My first week in Guatemala! Bailamos!

I stood over the pila tonight, brushing my teeth and wondering about my 20s and how I got to 30. It’s the stuff you shouldn’t think about when you’re brushing your teeth. You forget to stop brushing. Also, it’s in the past Simba. No importa.

Today we had language class in the morning and walked around town to introduce ourselves to the local authorities (how cute is that?) This is a task we will have to do once we move to our sites- meet the police, meet the firefighters, the mayor, the school teachers. It was hot, we were walking at the pace of pregnant tortugas, and the American in me just wanted it to end. We ended class 40 minutes past the scheduled time, because we were walking so darn slow and stopping to talk about the plants on the side of the road. Maybe this is what happened in my 20s. Maybe I was walking extremely slow.

Where is Raffiki with that staff to remind me what I already know?

I have learned so much in a week’s time, it’s ridiculous really.

I’m cultivating a love of Spanish, and harvesting despair for my inability to pick it up more quickly. In my mind, total immersion was going to be a passive process. I was going to learn the language via osmosis, como rosa jamaica tea. Turns out, learning a language requires effort. Lots of it.

My host family tells me that I should be patient. It’s a very weird feeling, getting increasingly comfortable with a host family every day but not being able to verbally express it. I rely on words like coffee beans on sunshine. I am going to have to trust the silence of the gaps between us, and trust our understanding in spite of my rumpled rucksack Spanish and the cultural differences afoot and aloft.

Rosa Maria explained to her son, my gemelo Javier, that I was sleeping when she woke me up for dinner. I told them “This is why my face looks like a potato.” Upon further googling, I realize that I used the wrong verb of “look.” I needed to use the verb “appear” not look. Mirar is incorrect, parecer is correct. They laughed anyway, probably half at the wrong verb. So. There’s that.

I ate my first Guatemalan Guacamole today. That was a raving success.

I am still reeling after yesterday. I woke up after a good night of sleep but it wasn’t enough. I told my host mom in the morning “Quise dormir para siempre.” I wanted to sleep forever.

I’m dipping in and out of present tense to past and then preterite like I’m juggling. I drop the balls, a lot. In the midst of this, I am supposed to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. I am supposed to save humanity from humanity and make it better but I don’t even know how to ask “who took the peanut butter?” No idea. Quien se casó la mantequilla de maní is the first thing that comes to mind.

Clint is very deliberate with pronouncing the words, and he is good at detecting what the locals are saying. Amanda is more experienced in conversational Spanish, she lived in Mexico for school. Tanya is a whipper-snapper and buoyant the way 21 year-olds who join Peace Corps to go to Madagascar are.

I give up on sentences before they find their purpose. I start phrases and end them with dramatic facial expressions. I thought this process would instantly make me better without me needing to make flash cards, or practice, or try very hard. I thought I’d be around Spanish and then I’d just soak it up like a sponge. But I am trying. And I am trying to try. And I feel like an idiot but here we are. In Guatemala. Doing the thing I’m not sure is a thing I thought I’d be doing.

Go Team.

But on a day when I am not ruffled by my rumpled Spanish, it’s pretty cool what I’ve learned. I’ve literally been here a week. I’ve learned how to say a lot of things. I’ve learned a lot about Guatemalan culture. I’ve learned how American I am. Today I walked past a man pulling a pig out of a truck and he had a cement bag over his head. It made me want to be a vegetarian. Maybe after service. But it’s pretty rad that I’m getting a sense of the landscape here. There is native culture and ‘ladino’ culture and the two are in different realms entirely. The dialects of Mayan language are a fabric of the culture. Corn, corn, corn, corn. I’ve learned that there is not even a different word for “fiancé” and “bride” in this culture, it all fits in the word “novio” (girlfriend). I’ve learned about Catholic and Evangelical cultures here, I’ve experienced the hilarious sidewalks firsthand, like dub step beat in cement form.

I’ve learned about gender roles and that women are the hostesses and they feed the men, they clean for the men, they don’t work. Each family is different, you can’t put anyone in a box but that is predominantly the case.

I’ve learned that I think I am doing the right thing, but I still feel lost in the midst of it. It’s not like living in Guatemala was my life long dream. I just knew that going rogue and learning along the way was the best next step for me. And here I am. With wifi. Going rogue. If for nothing else because I can’t communicate here.