Parte Uno...

I’ve been so MIA these past four days, but I just got Internet connection so it’s all good. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more often but I’m still trying to stay as off-the-grid as I possibly can. I haven’t posted since Saturday, and even that wasn’t so elaborate, and now it’s Wednesday, so I’m going to do my best to sum up the past three days as best I can without boring you guys to tears. J

Saturday we left Guatemala City and made our way to Panajachel (pronounced like “pana-ha-CHEL”), which is a few hours away (not sure in which direction though, I guess I could look it up). We drove 2 hours in little vans, and for the majority of the ride I stayed up to watch the scenery. Guatemala City is pretty commercialized, but every ad is in Spanish and they advertise either Tigo, which is one of the main phone companies, Claro, which is another main phone company (like AT&T and Verizon), Pepsi, and World Cup stuff or products endorsed by the World Cup. It’s very dirty and not too pretty, but I was fascinated anyway, everyone in the van was. We stopped in a place called Tecpan (“tek-PAN”), not for any particular purpose other than for food at this restaurant-ish thing. The place where we ate was a small room off to the left side, with a weird check-in place on the right, and down these paths looked like a colorful, abandoned Narnia. There was this playground with bizarre animal statues that you could climb on (and we did), different houses that looked kind of like ones you’d find in Victorian-era kids’ books, bottles filled with colored liquid hanging from under a bridge, empty alcohol bottles and flowers hanging from the roofs of little gazebos, sheep tied to ropes in random places, dogs in cages, and as if the place weren’t kind of eery enough, there were speakers playing Kansas songs without the words. But they had a swing so I was happy ;) and it was a cool place to take photos so I didn’t mind.

Lunch wasn’t really traditional Guatemalan food, but they did give us horchata, which is this drink made with rice, milk, and spices like cinnamon. It was kind of interesting, and took some getting used to (maybe because I’m not used to drinking rice). After we ate and talked at our tables for a bit, we had a few more minutes to hang out and take photos before we were onto the next place. I stole my friend Casey’s huge black Nikon and ran around taking stupid pictures (so many selfies), and when she went to take her camera back, she accidentally whacked me in the eye (because it was around my neck) and I guess the whole exchange was funny because one of the co-directors of the trip, Carla, and one of the van drivers started cracking up. This kind of stuff happens so often; I may as well have my own reality show.

It only took around 30 minutes to get to Iximche (“ee-SHEEM-chay”), which is a collection of Mayan ruins that the Maya actually still use today for different rituals and celebrations. It’s beautiful, and really vast. Which is what you’d expect, I guess, but for my first time visiting Mayan ruins, I was kind of caught off guard by how enormous the landscape was and how small I felt (and looked, in photos taken of me). Adriana, one of the students on my trip, who’s actually in her thirties and from Romania (grad students come too!), told me her mom used to read books about the Maya and other proto-American tribes, and was so struck by actually being there she got emotional.

On our way out, there was this little stall with a Mayan woman offering in Spanish to tell us what our spirit animals were, or something like that. I was surprised at how well I could understand her (and super proud of myself)—from what I got, I’m a monkey, born under the Aq-ab-al and a kindhearted, good-natured soul with powerful, calm energy. I don’t actually know what any of that means but I’ll take it. Other people got armadillo, turtle, bat, etc.  

We got to Panajachel not too long after we left, actually maybe an hour or so. To get to the city, we took this really long, windy road that I’m pretty sure was down a mountain, and when you got past how fast we were going and how many twists we were navigating, you could actually enjoy the view behind the trees, which was Lake Atitlan and the volcanoes, whose names I don’t know yet, and they’re so massive they shoot up into the clouds and it looks like you’re staring at two twin Kilimanjaros, without the snow caps. I took a few shitty pictures, and even after I edit them, they don’t really show you how…3D everything looked. The lake seems really far down and far away and the volcanoes look like subtly striking shadows, but when you’re driving past it with minor interruptions by little wooden stalls of natives selling their homemade trinkets, it’s memorable. It’s even better when you take Dramamine for your motion sickness (soooo grateful I’m not plagued by that).

Once we got to the hotel, which is nestled into the different shops and is surprisingly hard to point out when you’re walking around (speaking from personal experience), we dropped off our stuff and went to walk through the little market that’s not really so little. I wasn’t planning on buying anything, but I wanted to see everything anyway. We walked down really far and ended up finding a little alcove with a balcony leading out onto the lake with the volcanoes right in front of you—one of the best parts of the day. We took a few photos and wandered back around to the hotel, stopping for ice cream (mine was basically a banana on a stick but UGH SO WORTH IT) and looking in the stalls (I liked the art best, a lot of the stuff looks the same already).

