Catchin´ Up

First, I want to thank everyone again for their birthday wishes. You´d be surprised how much it means to me to receive so many messages. God bless Facebook.

Next, a disclaimer. I´m known for being wordy with my blogs, and I´m just telling you right now that this is going to be epic. I need to dump a little bit, so for those of you who are reading this right now, you probably are going to go with one of two options...either close the window right now, or grab a beer and get comfortable...

I just finished my first day of classes, and damn, that´s always a humbling experience. The only sure thing about my studies is that the more time I spend learning the language, the more I realize how much more there is to learn (and subsequently, how little I truly know). However, before launching into Xela and my classes, and for the sake of some sort of coherent organizational pattern, I´ll take it back to my second day in Guatemala City.

I think I left off by saying that I was going to go watch the World Cup match between England and the USA. We did that, and I´ve got to say that watching soccer in a Latin American country is an entirely different experience. Right now, with Paraguay playing Italy, you can hear the TV´s all around you and occasional yelling. Man do they love them some soccer down here!

After leaving the bar, I rested up before the three of us went back out for dinner and some club-action. I won´t bore you with details about dinner, but I will say that the clubs were pretty awesome. We met this dude who kept trying to talk us into going to the strip club, and when he finally realized it wasn´t going to happen (and that he wasn´t going to make any commissions from our going), he resigned himself to just hanging out with us. This dude was like the self-proclaimed mayor of the city...he seemed to know everyone. He got us into a lot of clubs and was a good guy to have around. At the height of the evening, the power went out in the bar. Now, you´d think that bad news for a club, but no, not in Guatemala. Before I knew it, flashlights and candles were everywhere and people were still dancing like nothing had even happened. Realizing it was getting kind of late and that I had an early bus to catch, I took this opportunity to pull my ¨Knight-Houdini¨ move and BOUNCED. Didn´t even say goodbye. I stopped by the liquor store to buy (nope, not booze but good guess)...water. Upon leaving the store, I stepped right onto the slippery sidewalk and my feet came right out from under me and I bit it HARD. Right onto my tailbone. Needless to say, I´ve been in some pain, but nothing too bad. What really got hurt were my feelings...lol

So on to the bus. Throughout the trip, I imagined myself dying a gruesome death, or even worse, being seriously injured and stuck in some ramshackle Guatemalan hospital with nobody knowing what ever happened to me. The trip to Xela is about four hours, complete with the supposedly ¨direct¨ bus stopping every 15 minutes to let people on to sell you random crap you don´t want or need. Although, I did go out on a limb and buy a ¨chicken tortilla¨ from a lady...that, in my mind, was living life on the edge. Oh, and there was this dude who got on and basically screamed bible verses to us for about 20 minutes. The whole time I´m thinking to myself, ¨He can´t be doing this because he thinks he´s going to convert anyone. Besides, any Guatemalan on here is undoubtedly Catholic anyway and the few gringos aren´t going to convert because he told us to. What´s his angle? Better yet, what crap is in that bag that he´s inevitably going to try to sell us?¨ Well, my second guess proved to be true because after he had preached, and then performed quite the elaborate prayer (complete with eyes rolling back into his head and speaking in some weird tongue under his breath) dude pulls out a sack of candy and starts trying to sell it to everyone by describing, in graphic detail, the delicious fruit flavor and how it´s the best candy in the world. Now, I´m no religion major (like my sister, who was but doesn´t go to church...figure that one out), but I have to believe that if there is a God, and he was looking down at that precise moment, he would´ve been pissed that this dude was using his good word to sell fruit candy for a measly Quetzal (which is about a dime). I´m pretty sure that was sacreligiousness at its highest form...

