Arachnophobia

So, still no pictures on the old posts. I blame it entirely on Ryan for closing the web browser accidentally while my pictures uploaded and before my blog entry had been saved or published. It was a soul-crushing end to an hour of work in Campero (which is essentially Guatemalan KFC and also happens to have free wireless internet). This weekend, I guarantee more pictures.

Wednesday was significant for finally discovering Luke. As we ran in slow-motion through Parque Central, our arms outstretched and our faces disfigured with rapturous joy, all previous frustrations at his absence melted away. It was a glorious moment. We hung out with Luke and our Australian friend Chris (Aja, his girlie, being incapacitated by some stomach ailment) at Gaia, the excellent hookah bar that I've mentioned. It was a really fun night and confirmed our suspicions that both Luke and Chris were top-notch fellows with whom we'd be sure to have a good time in the future. Chris and Aja are an interesting pair. He's a cameraman and she's a journalist. They've lived for the past three years in London, working for the BBC and, before that, working for various Australian broadcasting companies. At first we didn't realize it, but we started to figure out that they've done some pretty incredible stuff when they told a story that involved Prime Minister Howard. Also, Chris was taken hostage by a rebel group in Fiji some years ago. Basically, they have awesome stories. More to come. Ryan and I returned to our casa at around midnight and hung out in his room for a while before bed. I was worried about going into my room because The Smell was especially strong that night due to heat and humidity and I remembered that I'd foolishly left my window ajar.

After an hour or so, I went to my room to go to sleep. The first thing I noticed was that The Smell had indeed penetrated into my personal space and was pretty unbearable. Crestfallen, I turned on the light and beheld one of the biggest spiders I've ever seen on the wall over my bed, next to the window (which, by the way, I have closed and will not open for the rest of the summer due to both The Smell and the invader). Shuddering, I grabbed my hiking boot off the floor and slowly crept toward the monster. It was probably four inches in diameter (including legs) and had a shiny, terrifyingly well-defined thorax and abdomen. In position, I reared back and struck it with the heel of my boot hard enough that I was concerned I may have woken up others in the house. Direct hit. It fell from the wall and lay on the floor next to my bed for a moment, before coming to its senses and, as though I hadn't just slammed it with a hiking boot, skittering under my bed with preternatural speed. Horrified, I backed away and considered my options. It didn't take long for me to change into pajamas, shut off the light, and exit my room. I woke Ryan up and insisted that he let me sleep on the spare bed in his room. After he finished laughing at me, he let me in, and I slept on the dust cover of the spare bed (no sheets). I submit these events as evidence of my extreme masculinity. Try not to be intimidated. Oh, the next morning it was waiting for me in my shoe. How's that for tactics? But I had anticipated this possibility and it scurried out when I shook and kicked all my footwear. As if its unlikely survival of my previous assault was not sufficiently disturbing, it expertly dodged my first swing at it, but I was ultimately too great a foe and it expired beneath my well-placed heel. Unfortunately, in my zeal I mangled it beyond recognition. Otherwise, I would have documented the monstrosity for my records.

Thursday, we had school as normal. I've gotten much better but I'm going to try to spend some time studying verbs and vocab this weekend as memorization is the real bottleneck for me at the moment. I had my first exam and did very well (as did Ryan). I'm excited to start making real conversational progress. Oh! I did have a major breakthrough on Thursday. My class time is generally spent either going over grammatical rules, studying vocab through games, or learning through conversation. The conversations are (obviously) one of the best ways to learn, but we've already started to run out of topics for which my limited vocabulary is sufficient for actual dialogue. Having discussed our favorite music, movies, and books, the practice of medicine, my allergies to fruit, the practice of Santeria, Christianity in Central America, and "What did you do last night," we began discussing Claudia's hobbies. It turns out that she and her mother cook food and sell it for a little extra money (this is very common here). We talked about this briefly before (insert angelic trumpets here) I was struck by my epiphany. My eyes widened and I grabbed my dictionary, furiously turning pages, while she looked on with confusion. Finding my quarry, I turned back to Claudia and whispered with barely controlled passion: "recetas." Recipes. Since then, conversation time has been 75% composed of her teaching me how to make various authentic Guatemalan dishes. I can now make Salsa Picante Verde, Salsa Picante Roja, Chiles Rellenos, Tamalitos, and Chuchitos. Life is good. When I get home, I will make a feast.

Also of note is the craziness associated with being in Central America during the World Cup. It doesn't matter where you are; when a goal is scored, you know it. The screams of "GOAAAAAAAAL" are inescapable. The more advanced students at the school, occasionally including Ryan, often just watch the games and talk about them with their teachers. Folks here are all about Brazil, which seems like a cop-out to me but whatever. It's fun to be in a Latin American country during the tournament though, if only to get a taste of World Cup fever.

