La Semana Pasada

May 30, 2010

They say the first two weeks are the hardest. I certainly hope so. While my conversation skills have improved, I am still unable to articulate many of my basic needs, and fall sadly short of actually being able to hold a “real” conversation with anyone, which is difficult, because I like to talk to people. Classes were canceled on Friday, as well as the scheduled activity for Saturday, because of the volcano. So I’ve been at home for the last 3 days, speaking nothing but Spanish. It’s good for me, the best way to learn, but there are times when I have wished for the Pentecostal tongues of fire, just to make things easier.

More on the volcano – evidently it was one of 2 that went off that day in Latin America – the other in Nicaragua. In addition to the volcano, we’ve been subject to the furious rain of Tropical Storm Agatha for the past couple of days. It rained all day Friday and all day Saturday, finally stopping in the early morning of Sunday. Everything was damp. I thought I’d go crazy. Evidently it’s caused widespread flooding all over the country, with rivers rising as much as 12 feet and knocking out bridges and rivers. It’s also caused a lot of collapsed edges of cliffs, which would be fine, except that people like to build their houses there. So there have been quite a few deaths and lots of displaced people.

My first church service was today. According to Jaime, there are usually about 100 people, but today there were only 15, on account of all the flooding that’s happened recently. The service was pretty long – about 2 hours. We sang for almost half of it. The guy who led worship was amazing. He had prodigious piano skills, as well as a voice that combined the power of Josh Powell’s with the beauty of Cameron Voth’s. He was talented, to say the least. It was pretty difficult to pay attention to the sermon. I must confess that I spaced for a good portion of it. I have no idea what the theme was – the verses that Jaime was reading didn’t really seem to form a cohesive message on their own. Oh well.

I’ve met a couple of pretty interesting people over the past couple of days. Last Friday I met a guy from Veracruz, Mexico, which is the same state as Chris Eitzen is from, as well as a couple by the name of Jorge and Miriam Arevalo, who are familiar with the town of Newton and one of the pastors of a Hispanic Mennonite church. I’ve also gotten to know a couple of English-speaking Guatemalan guys, which has been a welcome break.

Tomorrow begins week two in Guatemala. Hopefully I continue to improve quickly.

El Volcán

May 27, 2010

ALWAYS HAVE YOUR CAMERA!!! You’d think that would be a given for me, but turns out, whenever I leave my camera somewhere that I’m not, awesome things happen, and I can’t document them. Case in point: the volcano that’s about 30 miles from my house erupted today, throwing flaming rocks into the villages surrounding it. Terrible, for sure. Legitimately awful for the indigenous people that live there. But it also coated our street, house, and Victoria’s roses in a thin layer of ashy/sandy/whatever-a-volcano-spits-out stuff, and it looks super cool. But guess what?! No camera. And now it’s raining, so it’ll probably all be gone tomorrow. Gosh-darn-it!

My comprehension and language skills are improving. I can understand about 75% of what Jaime and Victoria tell me, and I can carry on fairly intelligent conversations with them that don’t consist entirely of smile-and-nod or “esta bien.” I get the impression that they dumb down their vocabulary when they talk to me, and I still have to ask for clarification quite a bit, but I’m definitely improving, or have at least gotten to the point where I don’t have to think as hard about what I need to say. The conversation at the supper table tonight was “malapalabras” – dirty words. It all started when Jaime told me that the Spanish for those little floatie things that are left over in a cup of freshly-steeped tea are called “shingas.” And I must’ve given him a bit of a funny look because he started laughing at me, and even more so when I asked him how to spell it. The word “shinga” sounds dangerously close to a Spanish word that means (avert your eyes, you faint of heart) “fuck.” So if I ever decide to use “shinga,” enunciation will be super important.

We took a walking trip around a bit of the city yesterday, and at one point, we crossed the bridge into Zone 12. Not 50 yards into Zone 12, we heard firecrackers just ahead of us. Then we saw a guy go shooting out of a store and book it down the street. They weren’t firecrackers. We sort of giggled nervously and beat a hasty retreat back across the bridge to the relative safety of Zone 11. Turns out Zone 12 is one of the most dangerous in the city.

Our group went to a giant mall today during the afternoon, when our scheduled activity was rained out. We found a bookstore, and I FOUND A COPY OF THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA IN SPANISH!!!! For those of you who don’t know, the Chronicles of Narnia are pretty much my favorite books in the whole world, forever and ever, amen, and I read them at least once a year. So I bought “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and plan on reading it out loud to practice my pronunciation.

