In Guatemala, temblores/tremors are a part of life. Terremotos son otras cosas, they are earthquakes. Terremotos jumble the earth.

My host family asked: “Do you have them in your home?” and la verdad es no, I have not ever experienced an earthquake in Florida, Georgia or anywhere in the USA. It confused them, then, why I was so calm. Why it seemed normal to me.

We’re on a fault line here, sabeeer which one (I just looked it up, called the Matagua fault), which I’ve tried to explain to my host sister Clara.

Even though the ‘quake happened almost three months ago, I haven’t written about it yet. The concept of a fault line is dripping in metaphor.. but one does not stick out to me to accompany with this event. I can explain what happened, but I want a perfectly matched metaphor in my work here to accompany the physical event.

Without digging, I can see that the very essence of Guatemala is a convergence of different worlds, it’s own cultural fault line: la cultura ladina, Maya, Xinca y Garífuna. Granted we have very restrictive travel regulations but I have only met two of the four cultures: Maya and Ladina. Given how tiny this country is compared to my own, it’s surprising that I haven’t met someone Xinca or Garífuna. Pero no, nada que ver en Santa Clara.

In fact, the majority of Santa Clara is Mayan, specifically K’iche’. My host mom doesn’t even use the term K’iche’, she says “el hablado de nosotras” or describes a person as “puro corte” (of the skirt, referring to traje típico) or “natural.”  K’iche’ contextualizes her in a way she doesn’t need to contextualize herself. She says “Of me and my mom” in place of saying “K’iche.”

But I reacted like a gringa huevona when I woke to the earth shaking at 1:30am. I’ve felt other shakes before so I figured it was just like any other. Everything around me (well, I don’t have that much stuff) looked like it was in two places at once. It felt like God was pulling the rug out from under us all.

I went back to sound sleep.

The next morning my host family told me that they were scared. “Y no te asustó? They asked. I responded like it was a light breeze: “Nah!” I said and waved my palm. “Yo me fui a dormir.” And they told me all the things they thought: “We thought you were out in the street..” “I came and turned on the light downstairs but then I was too afraid to come upstairs because of the palos.” Clara said. You see, they’re building a third floor, that is to say, a ceiling for the second floor where I live. The wooden beams were still standing, supporting the concrete that had just been poured, when I woke up. (PS I have a ceiling, but when I moved here there was no ceiling over the patio that connected my room to the bathroom and to downstairs).

I found out the next day that it was a 6.9, quite the blender, and that some people in San Marcos died (that’s a departamento, or state, west of Sololá where I live).

My host mom told me she wanted to scream, that she prayed to God because she scared. My sweet host mom.. We had very different reactions.

I guess I’ll make this post introspective (I usually try to draw a parallel with my experience and the word I’m featuring). I didn’t come to country expecting earthquakes, not at all, and even though it was a little scary (well, like I said, I went to sleep), the earth truly is shaking around me. I’m not always aware of the minor shakes or alert for the major ones, but these terrestrial occurrences remind me that, yes, things are changing.

I could liken these two years to one, long-winded, enduring earthquake. I don’t imagine I’ll notice all the things that have fallen over, been shaken up or transformed entirely until this earthquake ceases and I am standing on still ground once again.

Am I stronger, wiser, how has my thinking changed about myself as a human, a woman, a survivor of major depression, an ex-evangelical, a US American? I suppose I’m brave for signing up for this even though I didn’t know it would be an earthquake.

Inside my wardrobe, I taped an excerpt I ripped out of one of our training documents: “How we are with ourselves is the biggest determinant of our success.” And I read it often, even when bottles from the earthquake have fallen over it.

Living on a fault line brings overwhelming beauty. I was walking to Paquip recently and just marveling at the greenery around me. Even me, an indoor person, can find myself lost in the beauty of these flowers and green eruption of color draped in fat, falling clouds. Send in the earthquakes, Send In The Clouds.