A Aprender

I have begun my alleged Student Teaching Experience, which, in keeping with the general theme of my truly adorable and well-intentioned but mildly disfunctional Spanish school, consists of me being tossed unsupervised into the mix of a public girl´s school and allowed to do pretty much whatever I want with two different classes for about an hour each, because it is Good for The Children to Be Exposed to English.

All righty then. I began with a mini-assessment, teaching the kids the word ¨to know¨, then explaining that I wanted to know about the English that they know. Divided the kids into groups of two, gave each set a plate and a handful of dry beans, told them to take turns picking up one bean at a time and saying one word of English for every bean they put on the plate. Modeled, ¨I know ´cat´¨, ¨I know ´yellow´¨, etc.

It worked pretty well, because it allowed me to circulate the room and listen in on kids, rather than subject anyone to the interminable sitting through one-on-one assessment. Most kids had a few colors, some numbers, a fair amount of animals and a random body part or two, so go ´head with your bad selves, previous Student Teaching Experience Volunteers.

We then did a KWL sort of chart, with one side being what they already knew and another side being what they wanted to know. Which gave me a chance to take stock of some truly terrifying pronunciation issues, as when one innocent eight year old raised her hand to announce that she knew...

¨FOREPLAY!¨

Er, otra vez?

¨FOREPLAY!¨

I looked at her, completely unsure of how best to respond. Earlier that day, I´d been paging through the national newspaper, and discovered that the pull-out youth section did, in fact, have a cover story on erections (last week it had been periods, cuz they´re egalitarian that way). So it was entirely possible, I figured, but still...

A classmate saved me with the Spanish translation. Morada. Purple. Pronounced, if you´re gonna read it like a Spanish word and lisp a bit initially, foreplay. We went on through several colors, my equilibrium restored.

Then it came time for the ¨we WANT to know¨ part, which was pretty awesome. More colors, numbers up to 100, people in the family. A Hermione-like girl, whose hand had been shooting up constantly throughout all parts of the lesson, requested the names of all planets in the solar system and a unit on aquatic animals. Geometric figures. Plants. How to say ¨friend.¨

I`ve been using the print-out Teaching Extras from a really awesome site, www.kizclub.com , as a resource in developing lessons (Hermione will be delighted by the printouts on both Ocean Life and Solar System, but I think I´ll sneak her those after the more basic lessons). So far, the kids are loving it, and I´m pretty happy, too.

A Jugar

So, one of the things that I appreciate about travel is that it forces me to be open to new experiences. My typical Saturday night, for example, involves a nice cultured movie or a sedate organic dinner with friends. In Xela, however, the folks I´ve connected with were, understandably, having none of this. From the San Francisco nurse contingent to my New Yorker housemate to what I like to refer to as the Iowa Mafia (a large group of med students from the state university), all tongues were wagging about the upcoming soccer game.

We got there a bit early to get seats and take advantage of the two-for-one deal, which gave us plenty of time to scout out the snack options. On the ground floor below the stadium, several families were knocking out comida tipica on portable stoves--tortillas, scraps of meat, grilled green onions. Ambulatory venders worked the stands, hawking a fascinating variety of wares. Slices of Domino´s pizza in perfect triangular cardboard boxes set you back 10 quetzales, or a dollar forty-five. Hot dogs, donuts, and chips were on hand. My favorite was the burnt-sugar peanut vendor, who also had spicy fried fava beans in little plastic pouches for a quarter a pop. A few of us had the hot pineapple cider. Many more paid about 3 dollars for a clear plastic liter bucket of pale yellow beer.

The teams were pretty evenly matched, which I imagine would make the game much more exciting if you had any idea what the hell was going on, but for me simply indicated that the board didn´t change much. There was a lot of bumping and shoving on the field, with some very dramatic flopping on the ground and entreaties towards the referees. There were many rude names to call the opposite team but we didn´t know any of them.

Soccer is big in Guatemala, and the Xela fans were pretty rabid. Fireworks were going off all over the stands, dumping scraps of newspaper in their wake. Young men stood with their shirts off, yelling cheers. A band played the run-up to ¨charge!¨ (but nothing else) every few minutes. And a bat whizzed drunkenly around in the sky, attracted and confused by the stadium lighting.

Towards the end of the game, things on the field got brutal, with more yellow cards and a brief shoving match. At one point, the fans in one section began throwing garbage on the field, but they either made their point or gave up on it, because the foodfight only lasted a minute and then the game went on.

Final score was two to two, and we all poured out of the stadium. All in all, a pretty interesting night.

