La Semana Hasta Miercoles

I feel like I’ve been pretty busy so far this week, but I can’t remember doing anything. I haven’t had a chance to get online since Sunday, so not much in the way of updates. Right now it’s Wednesday night, and I’m writing this in a document to post later when I can wrangle some internet. I might have to put it on a zip drive and go to the internet café. We’ll see what happens.

Saturday: Hugh and I got up and made a big breakfast. I made the world’s most perfect hashbrowns that have ever existed. And some so-so eggs. Then we went out to towards the parque to see what there was to do. Hugh especially wanted to go to the English-language bookstore because he was out of sleazy thrillers to read. I guess everyone needs a break from cultural ethnomorphagraphy. Hugh is the type of person that when he needs to choose something, he does it carefully, and he weighs it out long and hard before anything of importance happens. So we were in the bookstore for a good long while. In case you’re curious, I bought The Flounder, by Gunthar Grass, which I am enjoying very much, probably because it’s one of the weirdest plots I’ve ever tried to follow, and another very odd looking book, a fiction about Halley’s Comet. On the back there is a quote from Tom Robbins saying “Wow! This book would melt the top ice off a bucket full of stars!” I decided to go with my gut and trust Tom. Hugh got the Phantom of the Opera, and something terrible about 50’s style gangster sleuths in Old Time California. Or something. After that we came home. Hugh spent up all his energy with decision making. I went out by myself and got some produce (3 plantains and a pound of tiny native pears for 10Q, pound and a half of tomatoes and a red pepper for Q7.5 [that 8 year old that was keeping shop was a hard bargainer, she totally ripped me.]) and I went up to the second story of the market because I was looking for a skirt. All that packing and I didn’t bring anything nice to feel pretty in! One pair of sneakers, flip flops that I don’t wear outside the house, 4 pairs of pants, 4 or 5 tee-shirts, 3 long sleeve shirts, and various types of accoutrements for cold weather. Really, with all the traveling I do and dust I breath, that’s hardly enough clothes to successfully get me through a week before I need to pay for laundry. I try to wait 2. The whole ground floor of the market is temporary stands full of cheap crap and food, the second floor is more empty, more calm, and permanent shops mostly of the touristy persuasion. Lots of scarves and weavings and carvings that say “Remember Guatemala” in Spanish. I got what I thought was a wrap skirt, got home, and it ended up being wrap style pants. A little odd, but very comfortable. I’ll have to take a picture later. It’s winding into the rainy season now, so I actually doubt I’ll get a chance to wear them.

The rainy season here is the real deal. It’s not what I thought it would be. I imagined what you read about with rainforests.. Every day in the afternoon there’s a big crazy deluge, with perfect unclouded sun and warmth before and after. No. It’s more like there’s wet haze all morning, in the afternoon it starts raining around 1, and then it doesn’t stop until 8, if it does even then. It’s moderate from June to August, with what I can only describe as an unreasonable and unexplainable 15 day dry spell mid Augest, and then from the end of August to November, it’s rain all day every day. No haze in the morning, just rain. The air never dries out, your wet towel stays that way for a month. Your clean laundry in the closet is cold and damp when you put it on. Oi. I’m a little concerned about it.

Sooooo, I have come to decide that the one pair of shoes that I have here that I am willing to wear outside the house, some $20 sneakers that I bought for the sole reason that they were exactly the same color as the dust I remembered from Espunpuja, are just not going to cut it. One, once they’re wet, they might never be dry again, and they’re only cloth, cheap cloth at that. Two, once those dirt roads in Xeavaj and Espunpuja get wet, well, they’re more slip n slides than roads after that. So I have a distinct feeling that my classes will commence in those places only after I complete a mud hike to get there in the first place. I’m on the hunt for hiking boots.

Sunday when I wake up, the one thing on my mind is boots and I can’t sit until my need is satisfied. We went up to the park at around 9:30, so I could see the church procession. It’s a full out formal affair, I had no idea. First a well dressed crowd assembles around the mouth of the church courtyard, then you start seeing musicians dressed in tuxes and beautiful latin banners with silver embroidery, and they start filing onto the street, parade style. And then, from behind the tall walls, comes 12 men carrying a platform, pall-bearer style, with the gilded throne of Jesus, complete with velvet, flowers, the heavenly corona chased from sheet thin gold, the works. There’s also two people carrying a life size angel that reminds me of a doll. When the puppet-masters stop sharply, her joints move as if she’s walking. It’s kind of creepy. The procession starts when the 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, and a couple 10 year old drummers start their processional, and the whole thing goes ever so slowly, all the way around the park. The whole thing. Every single Sunday. Apparently there are also other types of platforms that the men carry. Hugh saw this two weeks ago, only instead of Jesus on the throne, it was some sort of silver knight! After we watched that for a while (I’ll have pictures of it up soon) we went to the Maya Café for desayuno (breakfast) and had some good eggs and black beans, tortillas, plantains.. it was good stuff. With that in our bellies we headed off to Democracia to look for my boots. I heard there was a mall there called Paiz, and I figured that would be a better bet than one of those creepy dudes in the street to try to buy some quality boots at. It’s about a 20 minute walk, and we had to pass through the open air market, which is massive and impossibly crowded. I get kind of worried in places like that. It’s easy to get distracted and lose, or “lose” important, and expensive, items… such as money… and cameras… so we tried to get out of there. I went to every shoe store in Pais, practicing my very best Espanol: (Yo busco las botas… para caminar en las montanas.. Tienes?) I understand if you’re a salesperson, or a Spanish speaker in general, you have to work really hard to understand what I’m trying to get at. I think sometimes they told me no just so they wouldn’t have to deal with me. So no boots in Democracia. I even tried to look in the market stores there, the ones that are actually in buildings, but I got really creaped out. My comfort zone is not bartering in Spanish, and usually they’re not much interested in having me understand everything they’re saying or doing anyway, it’s easier to just give me a number and not let me leave. On the way back to Xela, about 3 blocks from the Parque, on the other side as our house, we passed a very reasonable and safe looking shoe store where I saw many boots through the windows. I wandered in, and a very helpful and easy to understand woman showed me what they had, understood what I was looking for, and by god, I found me some boots. And she even took 50Q off the price when I told her I needed to go home to get more money. I need to work on this bargaining thing. Anyway, mis botas are wonderful, though they desperately need to be broken in. They’re heavy and leather and very comfortable despite being stiff, and they were probably about half here of what they would be in the U.S. Hoo-rah.

