En la manana (morning)

Wednesday, Jan 26, 2011

It’s a little before 7am and I can hear Violeta up and getting things ready for us to have breakfast and probably for lunch as well. The smell of garlic is definitely in the air. Violeta works as a nurse, and it’s difficult for her to be here at lunch, so she prepares something for us and leaves it in the fridge for us to warm up. She is an excellent cook and we have had really good meals. I think she has had many students stay here and she has learned to cook things that will agree with their stomachs and offer a little variety beyond beans and tortillas.

Last night we met her daughter, Carolina and her two boys, Isaac and Jorge. What beautiful children. They are ages 2 and 5 and had an awful lot to say. At one point Isaac, the 2 year old, was trying very earnestly to tell me something and I couldn’t understand a word. I turned to Carolina and she listened, then laughed and told me she couldn’t understand either. Oscar, Carolina’s husband is quite the handyman and he was over on Sunday to make a few welding repairs to Violeta’s front door and the door to our bedroom. He was back last night to finish the job. Jeff let Jorge borrow his headlamp so he could help Oscar with his work, then he stood there visiting with Oscar and Jorge. It’s fun to watch them chat in Spanish about fixing things and other general guy stuff.

En la tarde (afternoon)

School is going well for me; although, it is very intense. Working one on one for 5 hours a day is extremely exhausting. At home, teachers often have so many students in a class, that the lessons invariably stall when one or two students don’t understand a concept. If you happen to already understand, you get a little break for your brain to rest as the teacher reviews the material. Not so here at the PLQ Language School. My teacher, Saul, is very good, but we cover a lot of territory in a day. He’s been teaching for 40 years and is very good at it. He has a great sense of humor and we tease each other and laugh a lot. As a matter of fact, we had the craziest conversation today about caca in the garden. I didn’t know the word for compost and didn’t take the time to look it up, so just used the word caca. He got this aghast look on his face and started giving me a hard time about how we eat caca in MN. We got laughing so hard that we were both gasping for air. Finally I looked up the word compost and he gave a huge sigh of relief. I figure the way we give each other grief is good practice so I can tease Jessica in Spanish when we return home.

Saul and I have been drilling the hell out of the verbs Ser and Estar. These are absolutely foundational to being fluent in Spanish, and I think it’s finally beginning to sink in, but I know I’m going to be making a lot more mistakes before I finally get it right. We do a lot of visiting about all sorts of things as we work on these verbs, and that gives me a chance to practice inserting them into the conversation. We added the verb Tener (“to have” – although, it’s a lot more complicated than just “to have”) yesterday. Today we added several more verbs and worked on those too.

Jeff is struggling a little more with his lessons. His teacher speaks no English, and of course, Jeff speaks very little Spanish, so they just have to muscle through things without the benefit of the teacher being able to explain the why where or how of things. He and I spend a bit of time each day reviewing his homework and I’ve tried to help explain why certain words are used the way they are, but I’m learning too, so I’m not always giving him good advice.. It’s quite frustrating for him. Really, he would like to learn they way I did the first time. Learn a bunch of nouns and some basic verbs and start saying everything in the first person singular. We both want to be able to have conversations in Spanish. Reading and writing it are secondary concerns. My experience is that folks who speak Spanish are incredibly forgiving when you mangle their language, and as long as you have the verb and noun right, they know what idea you’re trying to get across. We will both get new teachers next week, so maybe his next teacher will be a better fit.

The school offers lots of activities for the students, in both the morning and the afternoon so everyone has a chance to participate (morning classes meet from 8amto 1pm and afternoon classes meet from 2pm to 7pm. There are trips to the local hot springs, movies on a variety of topics, speakers who come in and discuss Guatemalan history or current events, etc. We are signed up for tomorrow’s trip to a factory where women make hand-woven textiles and on Friday we go to the town of San Francisco where there is apparently a market that is incredible. Violeta tells us that in San Francisco, the entire town is for sale. All the activities are good practice for us to use our Spanish and it’s a way to break up the tedium of sitting in a classroom all day. Our teachers come with us, so we are still learning, but it’s a more relaxed way of doing so.

Our classes meet, for the most part, at tables scattered around an open air courtyard. The weather has been beautiful, but a person gets a little chilled just sitting for 5 hours in 60 degree temps. By breaktime at 10:30, the sun has climbed high enough that it is poking above the walls of the school and heating a small patch of the courtyard. That becomes really valuable real estate on the break. You see a lot of people squeezing into that small space. It doesn’t take long before each person has a little pile of clothing next to them as the layers are peeled back one by one.

There is also a very tiny terrace above the kitchen that gets sun all day. Because it’s small and the construction of the building is perhaps not up to American standards, they ask us to limit the numbers to 5 at a time up there. At one point yesterday morning, Saul told me to grab my notepad and pen and follow him. We are going to heaven he said. I thought it was time for break, but we were going to the terrace. Wow. The instant you set foot up there, you are warm. Fabulous!

I am slowly getting to know the neighborhood. The sidewalks here are very narrow and uneven, so I spend most of my time looking at my feet, in fear of breaking a leg. It makes it hard to take in the surroundings at the same time. I have to stop if I want to look around. Jeff is better at walking and looking up than I am. If he slips off a curb, he manages to keep himself upright. I’m afraid that if I go, I’ll land on my face in the street and if a car doesn’t run me over, I’ll be grievously wounded in some other way.

Yesterday afternoon, we went shopping to pick up a few more clothes. There are lots of little stores all along the city streets selling used clothing for 5Q apiece. We’re talking garage sale pricing here… less than $1 for anything in the store. I got a lime green t-shirt and a brown corduroy shirt/jacket and Jeff picked up a long sleeved black shirt that looks nearly new. It’s great to have a few more options in the dressing departments.

And now I have been sitting on the terrace for several hours soaking up the sun and visiting with Lisa, another student here and just generally being lazy. It is time for me to tackle my tarea (homework). Adios.