Lo Siento

Hi, this is more of an apology than an entry. I´ve been away for a week but have been so swamped with emails and errands that I couldn´t actually write today. But I´m alive and happy and will write soon.

¡Fotos!

¡I´ve uploaded some photos to Flickr! They´re from around Xela, Panajachel/Atitlan, and Salcaja. I could only do 40, and some of them didn´t work, but at least its a start.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14872592@N00/sets/72157607286689290/

Mi Familia (Real)

Here´s a quick update on the cool things my real family is up to:

A film that Alex (my brother) produced is one of five films nominated for Best International Short at the Raindance Film Festival, a British festival of independent films. Its a French film called Troubles Sens. Here´s the film´s link on festival´s website: http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/index.php?id=284,2591,0,0,1,0

He´s also about to go on tour with Stark Fucking Hipsters, a NY ska/indie/punk band, as their drummer. http://www.myspace.com/starfuckinghipsters

Erica (my oldest sister)´s pregnancy is going well. The baby is now full term, so its not a problem if she gives birth, although he´s not due until the very end of September. Of course, I will let you all know when I have a new baby nephew.

And, Beth (my other sister) is leaving tomorrow for France for 3 months, where she´ll study French and probably do lots of other cools stuff.

My mom´s been volunteering a lot at a community radio station, WJFF, http://www.wjffradio.org/wjff/ and both my parents are enjoying semi-retirement.

La Iglesia en Almolonga y San Simon

Yesterday David, Karen, and I went to Almolonga and Zunil, two towns just outside of Xela. Almolonga is known for its fruit market, but the best thing we saw there was its Catholic Church. Apparently the town is now overwhelmingly Evangelical, but Almolonga is still home to a 400-year old Catholic church dedicated to San Pedro. We walked inside the church and the caretaker asked us if we wanted him to put the lights on in the front. We were thinking that it was just so we could take a picture of the alter and all, but he was a bit insistent so we were like okay, thanks. He goes to the back and all of a sudden in the front of the church above the alter (appologies if I am using my church terminology incorrectly) big neon letters reading ¨San Pedro 400 años¨light up. Then he hits another switch and around each of the saints a neon boarder appears. Every day is a suprise. I didn´t have my camera, but Karen took a photo, which I will post when she sends it to me.

After Almolonga, we took the bus to Zunil where we saw the Mayan (Mayan/Catholic syncratic) idol to San Simon (Maximon). There´s a few areas, one of them being Zunil, where this Saint has a strong following. From wikipedia, San Simon ¨is associated with the subterranean force of masculine fertility and prostitution. Always depicted in black, he wears a black hat and sits on a chair, often with a cigar placed in his mouth and a gun in his hand, with offerings of tobacco, alcohol, and Coca-cola at his feet. ¨ Outside of the little room with the idol, they have three fires going where they burn offerings. The location of the idol changes every year so you have to ask people for directions when you get to the town. It certainly wasn´t obvious, but we managed to find it without too much trouble.












I got this photo from http://latinamericanadventure.blogspot.com/2008/08/san-simon-zunil.htm

¿Quieres un acertijo?

This past week Libia was my teacher again. She is whom I ran into in the mall the first week. We worked together the week before too. The day after I went to the meeting on La Florida, we were talking for a while about whether or not it was just for the workers of the coffee plantation La Florida (that I learned about last night) to take over the plantation after struggling in legal ways unsuccesfully for 20 years. After we finished up with that and I was copying my new vocab words, she said to me ¨¿quieres un acertijo?¨I asked her what an acertijo was and she said, a bit unsure, ¨a muzzle.¨ Of course, I was like, a muzzle!? Like para un perro? I know I can talk a lot, but isn´t that what this whole spanish school thing is about? I started describing a what a muzzle is and then we both looked up in our respective Spanish-English dictionaries ¨acertijo¨and ¨muzzle.¨ When I gave her the translation of muzzle, we both broke down laughing. It was great. And after, we told each other some acertijos, or riddles.

La historia de la identidad masculnia en los estados unitos

This is primary for Madalyn, Amy, Suz, and others who either took Bruce Dorsey´s class History of Manhood in America or other studies of manhood, with Bruce. I just wanted to share that yesterday in my class, I spoke at length with my spanish teacher (all in spanish, of course) explaining what it meant to be an ¨hombre verdadero¨in 17th and 18th century New England. I even drew out the whole shift from aprentice-> journeyman -> master to not being able to become a master and how that messed with the definition of idea manhood. This was all followed up with a discussion of how race and class shaped the ideal manhood in the Antebellum South. So, if you want to know spanish vocab ranging from ¨cabeza de la casa¨(which they actually use for head of the household) to¨jerarqui¨(hierarchy), give me a ring. Getting to talk about changing ideals of manhood is one benefit to paying someone to talk with you for five hours a day.

Mis palabras favorites...

My favorite word that I have come across so far has been¨chispitas¨, most commonly used in the expression ¨chispitas de chocolate¨: chocolate chips. I like it because its in the diminuative form, so it sounds so cute. I´m pretty into all words in the diminuative form--like when another student, David, who is 18 moved into my house, my host parents, Danny, and I started to refer to him as mi hermonito (my little brother...hermano is brother, which you all may know already from Arrested Development). Another great example is when a taxi driver offered us a ride home for only 20 ¨quetzalitas¨: 20 little quetzales. Awww, how sweet. (a Quetzal is Guatemala´s currency. Currently, Q 7.7 = $1 US. Q20 is standard for a taxi ride home from the center of town).

