January 16. The first day of school.

Some days are hard here because it’s different and other days are beautiful here because it’s not the same. This day was both.

The following are details as they happened one after the other. I was watching an unusual, slow-motion happenstance of logistical perpetuity from a cultural distance. I have to include the details, mundane as they could appear, because that’s how they came to me. One by one, moments of action without a narrator to explain the greater picture or the plan. Okay now the students are tying balloons to a string. Okay it’s 1:30 but there aren’t chairs. Okay now we are singing the same song that we already sang to the students 10 minutes ago. This is called culture shock at the moment you know how to define it but don’t know how to interact with it.

It started like this:

I got to school at 12:30 thinking I was a half hour late. Both of the schools I work at have class in the afternoons. I was actually a half hour early which translates to almost an hour early here. Two professors were standing on the stage in the basketball court hanging up a satiny maroon curtain. They were on a precariously positioned wooden ladder and were hammering a nail into the cement wall. A beautiful painting of Guatemala was on a giant canvas sheet, waiting to be displayed somewhere. Beautifully colored streamers were stretched across the cancha. I watched them endeavor to find the preexisting nails and somehow affix the curtain to them. It reminded me of how many chemists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

It felt much the same the week before when the staff was working through (what I assume were) their school contracts. The only female teacher sat back and, I wondered if she had an easy solution but said nothing, while the four men toiled over their employee numbers trying to figure out the best way to edit the document. Naturally, I just watched- how am I going to help? I don’t even know what’s happening. And why do I think I need to help? I’m a Youth in Development volunteer, not a business associate and they’re taking care of it as they’re accustomed.

I must admit: On this first day of school ceremony the culture shock was certifiable as each unusual custom unfolded. I don’t think it showed on my face but I was taking copious notes of all the things that surprised me simply because I’m not accustomed. I should emphasize, again and again, that while I felt judgmental in the moment, I wasn’t criticizing this culture, this school or their protocol. I was merely adjusting to the grand differences volleying between my own experience and the foreign customs of first day of school, Guatemala Style. I could just the same sit and write how delighted I’ve been to witness the major advantages to living here. Again and again. That is to say: If this post incites a fraction of superiority in the reader, please don’t read it. Superiority is the opposite of anything we should try to achieve as a people, a nation, a global landscape. I believe more than ever in the strength of learning from each culture and responding with curiosity and respect, and that’s after I’ve tucked my mosquito net in at night or flushed the toilet for the 9th time in one day. I’m not living some fanciful cultural integration experience from a kindle light, I’m in it. And I’m more convinced than ever before that we as a universal people should ever be in the classroom of one other.

And so I was ensconced in my own cultural classroom as the first day of school unfolded, noting with each experience just how accustomed I am to my own ways. The culture shock only intensified with each passing hour. At 1pm, several students were already around with new backpacks donning their “first day of school best!” You remember setting out your clothes the night before. The feeling was very much the same. I felt the excitement for them. I also felt the eyeballs and the pressure to introduce myself or maybe pop the question mark bubbles floating over their heads. The older the students, the more they masked their interest. But I still felt the silence stating: Who are you? I prefer to avoid introductions in my own culture; handshakes are perfunctory germ transfers. But I can’t help feeling the pressure, I know how important formal presentations are here.

I stick back, helping tape together the five printed pages in black and white “B I E N / VENIDOS / A CLASES / ESCOLAR / 2,017” I stick packaging tape to the back of each sheet. I’m not told to do this, but I’m going to make use of myself anyhow. The new director and teachers are going back and forth with the ladder and the hammer trying to hang the painted banner of Santa Clara. Eventually the painting gets suspended so it’s level and the men start to stick the welcome papers to it. In the midst of this, each teacher’s pulled a quetzal from their wallet so Profe Domingo can go buy masking tape. I privately assert that the tape we have is more than sufficient, and say nothing. I make mental note of the fact that each teacher is personally paying for tape from their own pockets. The school doesn’t provide them a budget for supplies, I think.

As Profe Miguel hangs the banner he repeats: “La utz a wach, Natalia” and I respond, laughing: “Ja Lutz, Profe. E le ech la?” He repeats “La utz a wach, Natalia.” (How are you?) I appreciate the acknowledgement in the midst of set-up. The way they are going about it feels so unusual: last-minute, rigged, and quite honestly underwhelming. I allow myself to feel the judgement but remember that it’s not right. This is how they set-up here. And how they set-up here is just fine. But I take a moment to miss the polished excellence of event planning from home, the pre-pre-pre-preparation of an event so that every chair is straightened and every pen laid straightly next to the notebooks at conferences hosted at hotels with pressed linens and sturdy chairs. I miss sturdy chairs. Even at the fancy wedding I went to in Ciudad Vieja, the chairs were of the plastic lawn variety draped in linens. I take a moment to love ‘real’ chairs.

