Well, it’s been beyond crazy.
I don’t know what way up is and I am surprisingly very okay with that. Guatemala is making me so much more chill and relaxed.
I’ve spent 23 hours at school in the past three days, and, if not for Gloria’s patience, I think my head would have imploded by now. (For comparison, ‘normal’ schedule is 20 hours a week).
{Also, side note, I’m very behind on pictures of recent activities…I’ll do my best to get those up this weekend as soon as I can!}
Today’s mantra has been “Mi cerebro está descompuesto. Por favor, no hablen conmigo.” (My brain is broken. Please, don’t talk to me.)
One incredible thing that’s been happening is my starting to be closer and closer to being bilingual. Chances are looking better and better that I’ll be either nearly or entirely bilingual when I get back stateside in just over a month (how is it that the time has gone so crazy quickly?!). The past few days, I’ve been talking and focusing more on articulating thoughts than on specific vocabulary and grammar and things have just been coming out correctly…even stuff I didn’t know that I knew. I’m having meaningful conversations about things like immigration and faith and dreams and it’s beautiful. I just start ‘wordsing’ and I’m speaking Spanish!
When this happens, Gloria just gets this dumbfound look on her face and we both start spontaneously laughing. She doesn’t even ask me anymore how I know things because my response is always, “Que es esto?! Estoy hablando Español!” (“What is this? I’m speaking Spanish!”) Instead, she just tells me that I’m doing really well and I thank her and we move on.
We’re not sure how or why I’m learning my final tense/grammatical mode (subjunctive) so quickly, but she’s never had a student that just ‘got it’ like I have been. I’ve taken to it like it’s just another tense to use, but evidently it’s harder than that for most people? I still have a lot to learn, but this week I’ve been progressing faster than I ever expected to, and it’s been fun for both of us to celebrate this.
Wednesday was my marathon 10 hour day. We took a group trip with our little budget list and community pot of money over to the market to buy carbon (charcoal), leña (firewood), arroz (rice), frijoles (beans), tomates (tomatoes), chile pimiento (chili peppers), zanahorias (carrots), cebollas (onions), aguacate (avocados), masa (corn mush, for tortillas), maiz (corn), guisantes (peas), limones (limes) and various herbs, spices, and seasonings. We proceeded to clean and beans, rice, and veggies and then went back to our classes for a couple hours. Then all the other lucky ducks went home for lunch, while I took my extra two hours of class and then everyone jumped in for four hours of cooking. It was hard work and we very intentionally chose to do everything by hand, with less technology than most families in Antigua have access to. Basically, we cooked a typical Guatemalan meal.
None of us are allowed to get married because we wouldn’t be able to win over our mother-in-laws with our tortilla-making (traditionally, it’s super important in this culture for a woman to be able to cook and demonstrate this to her future husband’s family). We joked a lot and we failed at doing a lot of traditional ‘womanly’ things, but everyone was in good spirits for how late it was and it was a good time.
Yesterday went an hour long because Gloria and I took on Raul in scrabble. With her and I together, we didn’t lose too badly. Our score was something like 310 to 280, so we were pretty proud of our collective effort. We also somehow had a bag of way too many tiles, so our game took almost two hours and we were almost entirely out of places to lay tiles. (Also, we didn’t have a single tile to play that was over 4 points and Raul got both of his ‘X’s on x3 letter or word score spaces, and he never loses, so we were pretty content.)
Today we took a trip to San Andrés Itzapa to visit a traditional Mayan ‘church.’ We took a chicken bus, which was an experience (and my first time on a public chicken bus), but I couldn’t help but have a hurt heart. It was such a concrete, physical example of a people group that don’t know the Lord. The way the teachers explained it, this particular religious branch was similar to Catholicism with the idea of saints as intercessors, but each of their ‘saints’/’gods’ was not recognized by the church. This was blended with the traditional Mayan belief of the need for certain ceremonies and sacrifices as a means of keeping life ‘in balance.’ They believe that, without these rituals, the cosmos will somehow fall out of alignment, things will become unbalanced, and general mayhem will ensue. (This is obviously an oversimplification of their beliefs, but between some language barriers and it being a sort of touchy subject to talk about, it’s the best explanation I’ve got.)
Guatemala continues to break and reform me in all of the best possible ways.
There are parts that are hard, there are parts that hurt, and there are parts that it'd be easier to just not deal with. But there are also parts that are beautiful, there are parts that are life-giving and healing, there are parts that fill me with belly-aching laughter, and there are parts that have changed me forever, and I'd take all of this beautiful, messy journey together over removing some of the ugly parts any day.
