Day 74: Spanish tidbits

March 16.

Because I haven't completely forgotten about blogging, and I don't feel like writing anything long.

• I like that in Spanish "I'm sleepy" is tengo sueño = "I have dream." 
• And that you don't blow your nose, you sonar = sound it.
• In Nicaragua, the answer to ¿Cómo estás? if positive, is often accompanied by gracias a Dios in a quick, casual way. "Bien, gracias a Dios, ¿y usted?" 
• For a fun time, ask a Spanish-speaker to say "puppy," "poppy," and "poopy."
• And then get made fun of when you can't roll your R's. 
• "To lend" and "to borrow" are the same, prestarse. This seems ridiculous to me, but I've been told that for Spanish-speakers learning English it's confusing that they're two separate notions. 
• Adding --ito to the end of everything is fun.
• "Platypus" is ornitorrinco. 

Day 30-33: pretty building

February 1-4.

While in Antigua we had group meetings every day to debrief and listen to Lindy spout theology. We even had two guest speakers, both missionaries. Our favorite place to meet was an old colonial building that is beautifully restored. It's actually owned and maintained by Spain. It has a cafe, an art exhibit, a library, and it's free of charge. We drank a lot of fancy coffee there. 

Some of the art included these big sculptures of beans. They were labeled "NOT FOR SITTING."

The building had 4 or 5 courtyards, which were all lovely like this one. 

Some of the rooms were left in a state closer to the original.

Right outside the front doors this huge facade is left standing by itself.

Day 65: a good day

Today.

More details and an update on the internship.

On Thursday the whole administration went to a meeting outside the school. Mitch had repeatedly tried to talk to some of the sub-directors about finding more work for me. They would say, "yes of course we have plenty of work for Hannah!" but then they would never follow up and give me work. On top of that, when one of the English teachers was sick, the director asked if I could teach her classes. He still thought I was a student-teacher!

Fed up, we decided to skip the talking and we marched over to the main office, where profe Kenya was trying to keep the school afloat by herself. She's the one who everybody goes to when they need something: parents, students, staff, everyone. And she had plenty of work for me.

The office will be my new place. Mitch and I realized that the best way for me to practice Spanish and be useful to NCA is to get out of the English teachers' lounge. I still help with the kindergarten English classes, and coming up next week the secondary students have an English writing workshop that I'm excited for. Mitch wants me to help mark the papers for grammar and organization, which is right up my alley.

Today I wasn't bored for one minute. I finished checking the new student ID cards off the list, cut out letters for signs, played hoky-poky with kindergarteners, kept Dulce (who has Down syndrome) entertained so the teacher could teach, and then went through a sea of manila folders with the nurse.

I feel like I was just making friends with the English professors, and now I have to figure out how to understand the people in the office. With new people, my Spanish acts like an animal that's about to be roadkill. Give it a few days and I get used to their voice and can understand them. That means that during first impressions I come off like an idiot who doesn't know anything, and have to spend the next month convincing them that yes, I do understand Spanish, just not at 6 in the morning or if you're mumbling. I can't understand 70% of what the director says -- that man has the Yorkshire accent of Spanish.

Kinder 2, 4-5 year olds. There are three kindergarten classes, the first only has seven students and is more like preschool, and the third is a full class preparing for primary school. They're not wearing uniforms because we have casual Friday, or día de colores. As you can see, coloring is no simple task.

I also had a really good weekend. Friday I saw Deadpool with two ISEP students and learned how to swear in Spanish. Rude language is more fun in English, in my opinion, because the F-word is so versatile. You can stick it anywhere in a sentence, even in the middle of a word. That doesn't work in Spanish. Saturday and Sunday I hung out with Camina and her host-parents... who are more like big siblings. Top that all off with history's first good Monday, and you have a happy Hannah.

More to come soon, I promise! Oh wait, is that the sound of a 10 page paper needing to be written? Noooooooooooooo (at least it's in English).

February: a summary

This isn't nearly all that I want to say, but it's been a month and I haven't written anything about Nicaragua. So here's a little about what I've been doing. I'll catch up with Antigua and write about Nicaragua in more detail eventually. 