At 1:15 (1:30 is when the ceremony starts) I’m looking out at an empty basketball court. I ask: do we need chairs? Or are the kids sitting on the cement? I don’t actually know. So I ask Seño Mary (I don’t want to sound judgey to the new director) she asks: “Do we need chairs?” to the other professor. (Hierarchy because she is a female professor). They reply “yes” and she tells me where to find the chairs. At 1:30, I see that the director is in his office signing up a student for classes with their parent. Seño Mary is signing up another student. This is when we’re supposed to start. I come in to get the stools, I skin the side of my thumb and it’s starts to bleed. It’s unlikely there’s a bandaid here since they don’t provide toilet paper in their bathrooms to begin with and I don’t have a bandaid in my purse. “Stay ready!” I remind myself. But how can you stay ready when you don’t know what you’re getting ready for?

At 2:15 I see that the new director has changed into his suit and bright blue dress shirt, and he calls Mary and myself to come the court: it’s time to start. I see that the hovering students have helped set-up the chairs. Plastic teal chairs. I only see about 60 students. I wonder how it’s possible that 30 students would be in each class, according to the number I’d heard. At this rate there would be 15-18 in each class. Maybe more will come as the school year gets underway?

I ask if there is a specific place I should sit? In a minute or two Profe David has set-up a separate row for the teachers. He directs me: Sientase, sientase Natalia. A row of the teal chairs faces the stage. We sit and the ceremony begins. I see that the director has a list in his hands, maybe the agenda? Profe Antonio gives me a sheet of paper- the lyrics to the song. I wasn’t expecting them to be printed out because I understood the school didn’t have a printer, so I was going to read the lyrics off the picture on my phone. I’m glad for the sheet. Anyway, I sit. Instantly my arrogance is questioned when the emcee Profe Ronaldo introduces and welcomes me by name: Licenciada Natalia de Cuerpo de Paz. I sit on the chair, smiling, beaming with gratitude, just happy to be there. And I also feel like I haven’t done anything in my life worthy of being presented by name and sitting along this esteemed line of professors, with families and careers and definition. I am an undefined blob of privilege sitting in a plastic lawn chair, judging it. But on the other side of the quetzal I am filled with happiness to be there, finally starting work, coming here to do what I’m supposed to do. This is the beginning, I think, and I feel it as I wear my Hillary Clinton style sweater I found in a used clothes venta.

Then the inauguration continues and I’m instantly reminded: we applaud everything here. At the end of the prayer, we applaud. At the presentation of each teacher, we applaud. The applause is sanctioned by the Emcee, who asks at every turn: Calida applausa para fill in the blank. At the end of a class I observed, we applauded God after a prayer. I find the applause at everything so bizarre. I know I’m going to have to dar palabras at some point and I know I don’t have the proper words or cultural predisposition to do it right. I fumble through them every time and hope that I don’t come off like the first pancake: not quite right. How long will I be a first pancake?

Seño Mary does the prayer, Señor Domingo introduces the professors, Señor Ronaldo introduces Sr. David our new director and he approaches to address the students. I hear in his words an address I did not expect: “The responsibility of your education is yours. There aren’t many of you here today, less than 100. Your parents have given you the opportunity to pursue your education and now the choice is yours to pursue it.” I might have expressed the same thing. Aside from the uneasiness of him being the new director from another town, it was delivered well and I appreciated his words. It felt like a short sermon. He gave me a reassuring wink/nod when he returned to the teacher row after his address.

Maybe these kids do need a good preaching, I’m not sure, but what I am sure of is that speech is not a lost art here. My own culture has lost the beauty of words for formal occasions. We flavor our words up a bit differently but it’s not the same: I can’t really explain it without the experience to fortify it. But take it from me: when a meeting starts with formal Palabras de Bienvenida and a personal acknowledgment of each member’s presence and a formal handshake for each person when a new member joins the meeting, you know you aren’t in the US. It’s a beautiful cultural inheritance, and I am inspired by the practice foreign as it may be.

By the end of the day I sang The Star Spangled Banner thrice, more times than I’ve ever sung it in my own country (in one day). All in all, I call it a success. Eventually we ended the ceremony with a recess. Of course I didn’t know if the ceremony would continue but I new it was time to take a break and seek out a snack: an encouragement treat.

Some days are about getting through them and smiling when you should and not thinking too much about your own thoughts. I think.