Word of Mouth

My lovely co-worker and sometimes roommate, Mari, loves chocolate just as much as I do, but it’s not easy to find here. There’s Hershey’s, of course, and Toblerone and Reese’s and other sugary concoctions masquerading as cacao… but the real stuff, rich and dark and slightly bitter isn’t easy to come by.

Or at least, it wasn’t.

But yesterday afternoon, Mari and I were chatting at Oxford after work, and she shared some fabulous new chocolates she discovered in a little place called Kaffee Fernando’s. It was slightly pricy, but so yummy that I just had to go see the place for myself.

So this afternoon after work, another co-worker, Erin, and I joined up for the weekly market trip- but first we dropped by Fernando’s! It’s this adorable little shop down a random little alley near the Merced church; I swear I never would have found it if Mari hadn’t clued me in.

Erin and I each bought two bars. My two, lavender and lime & basil, are both unexpected, unusual flavors, but utterly delightful!

Afterwards, Erin and I went to market together. It’s always a treat to have someone to shop with! The market is like a little city in and of itself. It’s still vaguely grid shaped, just like the rest of Antigua, but the variety of things inside is random and astounding. We went in to where Erin normally goes veggie shopping, which was on the opposite side of where I usually go, but I might like it there better. It seems like every time I go shopping I get lost, and today was no exception, but it was so much more fun getting lost with someone!

Erin has only been in Guate for four months or so, but she spent three years prior teaching in South Korea. Since that’s where I want to go next to teach, I was peppering her with questions; but she loves the country and misses it, so I think she liked being able to reminisce and offer advice. She still has access to a network of people teaching there, which I’m hoping to tap into to find a school.

We split us soon after the market. Erin lives on the north side of town and I on the south; and with a brisk wind corralling grey clouds heavy with rain, we weren’t inclined to linger.

Tomorrow, I’m going to spend my free day exploring another out of the way place a friend told me about: El Pilar. It’s a park of sorts with hiking trails and three outdoor, natural swimming pools. As much as I adore living in the mountains, I desperately miss being on the water. My recent trip to Lake Atitlan was refreshing, but unfortunately it was a little too chilly to swim, and I've been dying to feel the rush of water over my skin. If tomorrow is anything like the rest of this week, the morning and early afternoon with be bright and clear and full of sunshiny goodness before collapsing into a cool afternoon rain. Eep! I can’t wait.

In other news, I leave the country on a visa run in just under two weeks! It'll be my first time visiting Belize, and my first time traveling somewhere solo! As much as I love being with friends on the road, a the prospect of week of adventure all on my own is rather thrilling.  

Cheers!

cotton or china or China?

Evidently, the appropriate second year anniversary gift idea for a husband and wife (according to the modern list, the traditional sticks to cotton) is china.... so whenever and if ever I get married, the man and I are definitely taking an extended trip to celebrate the end of year two.

Because china is china is China, right?

a Grey Lady

It's no secret that I teach because of my kids.

This evening, I told a friend that they were the light in my life, and even on the days when they're infuriating; when they won't stop trying to kick each other or are too busy watching life beyond the window to be bothered with what's happening within the classroom, even then, just being with them helps me to remember who I am and I why I teach.

The past week has been tough. Guatemala is life now, so much more than an extended vacation, and life always carries highs and lows in her suitcase, dolling them out like sweets to street children, a ready combination of the honeyed and the bitter.

Sadness rolled in this year with the rains. Normally, from May through October, the rains come only during late afternoon or evening, with mornings and middays gloriously calm, cool, and clear, and for this, the rains mark my favorite time to be in Guate. But the change didn't go smoothly this year, and for almost a week we had grey skies and a constant, cold rain that hung heavy in the mornings. Up in El Hato, where the paved road ends as soon as it arrives, it meant mud tracked into cold classrooms, thick fog lying like a wet blanket along the mountains, and sickly children ill inclined to pay attention. Coupled with an emotional falling out of sorts between me and a friend back home, and a tiff between the preschool teachers that I'm trying my hardest to stay out of... well, it's been an interesting week.