La cordialidad

Just a quick one. I´m in an Internet cafe in downtown Xela, and there is a very polite statement on available ¨extras¨for your online experience. Since the next thing I´m gonna do is a bit of Spanish homework, I might as well translate the little note, taped to the desk of every computer.

Welcome to Master Web! If you would like to upload music or videos, we will be adding 4 quetzales (55 cents) to your rent of the machine. If you desire to view porn, we will be most grateful for an additional 4 quetzales.¨

Un Poco de Turismo

Happy Friday! I´ve finished up my first week of classes, and feel pretty good about my ability to communicate, although all the puppy dog eyes in the world aren´t enough to convince my teacher I´m ready to tackle the subjunctive again. I miss Raul´s gentle, student-centered approach to instruction at the Abraham Lincoln Center in Cuenca, but have to admit that Oscar knows his stuff.

After morning classes today, a microbus-load of us went out for a bit of tourism. We visited Las Fuentes Georginas, a set of pools from a sulfur hot spring outside of town. After a bit of hiking and soaking and lunch, the bus took us on a winding country road to the pretty highland town of Zunil, to visit the local...um, lemme think how to describe this.

So, in many Latin American countries, large sculptures of various saints and biblical figures take a surprisingly and literally active role in the spiritual life of the community. 3 months ago, I was in Antigua for Holy Week, and almost everything revolved around the movement of several statues in procession through the town. My second summer in Ecuador, a statue of the Virgen of Carmen was making the rounds, and I remember bumping into it (and its swanky tour bus) in pretty much every large town I visited.

In Zunil, there´s a statue with a slightly different flavor. San Simon is a semi-pagan semi-Catholic juxtaposition of a Mayan deity, a Catholic saint, and...well, the statue kind of looks like Walker, Texas Ranger. His more common name is Maximon, an amalgamation of the Mayan god´s name, Maam, and Simon.

Every year, the fraternity of San Simon chooses a family to host the saint: the adults, if they were working, quit their jobs and everyone dedicates themselves to caring for the icon. The statue sits on a throne, dressed in cowboy gear with a hat, a bandanna, and a huge pair of black sunglasses. A cigar dangles from his wooden lips; he holds a bowl of money in his lap. I honestly don´t remember how the alcohol was hooked up to him, but he received several glasses of whiskey a day. Maximon, in case you´re wondering, is not the most sedate and ethereal of figures; legend has it that the Mayan diety Maam started out his career as a mortal man who had his arms and legs cut off after sleeping with every woman in his village. The Catholic church attempted to identify the bifurcated San Simon with Judas Iscariot, not Maam, and he´s widely known as the one you go to if you want a side of mala suerte for someone else to go with your own prayers for health and safekeeping.

It cost us each 8 quetzales to enter this year´s temple, which was, of course, in someone´s home. The room flickered with dozens of candles, and one of our teachers explained. Blue candles for health, red for love, white for purity, green for money and...um, yup, those black ones mean that the penitent was asking for death. ¨¿Puede ser metaforico?¨ I didn´t get an answer.

On offer that day for Maximon: a raw chicken, bottles of whisky, some vegetables and a handful of herbs. The man of the house fussed over the cigar in his mouth. A woman in Mayan skirts walked in and out of a side room, doing household chores, while an older man sat in the back and flipped through a newspaper. A farmer came in and approached the statue, addressing it aloud to request something I didn´t catch. He passed one red candle and one green one over the saint´s body and made an offering I didn´t see. Our teacher took us to the roof of the house to show us a Mayan altar, with three smoking piles of ash and debris. Eggshells, paper scraps, candle bits and bundled herbs, burnt by the community priests at the request of the faithful.

We thanked the hosts and left, walking a few blocks downhill to the Catholic church. It was, as they often are, a soaring and ornate building, carved with little birds and vines like a frosted wedding cake. Inside were the usual statuesque subjects--a stoic, pious Mary, Saint Joseph with a donkey, a handful of apostles and a flagellated Christ with the blood sculpted on. I dropped a few coins in the offering box and we headed back to Quetzaltenango.

Just in time, as it turned out, for another religious experience, as three of us found out about The Bakeshop. Two days a week, a group of American Mennonites open shop near the mall to sell whoopie pies, brownies, blueberry yogurt, and bags of granola.

Everybody´s got some kind of offering to give.

A Enseñar

Day 4 of my Spanish course, which doubles as the school´s pilot program for Special Teacher Cultural Exchange. The school I´ve chosen has a very well established Medical Spanish program, where participants work in a clinic during the morning and receive specialized Spanish and cultural competency lessons in the afternoon, and they´re taking a stab at founding a similar program for educators. Currently, this largely looks like my 1:1 tutor schlepping me across town to buy whiteboard markers during classtime, in order that I and another girl can start teaching 40 kids English starting next Tuesday, but the access it affords us to the Guatemalan education system is pretty priceless.