Expectations can be misleading. Our professor told us to pack four months worth of feminine hygiene products, a drug store, a small fortune in spending money, and to kiss wifi goodbye. It turns out she's the over-prepared type. I live in the capital city and as such my home in equipped with cable, wifi, and safe drinking water. Oddly enough, living 4,200 miles away from home is perfectly comfortable (minus the 90 degree weather and the mosquito bites).

A brief summary of the program: I'm here through the Central America Service Program (CASP), and “here” is Nicaragua, which is not a country in Africa (that's Nigeria), is not the same as Mexico, and does not spell certain mugging and malaria for tourists. I have a host family, an internship five days a week, and homework which my professors at Whitworth are eager to assign. The goals are to be immersed in Spanish and the Nicaraguan culture, and to gain work experience pertinent to my future career. That's my life for February, March, and April.

As for the two CASP goals: my host family is from El Salvador, and I'm an intern in the English department of a private school. Immersion? Salvadorans complaining about Nicaraguan food and weather, co-workers who teach and communicate largely in English. Relevant work experience? How fun it is to be an English major when the whole world assumes that means “teaching.” Expectation of a perfect semester abroad? Unrealistic.

First the bad: the day I went to meet my boss, the principal of Nicaragua Christian Academy (NCA), he didn't have time to do more than shake my hand. I was sent off to find my supervisor, Mitch, who busy principal had neglected to tell was getting an intern. An intern who lacks any ability or interest in teaching, no less. As the days passed, Mitch and I talked about all of the possible projects I could be a part of. Some of these sound really cool – I am especially looking forward to when the secondary students have their English writing workshop – but so far most of these ideas haven't manifested themselves as physical work. The problem isn't a lack of work to be done, but a lack of people who can tell me what to do. NCA suffers from a severe case of faculty disorganization.

The biggest challenge, well really it's a disappointing lack of a challenge, is that the English team all speak English. They're the people I have the most contact with. Today, for example, I had a conversation with one teacher about books. I started out asking her questions in Spanish but she kept responding in English, after the third try I gave up.

Each day is getting better. I just have to get over my pessimistic ways and see it. The folk at NCA are open and friendly; surely I can compensate for the time spent speaking English by seeking out conversations with people outside the department. I enjoy grading homework, something the teachers loathe to do. As long as they keep assigning homework I won't be completely devoid of tasks to do. The writing workshop is happening soon, and a certain elusive professor with tasks for me can't hide forever.

Now the good: my host-mom and aunt sell Salvadoran papusas! Papusas are thick corn tortillas with cheese, meat, and beans inside them. They're fun to make and even more fun to eat. Typical Nicaraguan food is bland and loaded with queso seco, a boring cheese. The perks of having a Salvadoran family is that their food is better and their accent is clearer. Nicaraguans have a habit of dropping the S's from the ends of words – dos becomes “doh” and so on – which can be a real pain for someone who's learning the language.

My two little host-brothers are five and seven years old, they love dinosaurs and Plants vs. Zombies. The older one likes goats but the younger one is scared of them. I am continually in awe of their parents' endless patience. They're not particularly difficult kids, but I would have strangled them by now. I see my host-cousins almost every day. Entertainment improved drastically after I bought a deck of cards, but now I need to think of more games to teach them.

If there's anything I've learned from my family and my internship, it's that all kids are crazy. So go, thank your parents for not killing you, and give teachers a higher salary.

Day 30-33: Antigua

February 1-4.

At the tail end of the plunge we were dropped off on the side of a highway and pointed toward a departing bus to Antigua. We were pulled in through the back door because it was too crowded to go through the front. A very different wave of sound smashed into us: instead of the accordion and trumpet filled Mexican love songs we had been subjected to for the last three hours, this driver was blasting something modern and profane. And so we entered Antigua. 

Huddled around our backpacks at the bus station we discovered Jessica's phone had been stolen or lost. All of us frazzled after a long journey and Jessica especially struggling to keep the ol' chin up, we faced another market maze. On the third attempt we made it through to the main streets of Antigua, and without too much difficulty found our hotel. There we had a happy reunion with our friends and with the showers. 