I've felt out of sorts as a teacher, which is strange, because teaching is usually what helps me escape any melancholy that creeps in because of homesickness or adult drama. The kids are a constant in my life, which is a funny thing to say about these little people who keep my days in a constant flux. But for some reason, a light tap on my shoulder from a lady in grey turned my head, and suddenly the school up the mountain was no longer my safe haven.

But after school today, a few second grades came into the English classroom and started messing around- starting a puzzle with me, bugging a volunteer to see his phone, pretending a stack of stools was a car.... and they were all so full of a joy and movement that I hope to never forget.

Today, I wasn't the best teacher that I am capable of being, but that doesn't mean that tomorrow I can't be. Today, the Gray Lady was a faithful shadow, but that doesn't mean she must also accompany me tomorrow. This morning, I let sadness win, and the hurts in life overcame her beauty, but tomorrow I will remember the lessons of this afternoon. Because the thing about children is they overlook so, so much, and with them, the tomorrows are always fresh ones. And if tomorrow I still don't feel strong, it's no matter; because they don't ask me for my strength, but for my patience and love, for understanding and energy. And in return, they make each day I spend with them astoundingly bright.

It's true that life is hard. But it is also incredibly sweet.

Let's go be dragon riders

I don't want to talk. I want to shave twelve years from my life and curl into my mother's lap. I want to sprout wings and fly to high, broken crags where the world is cold and the view unbroken. I want to grow sharp claws and dig them into the flesh of chestnut trees and climb in search of robin's eggs. I want to learn the secrets whispered in the trenches of war and sing with the whales and shine with the fireflies on a dusky autumn evening.  

I've Moved!

More on the lovely little room that I now call mine will come later, but, for now, I'm really excited because the mattress in this room (unlike the last) is so well padded that I cannot feel the metal springs through it. What a luxury!

I've yet to unpack, (that will be a weekend project!) but I found a nail already in the wall to hang my clay angel, my bed is all made up and looks quite inviting, and this whole house feels imbibed with peace, which I realize is something I never truly felt in the last place, and I am perfectly content. All afternoon, the sound of children's laughter floated in through my open window; I love this neighborhood already!

Sweet night

Some Things Are Universal

My quest to find hangers led me today to a little store that sells plastic goods off of Santa Lucia Dr; a place I was told about last year but only just found. It's a hodge podge of random items, and it's fantastic! The daughter of the shop helped me as I muddled through with a series of pantomimes and spanish descriptions (hanger isn't exactly top of any vocab lists in spanish classes), and as she led me to the cash register where her mother was working, I asked her the word in Spanish.





Me: Como se dice este?
Her: Percha.
Me: Percha!!
Her: with a strange look because I was maybe a bit to excited about that Si. Es dieciséis cincuenta.
Mother: in Spanish Say it in English!
Her: she got flustered and awkward all of a sudden, insisting she couldn't, and finally decided on: uno seis punto cinco cero (with a laugh)
Mother: Sixteen! 
Her: with an 'oh right!' expression Sixteen 
Mother: in Spanish This is what I'm sending you to high school for?

I left the shop then, and couldn't stop laughing, mostly because I'm pretty sure I've had countless of these types of exchanges with my mother as well . . . and she didn't have to pay for my high school like most do in Antigua!

And now I can finally hang up my clothing! I feel so victorious, haha!

In other news, two of my best friends arrive in two days to spend their Spring Break with me!!

I'M SO EXCITED I CAN HARDLY BREATH!!

So this happened....

Drew and Bri, the owners of Earth Lodge, and their two children, Benjamin (2) and baby Lyla. 

So, today, Bri's bank locked her out for some reason, leaving her short on payroll for their Guatemalan employees. She came up to the bar in the morning, while I was working the opening shift and chatting with Emma, and asked if staff members would loan her money, in 100Q increments (worth about 12USD)... and she was joking about how unprofessional a request it was and how annoying the banks down here can be, and promised that we'd get paid back the next day.

