Today I made three phone calls entirely in Spanish, visited one English-free indigenous home and went to one Spanish-only birthday party. Would you like to hear all about it? Great. Thanks.
I took a huge leap and decided to stay here another week. After I get back from Costa Rica I hope to move to a house with Internet access so I can work a few hours a day.
After changing my plane ticket, the agent asked if I needed any help from the “travel designer.”
Romelia (who owns the house where I’m staying) and I took the bus (didn’t require a travel designer) to San Antonio so I could track down a huipil with Maya calendar symbols.
(Romelia translated that bumper sticker for me. Roughly, it means “We may be friends but you still have to pay.”)
After five painful minutes in the market with aggressive vendors we had to escape, and walked over to see Romelia’s acquaintance a couple blocks away. When we knocked, two little girls cracked open the portón and peered out, and then ran for their mother who invited us in.
The large main room had a floor of packed, well-swept dirt. The roof was made of sections of corrugated metal, held up by wooden posts. Straight ahead were two roosters in a cage. To the left, right and in the back, the area was subdivided with pieces of cloth and boards into living areas for cousins, aunts, uncles: I think about fifteen in all.
While Romelia talked to her friend, I was surrounded by children who leaned on me and stroked my arm and patted my hair. We talked about jewelry and drawing and homework. I’m happy to report that I speak better Spanish than Daniel, the one-year-old. But he could do a fine rooster impression — cawca-cawww — though I’m not sure they were the best of friends. At one point we heard a tussle and then avian and human shrieking, and saw the rooster rocket straight up in a flurry of feathers. I don’t know who was attacking whom.
The ten-year-old girl brought us blue plastic cups full of a milky liquid. You wouldn’t believe how much I didn’t want it, but out of courtesy I took a few minuscule sips with devout hopes that it was made of agua pura. It was very sweet and sort of coconut-y.
After half an hour we returned to the mercado where I bargained (in Spanish) for two huipiles — at one point outbidding myself.
Sometimes my language mistakes aren’t funny. This afternoon I asked some workmen on the street if they knew where I could throw out my soft drink. I may have asked them if they wanted to drink my trash. Whatever I said, they were not amused and they shot dirty looks as I walked away.
On to Maria’s birthday party. Her big-hearted friends — Rosa, Justa, Mercedes, Santos, José — adore her.
Maria asked everyone to say a little about what they hope for the coming year, and what they’re grateful for. That was well and good as long as I was just listening, but they wanted me to talk. Taking my cue from the others and from Guatemalan sneezing blessings, I wished for salud, amor and dinero. And when, in my own unique language, I told them how grateful I am to be in their beautiful country, they clapped.
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