If you've been reading Camina, Karli, and Rachael's blogs you know that more valuable items were stolen en route to Antigua. 

We spent three days relaxing in the hotel and cafés, looking at old stuff, and debriefing. One afternoon we climbed a hill to earn a view of the city; too bad it was cloudy.

The best part of our last few days in Guatemala was just being together. Even after only three days apart during the plunge I missed the rest of the group. It was great to hear everybody's plunge stories and thoughts. 

Given the historical context... not sure how I feel about this cross. But it gave us a nice Whitworth group photo.

Dana, our intrepid TA, provided us with a generous food stipend, and most of us had quetzales left over from our time in Xela. It wasn't worth exchanging the quetzales into dollars to take with us to Nicaragua, so we were left with cash to burn. That meant mochaccinos, overpriced souvenirs, and more coffee.   

Delicious crepes were enjoyed at a restaurant with beanbags.

Professor Lindy treated us to Pops' ice cream as he had promised many times. 

The downside to all the old buildings, statues, quaint streets, and adorable cafés was being a tourist. We were a large group of white people in a town that is designed to be attractive to gringos. After coming from Nebaj, where we literally counted the number of white people we saw on one hand, it was a little disturbing. Upon entering a restaurant or store we were greeted in English, the signs were mostly in English, the presence of sun hat wearing, pasty tourists was overwhelming. And we were one of them!

Antigua was pretty, very pretty, with museums and building ruins to tell of its rich history. But the culture felt like processed food soaked in preservatives. It was pretty but it wasn't the truth. The truth is that Guatemalan streets are scattered with corn husks, garbage, and dog poop. There are pot holes that will never be fixed and the roads are too narrow to comfortably accommodate pedestrians and cars alike. The truth is crowds of uniformed children walking home from school at lunch time, women carrying babies on their backs, gangs of shoe shine boys chasing each other around the park. It's a market full of people bartering in K’iche’ and Kaqchikel and buses crammed full of people but the assistants are shouting in Spanish trying to cram in more. Antigua wasn't that. 

I went to one shop filled ceiling to floor with trinkets and ornaments. There were a few other tourists there and the owner asked if we spoke Spanish. Their guide or friend or whoever answered that they didn't. The owner then spoke to us all in broken English about her wares, just a few words, trying to be friendly and hopefully sell something. I told her my friends and I spoke Spanish, not wanting to be lumped in the same group as those other people, and boy did she smile. She went on and on about her wares, but after that we continued to chat and laugh. I could tell she was so happy to speak Spanish with customers, I imagine she doesn't get the chance all that often.  

Catch up before leaving Guatemala

Some unorganized thoughts and pictures to share... 

The name "Guatemala" is most likely from the Nahuatl word "Cuauhtēmallān," which means "land of many trees."

On Day 21, January 23, we visited Fuentes Georginas (pronounce the G's like H's), which are natural hot springs. It was very relaxing, but we all smelled of sulfur on the way home. I finally had an opportunity to test out the water-proofness of my water-proof camera. The water was too cloudy for pictures to be any good, but the camera survived. 

I seem to have a lot of pictures of Camina making weird/adorable faces. More of those to come.

I will take this opportunity to share photos of the beautiful countryside -- they didn't seem important enough to take up space in previous posts, but now it seems they are.

The first in the "Dana Sleeping in Unusual Places" series.


Day 26, January 28, we foolishly "took a walk" up a mountain to get to Lake Chicobal. The whole time I reminded myself that it wasn't as bad as Santa María, but it was still hot and dusty. 

Santa María in the distance.

After admiring the view of the crater lake from above, we had to go down A LOT of steps to reach it.  

"NO SWIMMING (WITH CLOTHES)" Lake Chicobal is a sacred place to the Maya people. Around the shore there were ceremony sites and bouquets of flowers. People are allowed to touch the water but not to step a foot in it.

A log. 

The second in the series of "Dana Sleeping in Unusual Places." This time, with the dog that followed us.