Yesterday, we went to Quetzaltenango´s only public special education school, which, for Project folks, is very much like a tiny version of Ambato´s center. Students range from 4 to, well, 46, because there´s bugger-all else to do with your grown disabled child in Guatemala. The government provides a nifty little textbook, but only to the actual school-aged schoolchildren, and it doesn´t typically show up till the last third of the year anyway. Regardless of the lack of resources, the school is a sweet and dynamic place, with a pretty impressive vocational program: older students grow tomatoes and peppers in a greenhouse, make wooden knick-knacks to sell, and learn to cook and sew.

This afternoon, a group of us headed to a small town outside Xela to the guarderia founded by the school: it´s an afterschool care center for about 50 local kids, the children of single parents. I asked my host family about the guarderia a couple days ago. Her response: ¨¿Has visto la pelicula ¨Kindergarten Cop?¨

Possibly due to the absence of a Governator, things were not quite that chaotic. It was nevertheless a bit of an adventure, as the 10 of us were turned loose with no instructions on the center. Homework help was much in demand, and I ended out with an adorable, small eight year old attempting to confront long division with remainders. During today´s Spanish for Teachers Official Briefing (essentially my tutor peppering two of us with statistics and lamenting the sorry state of Guatemalan education for 45 minutes) we learned that many public schools have classes of 45 to 50 kids and a teacher who never made it past high school, so it was not hard to understand how Graciela ended out exactly where she was, throwing various numbers against a wall to see what sticks with no understanding of what division actually signified. I backed her up from 347 divided by 38 into the story of six cookies for two kids and we gradually moved upwards. I fully predict that she´ll hide under the table if she sees me again, because I made her late for recess by insisting on comprehension instead of number spaghetti.

And, speaking of spaghetti, it´s time now for dinner: every Thursday, students cook a big dinner at the Spanish school. Suzy´s cooking has been nothing short of fabulous, but I saw carrots in the kitchen this afternoon and I´m positively drooling at the thought of Gringo Food.

La familia

Taking advantage of the afternoon recess of my Spanish studies to whack out a quick post about what is perhaps one of the most salient experiences of the immersion student: the homestay.

I´ve got a pretty good set up. My host mother is Suzy, a stout, fifty-something woman with a warm smile and impressive collection of costume jewelry. In her past life, she was a nurse, but now she supplements her meagre retirement with income generated by hosting gringos in her sprawling two-story house ten minutes away from the city center. Living with her,besides the students, are: her father,her daughter,her daughter´s daughter, and her other daughter. Her boyfriend visits often: according to another student living here, there was a husband, but he cheated on her, she gave him an ultimatim,and he selected what was behind Door Number 2. Her boyfriend is adorably attentive and he´s gonna fix my camera tomorrow, so all I can say is, you go head with your bad self, Suzy Cruz!


In La Casa de Suzy, English is forbidden, because she´s quite serious about making sure her ¨hijas¨ learn as much Spanish as possible. Sarah has only been here a week, but she already speaks as much as I learned in two years of university study, possibly because she made 300 flashcards in her first three days and is constantly shuffling them around. Christina came here two days ago, fleeing a much sketchier homestay involving a bucket for various hygenic purposes.

As homestays go, it´s pretty luxurious: I have my own room, with a lock on it, a shower with pretty decent aspirations towards hot water, and some pretty good home-cooking,three times a day. Suzy was,alas,not told to expect a vegetarian, but she does endearing things like fish the squash out of the meat sauce and serve it to me seperately, and since meat is really more garnish than main course in Guatemalan cuisine, I´ve gotten along very well.

¡Cuidado!

Tomorrow begins my Spanish study in earnest, but I´ve been able to pick up a few words in passing over the past four days. I seem to have a great deal of difficulty sticking new nouns firmly down into my brain enough that they hang on for more than a few minutes, especially when the word sounds enough like something I already know.

Friday was all about ¨resbaloso¨, slippery. We had a real gem of a guide in Semuc Champey and Lanquin, a diligent 18 year old who shepherded the 6 six of us through the series of rocky pools with infinite care and near-constant gentle warnings. The word was new to me, and my brain misfiled it on top of ¨venonoso¨, which caused a few little starts of disquiet every time I heard that the rocks were made of poison.

Resbaloso, venonoso, peligroso...I´m noticing a trend here, which is that every word I currently know which refers to something dangerous ends in, exactly, the Spanish word for ¨bear¨.