I don’t know what way up is and I am surprisingly very okay with that. Guatemala is making me so much more chill and relaxed.
I’ve spent 23 hours at school in the past three days, and, if not for Gloria’s patience, I think my head would have imploded by now. (For comparison, ‘normal’ schedule is 20 hours a week).
{Also, side note, I’m very behind on pictures of recent activities…I’ll do my best to get those up this weekend as soon as I can!}
Today’s mantra has been “Mi cerebro está descompuesto. Por favor, no hablen conmigo.” (My brain is broken. Please, don’t talk to me.)
One incredible thing that’s been happening is my starting to be closer and closer to being bilingual. Chances are looking better and better that I’ll be either nearly or entirely bilingual when I get back stateside in just over a month (how is it that the time has gone so crazy quickly?!). The past few days, I’ve been talking and focusing more on articulating thoughts than on specific vocabulary and grammar and things have just been coming out correctly…even stuff I didn’t know that I knew. I’m having meaningful conversations about things like immigration and faith and dreams and it’s beautiful. I just start ‘wordsing’ and I’m speaking Spanish!
When this happens, Gloria just gets this dumbfound look on her face and we both start spontaneously laughing. She doesn’t even ask me anymore how I know things because my response is always, “Que es esto?! Estoy hablando Español!” (“What is this? I’m speaking Spanish!”) Instead, she just tells me that I’m doing really well and I thank her and we move on.
We’re not sure how or why I’m learning my final tense/grammatical mode (subjunctive) so quickly, but she’s never had a student that just ‘got it’ like I have been. I’ve taken to it like it’s just another tense to use, but evidently it’s harder than that for most people? I still have a lot to learn, but this week I’ve been progressing faster than I ever expected to, and it’s been fun for both of us to celebrate this.
Wednesday was my marathon 10 hour day. We took a group trip with our little budget list and community pot of money over to the market to buy carbon (charcoal), leña (firewood), arroz (rice), frijoles (beans), tomates (tomatoes), chile pimiento (chili peppers), zanahorias (carrots), cebollas (onions), aguacate (avocados), masa (corn mush, for tortillas), maiz (corn), guisantes (peas), limones (limes) and various herbs, spices, and seasonings. We proceeded to clean and beans, rice, and veggies and then went back to our classes for a couple hours. Then all the other lucky ducks went home for lunch, while I took my extra two hours of class and then everyone jumped in for four hours of cooking. It was hard work and we very intentionally chose to do everything by hand, with less technology than most families in Antigua have access to. Basically, we cooked a typical Guatemalan meal.
None of us are allowed to get married because we wouldn’t be able to win over our mother-in-laws with our tortilla-making (traditionally, it’s super important in this culture for a woman to be able to cook and demonstrate this to her future husband’s family). We joked a lot and we failed at doing a lot of traditional ‘womanly’ things, but everyone was in good spirits for how late it was and it was a good time.
Yesterday went an hour long because Gloria and I took on Raul in scrabble. With her and I together, we didn’t lose too badly. Our score was something like 310 to 280, so we were pretty proud of our collective effort. We also somehow had a bag of way too many tiles, so our game took almost two hours and we were almost entirely out of places to lay tiles. (Also, we didn’t have a single tile to play that was over 4 points and Raul got both of his ‘X’s on x3 letter or word score spaces, and he never loses, so we were pretty content.)
Today we took a trip to San Andrés Itzapa to visit a traditional Mayan ‘church.’ We took a chicken bus, which was an experience (and my first time on a public chicken bus), but I couldn’t help but have a hurt heart. It was such a concrete, physical example of a people group that don’t know the Lord. The way the teachers explained it, this particular religious branch was similar to Catholicism with the idea of saints as intercessors, but each of their ‘saints’/’gods’ was not recognized by the church. This was blended with the traditional Mayan belief of the need for certain ceremonies and sacrifices as a means of keeping life ‘in balance.’ They believe that, without these rituals, the cosmos will somehow fall out of alignment, things will become unbalanced, and general mayhem will ensue. (This is obviously an oversimplification of their beliefs, but between some language barriers and it being a sort of touchy subject to talk about, it’s the best explanation I’ve got.)
Guatemala continues to break and reform me in all of the best possible ways.
There are parts that are hard, there are parts that hurt, and there are parts that it'd be easier to just not deal with. But there are also parts that are beautiful, there are parts that are life-giving and healing, there are parts that fill me with belly-aching laughter, and there are parts that have changed me forever, and I'd take all of this beautiful, messy journey together over removing some of the ugly parts any day.