Tonight I´m going to a meeting to learn about a coffee plantation (Finca la Florida) that was taken over by workers after the owner went bankrupt. The government gave the workers´collective a loan to buy the property and now they still live in poverty but are working to improve their revenue generating activities (like doing more processing n the finca rather than selling the beans at an earlier stage) and develop their ecotourism. Some other coffee collectives have been pretty successful bringing in ecotourism in the form of tours and paying volunteers. It should be pretty interesting.

¡Me Desmaye en la Iglesia!

Yesterday, Sunday, I went to church with my host parents. They are super catholic (as in we have church group meetings in our house twice a week and they are all very involved with the church). The attend the big cathedral in the center of town (the photo to the right is the old facade...the church entrance is actually out of the picture). I asked if I could go with them with because I thought it would be interesting and a good way to practice my spanish comprehension. I didn´t catch most of what was said but I could pick out lots of words (like brothers, children of God, community, etc). I hadn´t been to a full mass before so it was pretty interesting.

About an hour into the mass, just before communion, I started feeling kind of dizzy, but it was while we were standing so I couldn´t sit down. I tried to talk myself out of the thought that I was about to faint. Fortunately, right about then we went down to kneeling, at which point I promptky fainted. The next thing I know my host parents were picking me up and I was sweating profusely. I can only imagine how they interepreted this. And today, I found out that its a common belief that if a woman faints it means she´s pregnant (don´t worry mom and dad!). I bet it didn´t help that after church, I asked my host parents where I could find the local type of baby carrier (para Erica, por supuesto).

Well, at least now its a funny story.

Lago de Atitlan

Last weekend Dany, the chica who was also living in my house, and I went to Panajachel (pron: pan a chel) , a town on Lago de Atitlan. The lake is really deep (300m) and was orginally formed in the crater of a volcano. Since then more volcanos have sprung up around the lake so its quite a spectacular site. There are a number of little villages around the lake that you can take a boat to. Lago de Atitlan is one of the main tourist attractions in Guatemala for foreigners and Guatemaltecos alike. It was much different from Xela, which has foreigners but isn´t based around a tourist economy. It was the only time since I´ve been here (only two weeks, but still) when Iñve had children and old women following me around and approaching me while eating to buy things.

We went to Santiago Atitlan and then to San Antonio. San Antonio was a tiny place that basically
comes to life when a tourist boat shows up and the selling begins. There is one narrow road that goes straight up to the church. This picture is from San Antonio. One woman was trying to sell me a scarf that I was interested in (the one I´m wearing in the photo) when another woman came up and said that I could get the same scarf in Panajachel for a third the price. She wasn´t even trying to directly sell me what she had with her, she was just set on ruining this other woman´s sale. The first woman told me that the other woman was crazy (and some other things that I can only guess how they translate). She got really pissed and was frantically trying to not lose the sale. I ended up agreeing to buy it for less than we had talked about realier, but more than I knew I could get it for elsewhere. But then she didn´t have change and my boat was leaving so I left scarfless. But, if you like any of the scarves you see in the photo, let me know and I bet I can hook you up.

Here is a link to more photos. They´re all Danny´s photos, but could basically be my own.
http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=33471220836543308/l=423072095/g=143524399/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

¡Hola!

¡Hola!

I´ve decided to at least try to keep a blog. I wanted to get mividaguatemalteca.blogspot.com but it was already taken. So I went with myguatemalanlife.blogspot.com, which just doens´t have the same touch. Aparently mividaguatemalteca was taken sept. 2nd. Maybe this is what I deserve for putting this off. For organization´s sake, I´m going to start with what I wrote a few days in and then post again with more recent additions.

From Aug 28th:

I´ve been in Guatemala for three days so far and like it a lot so far. I can´t believe how much spanish i´ve spoken. I spoke with the woman on the bus next to me from Guatemala City to Xela for a while. I have 5 hours of class in the morning and then have spent the afternoons so far exploring, doing errands, and trying to talk to people. Yesterday I ran into a teacher from my school (who is 20) at Hiper Paiz-guatemala´s walmart, but way more clean, well organized, and even beautiful than the ones in the us- and we ended up sitting and talking for like 3 hours, en espanol. It was really fun.

The school is good. My teacher is okay but I think I will try to have a different teacher next week. It´s normal to switch, so its not a big deal. I have to work pretty hard to get a word in so she doesn´t just read grammar points to me when we´re doing grammar stuff, so i´ll see how i like the other teachers. Tomorrow there is a weekly salsa class which I´ve heard is fun. There are three scots who will be at the school for 2 more weeks, a couple and a woman from oregon who will be here until december and an autralian couple. There might be one or two other people. everyone seems to be in their twenties. most of the teachers are, except mine who is 40.

I like my host family a lot. I´m still waiting to get a key to the house, but I´ve been lucky enough to have someone home whenever I came home. It´s kind of low committment host family membership but we all talk at lunch which is nice. I have two host brothers who are 20-somethings. One studied law and works for the government. The other works with microfinancing, but I´m not exactly sure in what capacity. Both are really friendly and I look forward to getting to know them more. I can´t understand anything my host father says but he hardly speaks to anyone, so its okay. And my host mom is one of the smallest people I´ve ever seen. She is very nice and cooks delicious food. Right now there´s another girl (mount holyoke ´06) living with my host family, which has actually been pretty good. She´s only here for the week, but she speaks enough spanish that we talk to each other in spanish and english sometimes. It´s nice because we can be out a little later and be safe together than if I were alone. It would be tough if she didn´t speak any spanish but she took it in hgih school so can communicate. I´m trying to decide if I want to ask to be alone or not after she leaves.

My number here is (502) 5182-5669 if you ever want to call on skype. I´m usually home after 7pm (9 east coast time) because that´s when it gets dark.