Herds of Herds

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd.

This morning I experienced the pastoral side of Guatemala. Before dawn, Monica and I met a shuttle to the trailhead of a dormant volcano. Along the hike, we encountered people from the village located at the base of the mountain, including shepherds of various sorts. It started off normal, an encounter with a goatherd and his flock. I resisted the urge to yodel a line or two from “The Sound of Music.” Later, we passed a young man who was trailed by what can best be described as a herd of dogs. It is not an exaggeration that he had at least a dozen mutts faithfully tagging along at his heels. At the end of the trail, we rested at a point overlooking a second volcano, this one quite active. While we resided at the vista a gaggle of study abroad students appeared, ushered by their guide who giggled in amusement as the barely post adolescents snapped selfies of themselves with an erupting volcano in the background rather than watching the spectacular phenomena.

Monica and I patently spent almost an hour at the lookout and caught three substantial eruptions. In this case, the volcanic bursts were not spouts of smoldering lava, but belches of smoke forming a column above the volcanic cone.

Clockwise from left: The eruption of Santiaguito volcano. Monica and I at the vista point on the side of the (dormant) Santa Maria volcano. Panorama from the vista point as Santiaguito erupts.

Redundancy

At dinner last night Monica and I decided to sample the fare of the only Indian (as in the subcontinent) restaurant in Xela. At first I found the menu perplexing because it described each item twice, be it a curry or a thali. It was only after ordering that I realized one of the descriptions was in Spanish, and the other was in English. I guess one week of language instruction, and ample experience ordering victuals in Spanish (both at home and abroad) is enough to be menu fluent. If only it was this easy to become fluent in phone calls home to parents.

Mi Botella de Cerveza Runneth Over

Having a beer at the Fuentes Georgina's
hot springs and natural baths

This afternoon I had a special experience. Upon completion of my first sip of beer from a newly opened bottle, a frothy head suddenly developed and spilled fourth from its vessel. With alacrity I placed the bottle on the ledge adjacent to which I sat. As I watched the foam subside, I thought, “my cup runneth over” both literally and figuratively. You see, this occurrence took place in the small cafe nestled in a canyon on the side of a volcano, the heat of which warms Fuentes Georgina’s, the local hot springs out of which I had recently emerged. My foaming beer sat with the backdrop of the fern-covered canyon inspiring reflection on my recent bounty of good fortune and fun. 

Yesterday morning, I moved to a new home-stay so that I could be the only Spanish student in the house, thus necessitating more effort in my endeavors to communicate, presumably resulting in improved learning outcomes. The new family is lovely, including parents and three sons (ages 4, 11, and 15). Additional benefits of the move include close proximity to my language school, a private bathroom, and a gorgeous view of the city from the balcony outside my room.

The view from the balcony outside my room

At school things have been advancing equally well. Most days the curriculum consists of one on one language instruction, enabling rapid progression. In addition to the intensive vocabulary and grammar instruction, the teachers also facilitate opportunities for us to practice our new found knowledge in authentic, fun, and/or challenging situations. This morning, the performance task was a game of charades with the other students at the school resulting is much laughter and learning.

Alice and Monica playing charades

Breaking Bread is an Idiomatic Form

The inaugural day of my Spanish course included, among other things, a desperately needed lesson on verbs (prior to this afternoon my Spanish vocabulary consisted entirely of nouns). For each set of verbs to which my teacher introduced me, she requested I write five sentences. This naturally required me to utilize nouns as well. My knowledge of Spanish nouns far outstrips my knowledge of Spanish verbs, but three times nothing is still nothing. As a result, while constructing sentences, I biased toward employment of food related nouns, the understanding of which prevented many an unpalatable meal on prior excursions to Latin America. When practicing the verb romper, meaning “to break” I constructed the sentence “rompemos pan” literally translating to “we break bread.” My teacher looked at me like a crazy person. She attempted to correct me, perhaps I meant “comemos pan” meaning “we eat bread.” Thus, I discovered the first (of what will surely be many) idiomatic forms that defy translation from English to Spanish.

Fortunately, despite the words not directly translating, the sentiment does. The first thing I did after arrival at my home-stay in Xela was join the family for dinner. My homestay is with a widow, Sylvia who has two teenage children, Lorena and Borris. The family makes a living hosting guests. Currently this includes myself, another student at La Democracia, and a young man who lives in Guatemala  City with his wife and two children, but work brings him to Xela during the week. They were extremely patient with my utter lack of Spanish skills. Fortunately, Lauren, the other student, is two days ahead of me in school so she stepped in to do some translation when absolutely necessary.