I think that’s about it. `

Conversacciones

May 25, 2010

It’s been an interesting last two days. As it turns out, my conversational Spanish skills are FAR worse than I had anticipated. I guess everyone has just been really nice to me up to this point, saying that they’re really good (thanks, Chris! J). But it’s ok, I’ll learn. I met my host parents last night. I will be staying with an older couple, maybe 55 or so, with no children. My host father, Jaime, is a Pentecostal pastor, and preaches at several churches over the course of a week, depending on when the congregants can come to church, since many of them work on Sunday. My host mother, Victoria, teaches several subjects at a school for children of all ages (K-12, I gather), and also goes to school. I think so, anyway. I don’t understand what she does quite as well. Conversation with them is interesting. We’ve taken to keeping a dictionary or two on the table, and whenever one of the other of us doesn’t understand (usually me), we both dive for our dictionaries. There are also obvious problems with my thinking that I know which word to use, when in reality, it means something totally different. Case in point – yesterday I was telling them about our trip to Costa Rica, and to describe the ecological reserves that we had visited, I used “preservativos ecologicos.” For all of you non-Spanish speakers out there, “preservativo” means “condom.”

I went to bed REALLY early that first night. Speaking Spanish makes me tired, I was super stressed, and at that point, it was either go to sleep or burst into tears. Hysterical weeping really isn’t my thing, so I chose the former. This morning, I rode the bus to CASAS with Victoria. She made me repeat back the name of the park near the gated community where we live, the street that passes the community, and most importantly, the name of the bus stop (which I cannot remember. A bit of a sticking point, I think). She also cautioned me against all of the creepy Guatemalan guys out there. Evidently Guatemala is chock full of them, and I should talk to none of them. Sage advice, I’m sure. Once we reached the CASAS bus stop, I met up with Patrick, one of the CASAS boys. And to be honest, I have never been so happy to see someone in my entire life. A bit of hyperbolic perhaps… but not really.

We had another 3 hour Spanish class this morning. Roxanne, Ruthi, and I are all in the same class with Marta, the teacher. It’s just like our Spanish class at Bethel, except without Jenae! L Marta actually knows Martha, and has been to Bethel and knows Barry and Rosa Barrera, which is cool. We’ve been placed in the literature class, meaning that we’ve advanced sufficiently in our understanding of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary to be able to understand Latin American literature. Haha. Yeah, right. It’s taken me four hours to read the second chapter of our assigned reading (it’s about 12 pages), and I have no idea what’s going on. It’s about a dead guy, and his story is told piecemeal by those who knew him. Reading a book in Spanish is kind of like this:

1. 1. Read two or three words and string them together in a logical order

2. 2. Meet an unfamiliar word

3. 3. Look up said unfamiliar word

4. 4. Forget what the first two or three words said

5. 5. Re-read the first two or three words and incorporate the new word

6. 6. Read the first phrase, and then progress to the next unfamiliar word

7. 7. Repeat from Step 1

8. 8. Attempt to divine the meaning behind the whole shebang

9. 9. Fail

10. 10. Curse violently

It’s a long, slow, agonizing process. But it must be an effective way to learn a language, because otherwise, people wouldn’t do it.

When I returned to the house this afternoon, I did some homework and Victoria painted a picture. She has quite a few hanging up all over the house. We were listening to some Spanish opera, when I mentioned that Bethel has a really great choir and men’s group. So we listened to “Hold on,” and “Praise God from Whom.” She was pretty impressed with Kelsey’s solo bit, and thought the Doxology was really pretty. Shout out to the BC singers. Thanks for a conversation starter!

Should you feel inclined to send me a letter (which would make.my.day), my address is:

Claire Unruh
c/o CASAS
Apartado 11, Periferico
Ciudad de Guatemala, GUATEMALA

Hemos Llegado!

May 23, 2010

We have arrived. Our plane left at 7:30, and after a 2 hour layover in Houston, and a connecting flight at 11:30 (which didn’t leave until almost 12 because the pilot was in Cancun!), we made it to Guatemala and through customs and such by about 3:15. Before the plane to Houston, we sat in the gate and creeped on all of the other passengers, trying to figure out which of them would be spending the summer with us. We got two correct out of about six. The CASAS staff met us and we squashed 8 people into an extended cab pickup truck to drive to the campus. It was pretty close quarters. I ended up sitting next to a guy named Scott, incidentally, he was one of the two that we had correctly pegged as Mennonite. As it turns out, he is dating my friend Allison Yoder from Goshen, whom I had worked with the previous summer at Camp Friedenswald. Once we arrived at the compound, we had the rest of the afternoon off to hang out. We’ll be staying in the CASAS guesthouse for one night, and then moving in with our host family tomorrow. Eek! Our group went to a Wal-Mart type store across the way, just to see what was available, then played Apples-to-Apples for an hour or so, and then hung out on the patio for awhile, until it started raining. There’s also a Bluffton group here, for May term, and I met another friend-of-a-friend, Gregg Beitler, who is the roommate of my friend Bracton Eicher from camp. Turns out… Anyway, it’s about 8:30, and I’m SUPER tired. Tomorrow we take our placement exams, meet our families, and do other orientation-related stuff. Hasta luego!

P.S. Spanish keyboards are SO hard to type coherently on. The @ is alt+2, instead of shift+2, the _ is shift+?, and the ? is shift+_. So obnoxious!

P.P.S. Scott just stopped by and informed us that it's only 7:30. Not 8:30, like I had thought. So sleep is postponed for a bit, I guess...