Last night was crash and burn.  This week has been exhausting.  Starting Tuesday with the from Palm Springs thru Dallas to Guatemala City, the night in Guatemala City, the long bus trip to Xela, checking into the school, settling into my guest home, exploring the town, and then Thursday and Friday, five hours each day of intense one-on-one Spanish lessons.  It seems impossible that I only left home four days ago.  It seems like a month already! 

 

This is a totally different world here.  There seems to be three groups of people, the white Guatemalans of European descent, the mixed blood people, like my hosts, who have both Indian and white blood, and the Mayans. 

 

The Mayans here are a fascinating group.  They are mostly short, dark skinned, with facial features similar to the Monguls in Asia.  What is really striking is the stunningly beautiful woven fabrics that they wear.  The color combinations remind of the women in India, who wear sari of bright colors that one would not think would go together but actually work to create beautiful clothing.   I would guess that the typical Mayan woman at any one time is wearing at least three perhaps four different cloths of various weaves, textures, and colors, and most of those colors are brilliant.  The way they arrange them, with one fabric for a long dress, another for a blouse, another for a vest type jacket, another wrapped around their waist, is quite beautiful.  Also, most of the Mayan women are carrying large packages on their heads that are wrapped in similar brightly colored fabrics.  The size of these packages is amazing, some of them perhaps more than two feet in diameter and over a foot high.  They walk along the most uneven and broken sidewalks you can imagine and these carefully balanced packages on their heads never waver.  It is an amazing feat, but one that I am sure they have been doing for a few millennium, long before we showed up here a mere 500 years ago. 

 

What is sad is that most of the Mayan population appear to be very poor.  I understand that most of them live in the countryside and farm for a daily wage of about $2 US per day.  Not per hour, per day.  No wonder that I saw no farm equipment.  People power is much cheaper here than machines and diesel would be.  I have seen two apparently wealthy Mayan women in the town and they take the traditional Mayan clothing to a totally new level with the most brilliant colors and complex weaving, their clothes were cleaner and pressed, and they wore gold jewelry which set it all off perfectly.  They also of course had nothing on their heads, had beautiful thick black braids, and wore discrete makeup which was beautiful on their dark complexions.  However these wealthy Mayans appear to be in the most minute of minorities. 

 

Another interesting cultural factor here is security.  I have walked all over the downtown and the neighborhood where I am living and have seen no stores where one can go inside the store.  Every block has at least one or usually several small little stores, like the one the owners of my host home have down stairs.  The largest I have seen was perhaps 300 square feet, and most are more like 12x12 feet inside.  Each of them has heavy iron gating with opening where there is a counter.  One has to ask for what one wants, and the women behind the counter (normally always women) get it for you.  The customer cannot touch or look at or inspect the items in the store.  Apparently this is a security issue.  Also, downtown every bank has at least two up to six heavily armed very serious looking security guards with big guns, mostly machine guns.  Even the one McDonalds, which appears to be the most popular high end restaurant in town, has two armed guards at the door. 

 

That in itself is interesting, that McDonald is so popular here.  Of course they even have McCafe.  The McDonalds is right on the town square with all the banks and government buildings, in fact it is the only eating place on the square.  It is on the same street as my school therefore I pass it often and it is always busy, which is interesting in a country where 70percent of the people would have to work two days to afford a “not so happy” meal at McDonalds. 

 

 The school.  That, of course, is the reason that I am here.  The school itself is in a  beautiful, huge old colonial mansion that is of the style where the rooms are all built around a large open courtyard.  The walls are adobe, the roof dark tile, and the floors also an old tile.  It was once a huge home, probably 3000 square feet or more on one level, counting the courtyard.  From the architectural details I would guess it was built in the late 19^th century.  All of the doors and window shutters are original, although they have been painted and have seen some heavy wear as the house has been a language school for the last 22 years. 

 

This school is the oldest and supposedly the best in Xela and all of the profits go to support a school next door for poor children of the town.  The school itself s a bastion of liberal thought, with the walls covered with posters of various Central American revolutionaries and guerillas and mottos for equality, social justice, etc.  Nothing anti-American, just pro “revolutionary”.  I would guess there are 60 students total, half come in the morning from 8am-1pm, and half from 2pm-7pm.  These first two days of this week I was on the afternoon shift and I have asked for morning shift next week.  My mind just works  better in the morning. 

 

The students are an interesting group.  Large majority are American, with a few Canadian and European in the mix.  I would guess that all but about three of us are graduate student age, like 22-25.  There is one American who is probably late 30’s working on a PhD, and one guy who leaves today who is probably in his 40’s, a social worker, and then there is the grandpa, which of course is me.  Many of the students fall into the general classification that the local Guatemalans call “heepees”, or “hippies”.  I definitely do not fall into that category. 

 

My teacher the past two days was very good, and I have asked for her for next week.  The policy is to rotate the students to a different teacher each week to get variety, however Ana Maria is very patient and very organized, therefore I have booked her for next week.  The only issue is that she is pushing me hard.  It is hard to imagine sitting across a table from a teacher for five hours a day, with one 30 minute break all day, and spending that entire time in total emersion Spanish learning.  It is like trying to drink from a fire hose.  I was begging my teacher (maestra in Spanish) for mercy yesterday reminding her that the other students are just that, “students”, just out of college or grad school.  I graduated from college 37 years ago.  The gears in my brain related to learning a lot of material very fast definitely have some rust.  The past two nights I have gone to sleep with Spanish words passing through my brain.  As I am starting from ground zero we focused on vocabulary and conjugation of regular verbs, and a lot of emphasis on “to be”.  I get the impression that it is unusual for them to get someone here who has no Spanish at all, like “yo” – me .  Most of the students are right out of college and have taken Spanish in college and are here to “perfect” their Spanish.  I am still trying to learn how to ask in Spanish where the bathroom is located. 

 

It is finally the weekend and I am going to study my butt off.  There school is actually sponsoring a trip today to San Francisco (the one here in Guatemala, not the one in California), however I decided I need to sit my butt here in my room at my little wooden desk and practice my vocabulary and conjugation.