Thursday night, we went out with Luke, Chris, and Aja. We basically just got really drunk for very little money. There's a bar/internet cafe near the school which has a drink special called the 4-4-2. It's 4 tequila shots, 4 little beers (like 12 oz), and 2 liter bottles of beer. It costs 111 quetzales, which comes out to about 15 dollars. We had three (with extra shots to fill the gap) plus a couple more rounds of shots. It was pretty ugly by the end, but Ryan, Luke, and I left satisfied since Aja forced Chris to admit that the Americans could drink. It was a really fun time. Chris and Aja are visiting Coban for the weekend so they're out of town now, but I'm looking forward to their return.



We have today (Friday) off from school for a holiday so Ryan and I have been wandering around town looking at historical sites and into indigenous markets.


Some purchases have been made, but no secrets shall be revealed in these pages. Aileen, the fourth Columbia student who's going to be in Antigua during our stay, arrived last night or this morning so our circle is now complete. We're all (Ryan, Luke, Aileen, and I) going to meet up tonight for dinner and then head to Cafe 2000 (that bar/cinema) to watch City of God. Should be fun.

Again, apologies for the slow picture posting. We bought a CD-RW today so I'll no longer need to carry Ryan's laptop all the way to Campero just to get pics online. Sometime this weekend, I'll get the visual aspect of this blog up-to-date. Until then, adios.

p.s. One more thing, for the record, to you filthy-filthy-really-just-disgusting-I-could-never-say-such-foul-things comment posters: my parents have been instructed that the comments section is officially off-limits now, but they're notorious liars and scam artists of laughable integrity (hi, mom and dad), so if you can restrain yourselves, try to keep it just a little bit family friendly. Just a little bit. There. Due diligence done.

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.

Semite Alights

As predicted, I arrived at the airport with 4.5 hours to spare. I have this dazzling photograph of the sunrise over JFK airport -- cold comfort. I slept through my flight for the most part, though the three-fingered man sitting next to me hacked every few minutes. Naturally, I'm terrified that he got me sick. We'll see.



Arrived in Guatemala City at around noon and passed through immigration:
Me: "No espanol."
Guatemalan Immigration Officer: "No english" Giggle. Stamp. Stamp. "Bye bye!"
High security.

I was met at the gate by Gustavo, a teacher from my Spanish school, who drove me from Guatemala City to Antigua. Guatemala City is non-glamorous. I've never really seen conditions like it, to be honest, except maybe in City of God. It was pretty depressing. I also learned that "Alto" means "Stop,' because it's on those red, octagonal signs that all the drivers seem not to see. We ascended into the mountains and, in around forty-five minutes, we were in Antigua and I was being introduced to Hilda, my "madre." She's a little old lady, basically, with a bunch of chihuahuas (chihuahuae?) and some birds. The house is largely constructed of sheet metal but I actually really like it. The bathroom will be dicy, I predict, but all-in-all it'll be fine. My room is not small, has a desk, a window, a closet, a bureau, and two mirrors in which I can admire my rugged semitic features. I dropped off my stuff, changed into clean clothes, and set out to explore Antigua.






I had around 8 hours to kill (three of which I'm currently in the process of killing) before Ryan, my buddy from school and Hilda housemate, would arrive. Antigua is a great city to walk around. It's pretty small, has perfect weather (breezy and around 70-75), and is totally beautiful. The three (huge) volcanoes (e? no e?) surrounding the city are mist-shrouded and amazing looking. Every street is paved with ancient cobblestones (older than the streets of Europe; Antigua used to be the capital of New Spain), which are very attractive but are pounding my pathetic, deformed feet. I think I'll be popping a lot of painkillers here, especially if I walk around as much every day as I have been today.




I made my way to Parque Central, which is a centrally located park. It's really pretty and a big hang-out spot for locals and travelers. I've basically been walking around, going into hotels/museums/churches and looking at neato courtyards, Central American musicians, etc. I've been befriended separately by Mauritza and Otto, two indigenous teenagers who are trying to sell me necklaces. They now know my name and approach me to chat every time they see me. Mauritza, who can't be older than fourteen, even asked me where my girlfriend was. Then she asked me where my mother was. The former question was amusing but comprehensible. The latter completely weirded me out with its randomness, but she's funny so it's cool. Anyway, I have a feeling I'll be buying some necklaces at some point...because I'm a sucker.




I've located a good internet cafe where I'll be able to start uploading pictures to post here. I took a nice one of my first meal: guacamole slathered nachos. Yum.

All-in-all, I'm feeling good about this town. The periphery is kind of shady and apparently has some gang warfare problems (sorry, mom). But it's fine because Gustavo told me that, since the police are unable to control the gangs, the military maintains a presence in town. Yay martial law! In fact, I have seen a few shotguns and about ten assault rifles since my arrival. The shotguns were being brandished by rent-a-cop types standing guard at various stores and hotels. Gustavo told me that this is because thieves often target these establishments so the owners just hire some muscle. Sweet. I'm definitely going to try to get a picture of myself with a guy brandishing a shotgun.

That's about it. I've been people watching and walking all day, waiting for Ryan. This promises to be a really interesting and incredible experience. Class starts tomorrow at 8 a.m. Until then.

p.s. Matt Alexander, look where we live!!!!