Day 24, January 26, we went to Almolonga, a town fifteen minutes outside of Xela. They grow a lot of vegetables, and use a lot of fertilizer.  It also gave us this very pretty view.

Day 28-30: ThE PLuNGE (part 2)

Saturday, January 30 - Monday, February 1
(Did I say I'd try to keep these short? Mmmmmmmm-oops.)

Jump back in to time to Saturday, the day we arrived in Nebaj. We went to an archeology museum (and had a fun time gaining admission, which is another story) and saw a lot of pottery and talked to a young man named Diego. This was the first of 3 Diegos we were to encounter.

The museum was started by a Protestant pastor who saw the need to preserve the history of the Ixil people. A huge amount of artifacts and treasures from Guatemala are owned by museums or private collectors in other countries, so this man wanted Nebaj to hold onto its own history. The museum building used to be a church.

The coolest thing I saw there were these big clay jars used to bury corpses. The Ixil used to bury their dead in the fetal position: since that's the way people come into the world, that's the way they should leave. There's only one other location in Guatemala where archaeologists have found bodies buried in the fetal position. (That's also how they were buried in Chile.)     

Diego and his friend painted all of these pictures.

Diego gave us some advice about where to go to next to learn more about Nebaj, which leads to our next adventure...

He told us to go to la Pista, a little town just outside of Nebaj. It was the site of a lot of killings during the war. We took a microbús there on Sunday, and it truly was a one street town. We poked around a little bit and farther down a dirt road some little kid shouted "GRINGOS!" Clearly, they don't get a lot of tourists. There wasn't anything to do so we bought some Coca-colas and sat down on a curb to watch the world go by. It went by very slowly.

This isn't "the road" of the one road town, just to be clear.

We thought that since we were there we might as well walk around some more, so we went up the hill and followed the main road past a school and some fields with horses. The road became very wide, oddly wide, and stretched on for a long ways.

At the urgency of someone's bladder we returned to the main street to find a bathroom. We asked and were directed to someone's house. They just let people use their toilet pit, I guess. While we were waiting for the bus outside a store Grace saw someone inside she recognized: it was Diego from the museum! He asked if we saw la pista and we answered yes -- that was the name of the town wasn't it? After thirty seconds of us describing what we had seen, which was not much, Diego realized we didn't know what a pista was. "Did you see where the planes land?" he asked us. OOOH. So that's what that big wide road was for!

Later that day we took a took-took to the outskirts of Nebaj where Diego had told us there was a Maya ceremony site. The driver didn't know exactly what we were talking about but gave it his best guess. We walked down a little path between farms until we came to the site, a fire pit. It would have been disappointing if the scenery hadn't been so dang pretty. The took-took driver had advised us to continue walking up the hill where he dropped us off in order to see Nebaj from the top. We did just that, and it was even more dang pretty.  

Monday morning we left Nebaj. There was some confusion getting on the bus because we wanted to go to el Quiché, but the bus assistant replied "yes, we're going to Santa Cruz." "No no!" we said, "where's the bus to el Quiché?" The assistant looked at us like we were idiots, which we probably were, and clarified, "Santa Cruz del Quiché!" 

We enjoyed some giggly conversation with two young ladies on the way to el Quiché. They advised us not to marry people from different cultures because we do things differently -- the example they gave was a Guatemalan husband wanting fried plantains and tortillas for breakfast and we North American girls not wanting to cook that. My solution was that he could make his own tortillas, which was either not the right answer or a very right answer because an older woman in front of us almost choked from trying to keep from laughing out loud. 

After an hour of laughing with them we learned they both had children of about eight years old. They were in their early twenties, just two or three years older than us. We tried to contain our surprise -- they started having kids when we were in the middle of high school. There's nothing shocking about that, but after chatting for a long time we perceived them as girls, very giggly girls, who played on their phones and wanted to be facebook friends and were crammed in this van together with us. And only after that did we learn about a huge difference between our lives.          

One of the few pictures that isn't blurry, taken on the bus ride from Nebaj. Only three crazy buses and five hours to Antigua.