went out for lunch yesterday (day two of school) and missed pepien, which is a staple Guatemalan meat stew. Ah well. Silver lining: we ate amazing guacamole with chips and black bean soup instead.

Day two of school started out strong. We did more vocab, worked on some grammar (sweet), and played childish games (e.g. Memory with Spanish antonyms on cards) with an eye towards such complex subjects as “What time is it?” and “How do you count past ten?” and “What are the days of the week?” Learning things like these makes me feel kind of dumb, but I guess not knowing them would make me feel even dumber. At noon, we went to Parque Central to find Luke, failed to achieve that goal, and consoled ourselves with the aforementioned black bean soup. After lunch, Claudia and I again went for a walk, this time to an old monastery in the city. It was alright, but not really anything special. On the way back though, I poked my head into a church where a Guatemalan evangelical minister was giving a fiery sermon. Claudia helped me to understand some of it and we got to talking about religion (she is, shockingly, a devout Catholic). She told me about a town relatively nearby that is a major center for Santeria and has a local saint, San Simon, to whom people make bizarre sacrifices and of whom people make even more bizarre requests. I might try to visit the town to see a Santeria church. She said she didn’t think it would be too dangerous. School finished up fine, though by the end I was pretty hot and uncomfortable because a) school is 7 hours long; b) my chair is insanely uncomfortable (Paul, you’d die); and c) school is 7 fucking hours long. But then, thankfully, it ended, and me and my throbbing ass limped off to meet up with Ryan to engage in extracurricular activities.

After school, Ryan and I had drinks with Chris and Aja and confirmed that they’re nice and amusing. They have great travel stories (as most folks from that region of the world do) and are generally just fun folks to spend time with (parenthetical non-preposition). I anticipate hanging out with them further in the future. We came home for dinner (chicken and rice, fried sweet plantains [promise fulfilled], and pumpkin soup), then went out to look for Luke. We had an email suggesting that we might find him at this one place. He wasn’t there. He’s on notice that if he doesn’t show up at the chosen spot tomorrow, we’ll feed him to Agua (the ironically named volcano). In looking around for Luke, we stumbled on a crazy indoor market with insane amounts of hand-crafted items. We’ll definitely be purchasing some things there (e.g. masks, tapestries, bags, etc.). Requests accepted. We also stumbled on a bar with a large movie screen that shows films each night. Friday is City of God, which is too perfect to miss.

Giving up on finding Luke, we returned home to do our homework. I’m still feeling great about this place and optimistic about my Spanish learning. The going was a little tougher today because we started irregular verbs, but I’ll get my mind around those bitches eventually. All-in-all, this has been great so far. We’re going to have a fantastic time.