Drew comes up to the bar after Bri, and goes "hey, if any of you staff have any 100s lying around, fork them over", and Bri interjects, "no Drew, it's ok, I already told them".

But Drew replies "No, this is separate from Bri, this is for me"

Bri: Too bad, I got there first, and momma always gets the money. Even Benjamin knows that...

Drew: I need it to buy cocaine and strippers.

Then, Drew tells Emma and I that this will be a test of our loyalty (to either him or Bri), and reiterates that he'll be going for cocaine, and strippers- and pizza.

Me: No, I'll loan you money for cocaine and strippers, but not for pizza.

Emma: She's lactose intolerant. . .

Drew: I'll buy you cheese-less pizza!!

Bri's not really paying us any attention- she's a little distracted- and muses that if she's not able to borrow enough from us, she'll have to send Drew into town to deal with the bank.

Drew: I already have to go into town anyway for the cocaine and strippers.

Me: Don't have them in El Hato?

Drew, completely deadpan, replies: They do, but they're not very good. The cocaine has been stepped on; and the hookers have been too.

At this point, I started laughing so hard I could no longer take part in the conversation. . .

It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

I am quite literally writing this by candlelight! I feel like Abraham Lincoln! The power has gone out, following at least a day of heavy winds. I spent last night in Antigua, and only noticed that the wind was slightly gustier than normal, especially in the open spaces of Central Park, but evidently it was so strong up on the mountain that staff and guests had trouble sleeping!

This morning was my last day of proper teaching at Máximo, next week, I'll just go in for two days to give the quizzes and then go over the answers. I cannot believe how quickly the week went! I’ve so missed being a teacher, and I fear this week substituting was just a quick fix that will leave me hungry for more!

Today was chock full of odd events…. After the 7am High Basic class, one of the students- a sharp, talkative woman, the oldest in the class, hesitated before leaving and wanted to ask me a question…. which turned out to be the typically Guatemalan query of if I have a boyfriend or not. I blushed (stay tuned! This wasn’t an isolated reaction!) and told her no. Turns out, she has a son who works for a zip-line tour company close to where I live, and she has been telling him about her ‘new teacher’. I wasn't quite sure what the proper reaction would be to that one, but we laughed about it, and here's hoping he doesn't decide to walk her to class next week!

My age and relationship status have never been questioned more than in my few months here, even complete strangers who come in to the bar for lunch will ask me! and the chicas who work in the kitchen are constantly telling me that I need a "novio", and that they’re going to find me a nice Guatemalan man. I’ve never experienced a culture so eager to fix people up, or so open and warmly affectionate in public once they’re together; it’s truly taken some getting used to!

Side note, did you know that “it’s” can mean “it has” along with “it is”? That came up in one of the English classes this week, and completely blew my mind! It’s crazy how little I consciously thought about my native language before I began teaching!

Anywho, I ran a few errands, checked the quiz packets for completeness, and then headed to Central Park to meet up with Enio. For some reason, stretched out along the length of the Park, there was this awesome street food fair, full of vendors selling a wide variety of traditional fare, and I wandered through it and listened to some live marimba music! I'd never heard marimba before coming here, but every once in a while, a marimba band will set up in the Park, or along the famous arch street to play, and it's absolutely lovely! Enio told me today that in uni he was president of the marimba club, so now I'm conspiring to somehow get him to play a part of a song on one for me! 

Lunch, for me, was chiles rellenos and sugared figs- and I got to try ponche for the first time! Ponche is a hot fruit drink that is only served during Christmastime, and I am completely enamored by it! 