So, after a million stops by the bus driver, who was apparently going for some sort of philanthropy award for letting the most free riders onto the bus to sell crap, I guess he decided that he needed to step up the pace. This resulted in him careening around corners, up through windy mountain passes, for the next two hours. I seriously felt like Keanu Reeves on ¨Speed.¨ I was absolutely terrified out of my mind! This guy was hitting mach-3 in some ancient Pullman bus that likely hadn´t been serviced in years. I´m thinking to myself, ¨Does this guy have so much faith in these tires that he´s willing to risk all of our lives to save a few minutes?¨ And the answer to that was a resounding YES. He really did. I´m not kidding when I say he was taking the corners way too fast...at one point, the tires actually screeched (or maybe that was me screaming). You´d think that this would phase him, but no, he went on to do it two more times after. I kept checking my alarm clock for time, and to my horror, we had more than one hour to go after the first tire-screeching incident. I thought for sure this was how I was going to go out. But finally, we made it, and I got the hell off that bus as fast as I could!

Arriving in Xela, as in any new city, was overwhelming. It´s a huge city set in the mountains with a largely indiginous population. It´s actually pretty cool to see the old women in the traditional clothing speaking one of the many ancient dialects...it´s like going back in time. The city itself isn´t very impressive or beautiful...it´s cobblestone streets and crumbling buildings in the typical third-world style, but it´s definitely what I expected. I arrived at the school and was greeted, in English, by a girl working there who obviously started school and then decided she didn´t want to leave. The director is this HUGE man named Juan, who seems to be a really nice guy. He got me set-up and called my family to come pick me up. A few minutes later, Carmen walks in and gasps when she sees me...I´m assuming not because of my strikingly good looks, but perhaps rather my size. She comes straight up to me and puts her arms around my waist, explaining that she was my new mom and I her new son. Very sweet. We left for the house, which is conveniently right around the corner, and I was led to my new room...about the size of a prison cell with less amenities. But, I didn´t have a problem with this until I met Eli, the other student staying at the house, whose room is easily three to four times bigger. But then again, he´s been here for five weeks, so who am I to complain, right?

I laid down for about an hour, just enough time to have some sort of really troubling nightmare that I don´t remember. That was awesome. It basically thrust me into a mild panic-attack for the duration of dinner while being surrounded by Carmen, her husband, her three daughters, and a five-year-old girl who insisted on playing Pattycake with me. While all of this was happening, I prayed for the apocalypse. Then, Carmen found out it was going to be my birthday and everyone started singing the birthday song with their funny accents...that lifted my spirits a bit. After dinner, Carmen proceeded to hug the life out of me as Eli and I tried to escape to go have a few beers in the Parque Central. Which, by the way, is an absolutely beautiful spot that I never would have expected to be in a city like this one. I´ll have to post some pictures later.

And all of that brings us to today, which was pretty uneventful. I woke up to Carmen singing to me and giving me more hugs, telling me that we´re eating chocolate cake tonight. Can´t complain about that! Class itself was, as I said earlier, humbling. I started in gangbusters, throwing out my knowledge of different verb tenses, but after a while, it became fairly apparent that I have a long ways to go. We reviewed a shitload of verbs, seemingly none of which I knew. Once that starts happening, the affective filter gets raised, and I begin to shut-down somewhat, dismayed by my lack of skills. But, having been in this situation before, I took it in stride and just did the best I could. For our last hour of the day, we took a walk to the local market and really got immersed in the culture. The only word that I kept thinking of was ¨authentic.¨ This place is the real deal! Very few tourists, colorful Mayan clothing, fruits and vegetables abound in local markets, and just general chaos. It´s a bit overwhelming right now, but I´m starting to get used to it.

Alright, I guess I´ll leave it at that for those of you that even made it this far. Thanks for indulging me with your attention. I fell better for having recounted my experiences so far. Things will get easier (but not the Spanish, I´m sure) over the course of the next week or two and hopefully I´ll find my groove. This weekend, I´m going on a two-day hike to what is supposedly the highest point in Central America (thankfully I remembered my asthma medicine, not socks, but medicine), and for my third week, I think I´m going to hit a school in Antigua for a change of pace. That decision remains to be seen...

Talk at you later!

Ben