Going on my sixth week in Guatemala and there are still new things to write about every day! The semblance of a semi-routine I had going from the past five weeks mixed up a bit this week. Friday was my last day of Spanish classes, leaving my afternoons completely free. I still volunteer at the orphanage in the mornings, but come two o’clock I have the whole day to explore the city, practice my Spanish, and catch up with friends. And I definitely made the most of this first week of tardes libres. Here are my weekday adventures from this previous week.
Monday. Autumn here feels colder than Texas winters. At first I thought I just needed a few weeks to get accustomed to sub-100 degree temperatures, but after six weeks of wearing two jackets at a time and still shivering I finally decided to buy another jacket. Luckily, Xela is the perfect place to find a nice warm jacket for a nice cheap price. Hundreds of second hand stores, called pacas, line the avenues and fill the street corners. At these pacas, one can find anything. Seriously, eh-nee-thing.
They are fun to wander into if you feel like immersing yourself head first in piles of shirts, jackets, pants, and everything in between—yes I even found adult footie pajamas. If you are really lucky, like I was hoping to be, you can even find brand name apparel, I’m talking Columbia and Ann Taylor, for under $10. You really never know what you are going to get. If you have something in particular you are looking for, however, it is a pretty hefty task.
So Monday Jessica, Maria, and I browsed the entire afternoon away in nearly twenty different pacas (covering only two streets!) in search of a warmer jacket. After trying on tons of way-to-large jackets and a maybe just a few silly what-was-that-designer-thinking tops, I finally found a nice Northface fleece for only $6! Glad I found such an awesome deal, but even without the amazing find I still would have counted it a win to spend a good afternoon laughing over the interesting ropa we encountered and the still-developing Spanish we conversed in.
Tuesday. Upon arriving back at the house for lunch after my morning at the orphanage, I was greeted with an official yellow piece of paper with an urgent message. At first glance, I thought it was a telegram—because those things are common place these days?—or maybe I just secretly wanted it to be. After further examination I realized it was a notice from the post office that I had packages ready for pick-up. I’m not sure why they held them there this time instead of delivering them to the school like the previous time, but nonetheless it gave me the chance to explore another part of Xela I hadn’t yet!
I had about an hour to kill before meeting my friends, so I headed that way after lunch. It took me a little longer to find the post office oficina de correos than I was thinking. I knew the general area it is located in, so I took off figuring I would just make my way over there and stop when I found the official looking government building with the classic (American, duh! What was I thinking?) logo. It took me a few wandering passes down the street and back to realize the post office was just another chink in the brown-brick chain of stores. My feeling of triumphant was soon deflated, however, when the clerk told me he couldn’t help me and I had to come back an hour later.
The hour delay turned out to be a blessing in disguise because when I arrived the second time, I had three other people in tow to help carry the two heavy packages from my mom and sister. And the heaviness turned out to be a blessing too, because it was caused by the likes of peanut butter, Nutella, a beautiful new journal and photo album, and many more amazing things. Gracias familia! Te amo!
After we dropped off the packages, Marjorie, Jessica, Maria, and I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out, eating chocolate donuts! (okay, maybe that was just me), and speaking entirely in Spanish. It was exciting to see how far we have all come in our ability to speak Spanish. Although we still have a long way to go, we were able to converse more or less easily about our lives in Guatemala and back home, goals, favorite stories of families and friends, and even make jokes like any conversation one would expect four chicas to have in their first language.
Later that night, the Spanish school hosted a showing of the Argentinean movie Historias Mínimas (English title “Intimate Stories”). This multiple award-winning movie is said to follow three seemingly insignificant characters who’s day of seemingly insignificant tasks intertwine to create an underlying story of great significance.
We started off confident choosing to watch it in Spanish without any subtitles, and after about an hour clash between our pride and our severely lacking understanding we finally all caught each other’s glances and erupted in laughter realizing none of us had any clue what was going on. Even with the last half hour of subtitles and piecing together what we each happened to catch in the beginning of the movie, we all still left a little confused but no doubt thoroughly cultured in the art of Argentinean movie making.