Dinner was uneventful and after that we had another orientation, this time with just the anthropology trip people, so it was more relevant. We all sat in a square, with Tim, Carla, and Charlie (the program directors/leaders, if I haven’t said that before) at the front of the room. Carla went over some of the logistics, and gave the papers to Tim so he could give us the sex talk. And yeah, it was significantly more uncomfortable than you’re thinking. Tim’s not young, which is fine, but he was SO graphic and ended his little shpiel with “so whatever you’re thinking, don’t, ‘cause you can’t hide from me. I’m gonna know, whether you want me to or not. And it can be weird or not.” …Yeah, whatever. As he’s digging his hole deeper, Carla is sitting there laughing and shaking her head whenever he says something weird and Charlie, who’s new at this, is biting her lip to keep from cracking up. I guess it’s going to be an entertaining seven weeks, in the very least…

Sunday I met my host family, which ranks as one of the most awkward and anxious days of my life. The family speaks mainly Kaqchikel, one of the Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala, which is fine except their Kaqchikel accent is so thick, I can’t understand their Spanish. I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting an accent, or just didn’t think about not being able to understand them, but my first meal was something I’m not eager to relive. It may have been just my appearance or my paranoia, but I could feel their eyes on me the entire time I was eating, and I HATE when people watch me eat. HATE IT. And because it’s the rainy season, it rains almost every afternoon, so it was already pretty gloomy. My host mom told me she and a family were going into the neighboring town for the market, and were gone for several hours, so I was alone for like four hours in a new village where I stood out like a seriously sore thumb. Even though I managed to occupy myself with a book and my music, it was torture. It felt like someone cut my tongue out of my mouth, threw it into the bushes, told me to go look for it, and walked away. Even when I could understand what someone was telling me, I was too nervous to say something that made sense. Forget culture shock—I think I was shell-shocked.

Carla called me that night and asked how I was settling in, because we talked before about Concepcion and what my family was like, and I told her that I was okay but really nervous. She told me that it was normal and natural, but that made me feel worse somehow and after we talked for like 20 minutes, I was up for the next two hours trying to calm myself down. The next morning was okay, but once I met up with my friends in Solola to go to class in Pana together, and they started talking about how amazing and welcoming and accommodating their families were, I could feel my eyes welling up. I wasn’t jealous, just frustrated, honestly. I knew my situation would get better, but I was impatient and a little disappointed. And anxious, oh my god. Once we got to class and we went over the syllabus, expectations, I was so overwhelmed I felt like throwing up, so I did (not in front of everyone, obviously). Honestly, just thinking about all the assignments I’d have to do in my community combined with my inability to understand the people I was staying with, who were supposed to be the most patient with me, made me feel faint.

Whatever, I got myself together and went back out with the group and it was fine. We were hanging out a bit before lunch and I felt okay, and then we had to actually eat and I couldn’t do it. I stayed at the table with everyone, got up and threw up again halfway through, washed my face and went back to the table. After everyone ate, we were supposed to go on a little tour of the nature reserve where we had class, and my friend Kristen kept pushing me to tell someone and get it out (I mean I have zero poker face so it wouldn’t have been long before I lost it anyway). I pulled Charlie to the side and started talking, Carla joined in after a minute, and I genuinely don’t remember what I even said because I was talking so fast—word vomit I guess (first Mean Girls reference out of the way woooo). I felt semi-less stupid after I got a lot of my thoughts out, but I hate crying in front of people. We didn’t finish talking, and the group separated for a bit as we were walking out of the nature reserve to catch buses back or to hang out in Pana, but Carla and I ended up in the same cluster of people, so after everyone went their separate ways, we talked more in this coffee shop right across the street. She told me about how difficult her fieldwork was and that fieldwork in general is really taxing (physically and emotionally), that part of the point of the program is to get us acquainted with ethnography and to support us in the process. We talked for like an hour, and I felt like whatever I was drowning in was sucked through the drain and I could dry myself without a towel. I found my friends and we caught a bus back to Solola (they’re called chicken buses, and if you’ve ever played chicken in the pool, you can figure out why people get so motion-sick on public transportation) and I made my way back to Concepcion. My stress was replaced with some confidence, and though my battery wasn’t fully replenished, I had enough to function. Even when I got lost coming back to my homestay (didn’t take long). Sometimes I forget how new things are to me.

So, the moral of this post and those couple days? Seeing new places and faces creates the most amazing feeling, there’s a difference between sucking it up and throwing it up. I’m fully capable of making the most of my experience and dealing with the difficulties and complications of what I’m doing, but I’m also nineteen and I’ve never been dropped off in a village in a foreign country where everybody speaks a different language and conforms to a different culture. I’m totally fine with falling on my ass, and I welcome it, but it means an incredible amount to have someone help you to your feet. I should try to remember that…

xxxx