Monday we went grocery shopping and went to school. Not a whole lot to speak of. I still dread Rosario as if her name were Mrs Clemmer and she was teaching sixth grade world geography…

Monday night I had a nightmare that I was shot 3 (or 6?) times in the stomach, and had to find someone to drive me to a tienda here so I could buy minutes for my cellphone, because I knew I was dying and I wanted to talk to Hugh one last time.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a nightmare.

Tuesday Hilda and I went to Cantel, and Hugh stayed around here. It’s my last class there before we get silver and start going at this jewelry thing for real, so I threw my last techniques at them, inspected all their work extra carefully, and had them make the exact replica of the most complicated earring, substituting crap for silver wire. That day, Hilda said she was caught up on work, so she sat in and I taught her quickly too. I guess she’s been watching everyone else for a long time, cause she just picked it up and did it right away. If only everyone were as good with their hands as my boss and my driver! She’s also a rampant perfectionist apparently, too. She didn’t make any that she thought were good enough, though they were completely perfect. Olga and Dilma, of course, are always flawless and bashfully modest, and Juana, oh Juana, she tries so hard. She’s so much better, but she’s still not consistent. I’m finally better at communicating, and being less intimidating, and being more friendly and open minded and complimentary, so she’s being more respectful and open minded of me and my teaching style too. After class, once again, I hardly have time between getting off the bus and school to eat lunch, much less do homework. 5 long hours of rosario. This time she tried to give me all her ideas for “Liiiiiinda!” jewelry that I should design. Things that she tried to convince me no one’s ever thought of before, and insisted that I should invite her to the US so she could design a line of jewelry for AlterNatives… I wanted to stab myself in the eye with my pencil. I want to learn Spanish! Not watch you draw zigzags for 3 hours! Spanish!

This morning, Wednesday, my class is here in Xela. I really didn’t have anything left for them to do. I get my materials tomorrow when we pick up Lupe (which should be pretty exciting) and they’re learned everything I’ve got, so I gave them all the different kinds of beads I had and told them to play. I think they might have been kind of bored. I know it’s kind of a waste of their time. But I can’t cancel a class, they need regular practice with their hands to be able to remember fine movements, so I know it was to their benefit to be here even though it was pointless. They didn’t complain or anything, but they weren’t all that excited either. I ended class probably an hour early, and afterwards there was all kinds of action going on in the house, trying to get ready for Lupe’s arrival. Apparently Lupe is bringing a guy named Vladimir with her, someone who went on the week long vcu trip this year and is returning, though I don’t know what for. The plan is that me and Sylvia (the director of the sewing project here in the house) are going to leave here at 4:00 am to drive up to Guatemala City to retrieve Lupe. We’re going in the truck, and this guy Marvin, who I remember from my first trip here a year ago, is going to drive us. So Marvin is staying here tonight, and tomorrow night we’ll have him, Lupe, and Vladimir too. It turned out that the best thing for us to do is to rearrange room situations so that Lupe stays in the room I’ve been in, Vlad and Marvin are in the room next to my old one, and I get a new bedroom. My new room is a manse. It’s huge. It’s for 4 or more people usually, I guess for if AMA has a lot of renters or a lot of volunteers. It even has it’s own attached bathroom, though the sink only turns on and off by the valve at the base of the wall, and the shower doesn’t get hot water. So really, I’re not exactly benefiting from that part. It’s also on the side by the street, so it’s rather loud. At this point, between the fireworks and the loudspeaker cars, I’m kind of immune to traffic noise, though. My only complaint is that the room smells bad. Musty. Hugh said while I’m gone tomorrow he’s going to buy some incense. I hope that makes it better. I’m wary of incense as a cure to stink, it’s usually rather the cause. Anyway, we’re picking up Lupe tomorrow, and she’s got lots of ideas for new jewelry designs that don’t use any metal, only fabric. We’re going to look in one store in Guatemala City that exclusively sells well made textiles made for Guatemalans by Guatemalans, and then we’re going to Antigua for similar materials, I think. I’m not sure. I’m just happy to have my materials tomorrow, much less get to play with more! The only problem with the arrangement is that I have to miss class on Thursday, which is ok in one sense because I can make it up on Saturday, and terrible in another sense because it extends my time with Rosario by 1 more day. I ran into Carlos on the street today and he asked me how I was liking class. I told him, truthfully but mildly, that I didn’t like class with Rosario much, that I didn’t think I was learning much. He didn’t act surprised at all. He’s not the type to badmouth his co worker, but he did offer to meet with me other times to practice and talk and get more help if I wanted, which I do. Augh! I need to sleep! This thing took two hours to write almost!

(This was written wednesday night and I just got around to posting it. My weekend was crazy. More later.)