I've just "graduated" from 4 weeks of school. Immersion does seem to work quite well and my Spanish is decent. I can carry on a great bar conversation about football…and thank GOD they like the World Cup here, or I probably never could have caught a game in the states since I don’t have pay-per-view.

    Of course, I may find out later that the last time I conjugated the verb "to climb" in the past preterite I actually told someone to milk their chicken. But despite not knowing a lick of real Spanish before landing in Guatelama City alone 4 weeks ago, I now feel pretty confident just striking up a conversation in Spanish, and it actually goes fairly well. I just finished watching a theatrical adaptation of a Kahlil Gibran book (in Spanish) and I only caught about every 18th word, but for only four weeks of study in my whole life, I'm happy.

    Perhaps the most entertaining part of my studies has been attempting to translate common English idioms into some sort of idea people can understand. I tried to use “Nature Bats Last” the other week, and ended up in a long conversation about Puerto Rican ballplayers in the major leagues. A bit far from the environmental ethic I was trying to communicate, but fun none-the-less.

    I’ve also been trying to learn the idioms used here to better understand people’s mindset. My favorite is "Buen provecho". Literally, it is a wish for "good digestion," but has a more broad connotation closer to “bon appetit.” It’s the local thing that the cook might say to the people eating, or the waiter might say upon delivering the food, and perhaps sometimes the cook might even say it to the chicken before lopping it’s head off. I’m still trying to get a handle on these sorts of things. But it does seem to function like the "aloha" of anything intestinal. So...

Buen provecho! ("Enjoy your soup!")

    I hopped off the bus last Tuesday from Tajumulco in the rain, smack in front of a barber shop. It was an interesting open-air, "Hey miguel come look at the gringo!" affair. The walls were papered with gentlemen modeling the finest in Latino bouffant. But since the civil war here ended a mere decade ago, most barbers seem to know just three styles: Guerrilla-shave numero uno, dos, and tres.

    So, if you can manage to find a barber NOT trained during the civil war, you might end up looking like Julio Eglasias. As it was, I had to resort to vocabulary completely unrelated to haircuts to tell the nice man with trembling hands and a smoking WAHL clipper that I didn't want to look like my haircut came from the LEGO "Guatemalan civil war" collection.
I believe that the only thing I was able to communicate was “Number FOUR,” referring to the tallest guard for the clippers. He thought I was trying to bargain with him, and his friends were nearly irate at the cheap-ass Gringo. So I just handed him a whopping 10 Q ("quetzales"... a rare bird, and also the currency), or about $1.23, and put my trust in god.

    It was shortly after realizing the final effect of this shearing that I became especially thankful for a very wonderful phenomenon: Guatemalans, in general, are not big people. Thus it follows that they also have not-big heads. WHY this random tidbit?
    For 25 years I have been cursed by some fashion designer’s perception that all Americans have huge noggins. I can rarely find a hat that fits my head properly. If it is the right size, it is invariably made for a child, and is plastered with cheese-wad Disney logos. But most of the time, caps are too freakin’ huge, and smash my ears out, making me LOOK like a Disney character: Dumbo.
    But AH, the JOY! Here, in the land of VERY wonderful, smiling, jesting, resourceful, intelligent, and small-headed people, the hat selection is PHENOMINAL! So after receiving a haircut that was either length #4, or possibly just the Barber’s execution of what he believed was a 4Q haircut, I bought myself a new “gorro,” or ball-cap: Which cost about 4 bucks.

    Now, it's been about 19 years since my hair was buzzed short, and I'm actually quite happy with it. I look a little scary, so I just smile even more to offset the effect--although the “shaved-mean-guy” look does come in handy when a drunk guy might accost you. (The drunks: are really not that big a deal. They are EXTREMELY drunk, so if they're not sleeping, out-running them really isn't a problem.) But that really isn't what makes this place magical, so no more of that.

One week of school left to go...

I arrived in Guatemala two weeks ago, to begin four weeks of immersion-based Spanish instruction. I thought it was prudent to try and learn some Spanish, as the next 5 months would be spent in Spanish-speaking countries...

    This third week of school was spent at the sister school to my school in the city of Xela (pronounced "Shayla"). This smaller outpost is located up in the coffee region in the middle of a hundred-acre Finca. Coffee-beans are growing all around the one-house campus, and I start by morning by grinding beans that grew on the bush outside the window; were roasted in a cinderblock-building 100 yards down the hill, and immersing them in the coffee-sock with water piped up from the creek (and then thoroughly boiled).
    Yeah...people are poor, in terms of paved roads or in-house kitchens, and e-mail is just a fairy tale. But people laugh more in a day than I generally see back home (of course, ALL present company excepted).

    One of my new travel-friends here and I were talking about this while on the bus. Her theory was that people's high spirits had to do with the fact that there is more physical contact with others here than in the states. Since there’s more personal contact, you’re bound to feel more connected to others, and thus more likely to connect about things a laugh a bit. There may be something to that, especially if you just consider the bus-rides themselves:
    You're packed onto a bus seat made for 3rd-graders with at LEAST 3 others. My personal record for one seat is 9 people. And even though you are all smashed up, no one is acting like it's a personal affront. In fact, it's sorta homey. And even walking around on the streets and you are just more often in contact. So maybe there's something to that theory. Try it out: Go hug somebody, and tell me if it works.

    The finca-region is beautiful. Soft, golden light all day, and in the evenings there are great clouds of lightning bugs. It generally rains HARD in the afternoon, and then can clear to a stunning sunset with lightning storms on the horizon and stars peeking out between the thunderheads.

    After a week in the fincas, I hiked up Tajumulco--the tallest peak in Central America, but by a climber’s standards just a domed pile of chaucy-rubble. But it was an absolutely amazing experience…we were blessed with the most phenominal sunrise and cloud-mix I could have hoped for.

    I went with a group of about 15, with an organization based in Xela that uses the money earned through these tourist-treks to fund a school and medical clinic for street-orphans in that city. The guide’s toughest job is dealing with a huge group on the busses, as the climb itself is just a hike. But it makes for a very fun and conscious group of like-minded folks, and it’s a great way to support a very needed program.

    Now, back to Xela…