But while we were walking through the tight, crowded aisles between vendors for the second time, I got separated from the others by a family. The mother turned to me, and asked, in Spanish, to take a photo. At first I thought she wanted me to take a photo for her, but no... she wanted one of me and her ten year old son... Now, Emma has told me that this used to happen to her all the time when she worked in Korea, but here in Antigua, it's not like there's a dearth of foreigners. In fact, it'd be quite easy to stay for an extended period of time in Antigua and never speak a word of Spanish- there are that many expats and foreigners around; and my light skin and eyes really aren't anything unusual. But I told her she could, and we halted in the middle of the bustling crowd for a picture. It was random and slightly uncomfortable, and Enio teased me later that my face turned bright red, because I wear all my feelings on my sleeves... 

After lunch, Enio told me to take him to my favorite place in Antigua, and then he would take me to his, which is an impossible task, because I am incapable of having only one favorite. 

So I took him to a favorite place, a spot that my college pastor Vance brought a few of us to when I was in Antigua in May of 2011: the ruins of the Catholic Church that lies along the east end of Central Park. Most of the unfinished building was destroyed by an earthquake, so only a tiny portion is open for religious ceremonies, but the expansive ruins behind the functioning church are absolutely gorgeous.  

I have been here several times; by myself, with my roommate, with my friend Cassie when she visited me over summer break. . . something about this place keeps calling me back. . . .

And, of course, every time I visit, I have to find something to climb on. . . . 

Which is probably frowned upon. . . .

Enio's favorite is the first University ever built in Guatemala, but we didn't have time to explore it fully, as I had to get back up to Earth Lodge to work the night shift. But it looked absolutely lovely as well, and I can't wait to go back!!

I left Enio listening to marimba in the park, and grabbed a shuttle back up the mountain, along with Kerri and Lewis, a young couple from England who were working at Earth Lodge when I arrived in July and are now teaching in the Yucatan. We've missed them so much, and it was so perfect to see them again and to have them back for Christmas!

Our Tree has been up for a few weeks now, but this evening, we started playing Christmas music for the first time this season, and with Kerri and Lewis finally with us, it's actually starting to feel like Christmas!

Oh! And my last piece of good news is that today, an El Salvadorian guy who works as manager for a hostel I've gone to several times now in Antigua has asked me to tutor him in English! It seems he needs to be able to speak English better to keep working in tourism and hospitality- and he's willing to wait until February when I get back from my vacation to the States! I'm excited, because it's proving to me that I'll be able to teach adults as well as children next year- which is the best of both worlds, and will help me make ends meet next year- in a way that I love! I'm pretty sure I would do private tutoring for free just for the fun of it, and getting paid to do so? A dream come true! 

Night!

Tortillas with Fingers

 Marisol, the youngest of the Guatemalan girls who works at Earth Lodge, and an absolute sweetheart. 

Everyday, the chicas who work in the kitchen at Earth Lodge make themselves lunch; and it is always something more traditional than the menu items we offer: lots of rice and pasta and things cooked in eggs. This afternoon, they were making tortillas, and I wish I had a video of the process, because they make it look so incredibly easy! 

They pull a clump of dough- basically corn and water- roll it into a ball, and clap it between their hands until it forms a perfect circle a few cm thick.

I was on shift, but there were no guests around the bar and all my jobs were finished, so I joined them in the kitchen to try my hand... and let me assure you it's not nearly as easy as they make it seem. Mine took ages to craft, the dough sticking to my hands and refusing to shape itself the way theirs would. The girls were laughing so hard at my attempts, teasing me that my tortillas (I managed to make two in the time they made five or six) needed to visit the doctor and had 'fingers' rather than being circles. 

Can you guess which two are mine? (Top left, and second from the top right.)

I got to eat mine with guacamole though, and though they look weird, they tasted just fine!!

Catalina, the matriarch of the kitchen, has taught me how to prepare two other Guatemalan dishes, which were much easier to pick up- including one with guicoy and eggs that's to die for!  

 And you know what else is to die for?

This view. 