Wednesday started off with a whole lot of a rain and a whole lot of bad luck. First, I woke up late, ate breakfast late, got ready late, and arrived at the orphanage way late. Second, on the hurried walk to the orphanage I found myself the victim of someone else’s lateness too when a car sped past me without regard to the huge puddle-river on the side of the road and completely soaked me from the waist down. Third, when I finally arrived at the orphanage late and dripping no one answered the door bell or my knocking, leaving me standing in the rain for ten minutes until I decided to walk back home, take a warm shower, and change into dry clothes.
Luckily, my luck was so bad it was too comical to be frustrating and the rest of the day only went up from there! After a nice long shower, I spent the afternoon filling my walls with last-minute-packing forgotten and long awaited pictures of home I had received in my care packages. Surrounded by beautiful familiar faces and memories, I couldn’t help but be hopefully for what the rest of the day, and weeks, had in store.
And what was in store was a very interesting night. Our newly dubbed weekly guitar and cross cultural songs jam session was joined this week by another (American) classic campfire companion—smores! Ashley, Marcie, and I introduced the Guatemalans Javier and Julio and the Spainard Christina to the wonderful sticky yumminess of smores after a little bit of coaxing. The outcome? Julio loved them, while the other two “appreciated” them. And then they introduced us to the Guatemalan and Spanish names for marshmallows. In Spain, people call marshmallows nubes, which literally means clouds and in Guatemala they are called angelitos, which literally means little angels—interesting thing to think about next time you are snacking on some of that fluffy white goodness!
Once again, our song selection varied across languages, decades, and music styles. But my favorite memory of the night, and one of my favorite memories of Guatemala so far, was the hilarious scene of three gringas and two heavily Hispanic-accented wannabes belting out We Are the World by Michael Jackson.
Thursday started off with an exciting yet bittersweet moment in the orphanage. The youngest baby, Jaime, crawled for the first time! I have grown so close to all the sweet children after six weeks of working with them, and getting to witness such a big moment in one of their lives filled me with so much pride and excitement. However, the excitement was tinged with a bit of sadness knowing that these first few crawls went unnoticed by the people who brought him into this world and that the only person who took joy in his accomplishment is going to leave his life for good in just a few short weeks.
Later in the afternoon, the sun decided to finally grace Xela with its presence. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder; after so many days of chilly clouds my skin welcomed the kisses of the warm rays like it had never known such love. It’s crazy how 68 degrees can really feel like 90 after a few days of temperatures in the 50s. I celebrated the return of this long lost friend by passing the afternoon away in el parque central studying Spanish vocabulary and grammar. Now that I don’t attend Spanish classes every day, I have to make a conscious effort to keep up the studying and practicing so my pace of improvement doesn’t slow—or worse, stop. But sunny days like Thursday make it easy to grab a bench outside and spend a few hours with my Spanish book and journal.
That night, I went to El Cuartito to finally catch the live music. Supposedly every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the café hosts local live artists spanning a number of different genres. However, the past three times we’ve tried to check it out, no band was on schedule for that night. The only time I’ve caught a glimpse of the promised nighttime entertainment, was a last Thursday night when I had gone to the café to Skype expecting some peace and quiet. So this Thursday I went ready to hear the self described “Latin vibes” band.
The band consisted of an acoustic guitar, bass guitar, trumpet, a set of large bongo drums, and lead electric guitar and the vibes were definitely Latin! This band of guatemaltecos also had attracted a crowd of local university students and professionals and for once the foreigners were heavily outnumbered, so the café took one a whole different, and much enjoyed, atmosphere.
On the way home, I grabbed a chicken sandwich from the fast food place Pollo Campero and thoroughly enjoyed my first Guatemalan fast food experience!
Friday I started a second volunteer project at a local church. The project provides a free hot lunch to ancianos, or elderly people, in the community five days a week. After a morning of working with the children in the orphanage, I walk about thirty minutes on the other side of town to the church where I help serve the food and just provide company for the thirty or forty men and women who come.
Although I have only visited for one day, I am already excited about getting to know this sadly forgotten age group that has so much to offer to their community and to volunteers like me in the process of shaping the way I see the world and the different but beautiful people in it.
I also had two pequeño mundo experiences with the two other volunteers in the lunch program. When I first showed up, I was surprised to see the English woman I had met previously in El Cuartito there for her first day of volunteering as well. In addition, I found out the second volunteer is from Texas and she knew even where Rogers was! That is definitely a first since being here.
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