Students and teachers of La
Democracia drinking hot chocolate

Similarly, the first activity I engaged in with the Spanish school was an excursion to a chocolate factory. On the visit we learned about the history of cocoa in Mesoamerica, the process of growing and making chocolate, and the health benefits of consuming chocolate. We also formed our own chocolate treats by hand from pliable chocolate lumps that were eventually chilled into permanent (until we eat them) creations. My favorite part was sampling the merchandise, including fondue and an amazingly delicious and refreshing vegan hot chocolate.

I tried to make my chocolate into a stegosaurus but I couldn’t make the legs strong enough to support its weight, so I shifted strategies and made a lizard instead

How to Avoid Motion Sicknes

I knew that after my arrival in Guatemala City I would need to take a bus to complete my journey to La Democracia Spanish School in Xela. Having examined a map, it seemed that Guatemala City and Xela were relatively close in distance. However, when traveling in certain parts of the world, proximity is better measured by time rather than distance. So, it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that the bus journey was expected to take 4 hours. I have partaken in bus journeys of similar duration during previous adventures, and based on these experiences I have developed some trepidation with regard to travel by bus. Avoidance of the primary challenge of extensive coach travel, namely motion sickness, generates the secondary nuisance of boredom. The primary diversions on a long journey, namely reading, watching movies, and even gazing aimlessly out the window, all have the effect of exacerbating movement induced nausea. Fortunately, from my prior experience, I have generated a list of strategies that overcome my secondary concern while also circumventing my primary concern. These strategies include:

1. Listening to music or audio books
2. Sleeping
3. Engaging in lively conversation with my travel companion

Unfortunately, the circumstances of my voyage made each of these possible diversions unlikely to fill the duration of the journey for the following reasons:

1. In my haste to pack for the trip (I booked my flight 48 hours before departure while facing a full day working and a full day family gathering), I was unable to locate the charger for my iPod. Given the impending loss of its utility I decided it was best to skip the iPod all together. This limited me to enjoying the music that my fellow travelers blasted from their own devices. Certainly I enjoyed catching the refrain of “Hotel California” or the bridge of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” but this was not sufficient to fill the journey. Similarly, even if my iPod were available, I lacked the foresight to fill it with audio books.

   

   I may not always travel first class,
   but when I do, I look like a hobo.

2. One of the upsides of booking a trip with 2 days notice is the sudden drop in the price of airline
   tickets. This coincides with a decline in the number of seats available leading to a particularly unique condition in which, for less than the price of a coach ticket, I procured first class seating. Naturally I took full advantage of the extra space on my journey and slept for most of the flight. When I was not snoozing I took full advantage of the complementary wine served at the front of the plane. This meant I also slept soundly on my overnight stay in Guatemala City, a situation that resulted in feeling well rested and unable to succumb to the typically soporific swaying of the coach.
3. Congenial banter can delightfully fill many an hour, on or off a bus. As a solo traveler, said discourse is not easy to come by. My fellow voyagers were Spanish speakers. While unpleasant, I am compelled to highlight the irony that the purpose of my journey is to attend a Spanish language school in an attempt to remedy my embarrassingly poor Spanish skills. Needless to say, I did not find myself in rapt discourse while on the bus. Fortunately, I will be joining a friend, Monica, at La Democracia. On future bus rides, I can dialogue with her or attempt dynamic discussion with Spanish speakers, given the anticipation of rapid improvement in my conversational ability.

As it turned out, I happened to be traveling from Guatemala City to Xela by bus the day that a group of protesters shut down the road periodically to demand respect for the indigenous people of Guatemala in the form of land and water rights. To my delight, this resulted in at least 4 hours of time spent on a stationary bus. While my fellow travelers were irked by the delays and the associated doubling of our travel time, I was sympathetic to the cause and gratified by near impossibility of suffering motion sickness in an immobile vehicle. I took advantage of the disruptions to our forward progress by reading, writing (in case you wondered why a blog post about a bus ride is so long), and engaging in what would be sick inducing recreations were the bus in motion. Between these pauses I marveled at the novelty of making headway. I also figured out how to operate the text-to-speech feature on my kindle.