It still gets me, every time. 

the Journey

There is a sweet sort of purposefulness that accompanies being a teacher- especially of students who are eager to learn, full of questions and yearning to better speak a language. Last month, I took a TEFL certification course at Maximo Nivel, an indescribably phenomenal language school nestled in the heart of Antigua. Becoming certified was a condition of getting my job back for next school year, but also was something I desperately wanted for myself once I realized that teaching is it for me, the passion I looked for all through university when I felt so purposeless, such an aimless drifter.

I adore academia, I always have, and uni was a joy. I had some incredible classes taught by brilliant minds, but I always felt the lack of something concrete in my life to be especially or overly excited about. I love to learn for learning’s sake, but I was always surrounded, it seemed, by people who either had an end goal or had already found their passion. In my church community especially, the idea of having a passion and doing something with it was lifted up often… but I avoided the question. I’ve always been full of these nebulous loves, of reading, writing and music, of performance and depth, of travel and working with my hands, but a passion? It didn’t seem to exist for me the way it did for my friends. I had advisors urging me to pick a career and then find the specific classes I would need to get there, but that seemed so stifling and prescriptive. I don’t want to go through life meeting requirements for something that might come next. So I stopped meeting with advisors, and started taking every class that caught my eye, regardless of their ‘relevance’ to some sort of future career, resting in the hope that by doing what I loved, I would be forging a path towards something else that I loved as well. There’s a cliché that I believe in unreservedly: that the journey always tops the destination; but it seems the idea doesn’t hold much merit when going to school and getting good grades supposedly prepares you for a career where you rise in the ranks until you retire (if you’re lucky). And all the while trying to nurture a family, friendships, community, hobbies…. There just has to be another way! Plans are important, of course, I won’t refute that, wise choices must be made now to prepare for what will come… but the future is coming either way. It strikes me as foolish to spend so much time getting ready for what comes next that we miss the current season.

Leaving academia behind was absolutely terrifying; I always thought I’d press on to my PhD or a law degree, but graduation came and went, and somewhere along the way, I lost all desire to apply to grad school. Instead, two months of uncertainty and directionlessness later, I was on a plane to Guatemala, on my way to a job I was under qualified for, but brimming with excitement! And in coming here, somewhere between the insanity of being presented with crowded classrooms, very dear but high energy children, a nebulous idea of lesson plans, and not enough training- and the busy tranquility of working in a hotel far removed from the cares of the world, I found my passion, and my niche. I absolutely adore teaching. I could ramble on about it for hours, and the satisfaction and joy that working with these children has brought me cannot be overstated.

Is it too dramatic to say that working here, learning to teach, earning the affection and respect of my students, has helped me feel alive again?

I am a generally peaceful and placid person. One of the reasons my boss (a phenomenal women with big dreams and the drive to make them happen) hired me back for next year is that I remain unflustered in the face of even the wildest classroom conditions (and rest assured, my second grade boys may very well have invented wildness). I have a long fuse, and though my anger, when provoked, can be powerful, it’s a rare occurrence. But the flip side of this is that I have a tendency to hold a grudge, and when I leave problems alone rather than address them and rock the boat, my anger simmers beneath the surface like a pot constantly about to boil over. I spent so much of my senior year in this state that it started to feel normal.

But here, I am being stripped, both of the anger and the many causes behind it, so that little by little, the heat is being turned down. It all began when I met a mission trip group three or four months ago, and a woman on it prayed over me and told me that God would be bringing redemption to something broken in my life…. which He did not too long after. Slowly, little by little, piece by piece, and in ways that could only have been crafted by my Daddy, harsh and harmful influences have been culled from my life, the painful shards painstakingly removed. This morning, I realized I wasn’t angry anymore, the absence feeling almost as unsettling as the knowledge of how long I lived that way.

Happier things to follow, I promise, but this new start, these steps into life as a ‘grown-up’ still feel new, a page in a book half turned because I wasn’t fully prepared for the content to follow. Tomorrow may bring troubles of her own, but I feel finally able to turn my back on past pitfalls. It may have taken a year of dramatic ups and downs, but the process was worth it, for my heart is stronger, and my spirit is light.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

The Prophet, Kahil Gibran