Home and Back and a Little Bit of Language

After finding a good price for a plane ticket to the States and back, I decided I would make a trip home. I stayed for a week and a half, which in hindsight wasn't enough, but certainly better than nothing. It felt strange to be going home after being away for a little less than five months (my host mother was afraid that I wasn't going to come back and I think my mother was afraid I would), but now that I'm back in Nebaj, I'm feeling energized and more hopeful about my time here. My Spanish has improved immensely, to the point where I don't have to think-translate-conjugate-speak (though, not always in that order, sometimes I speak before I conjugate, and then stumble over my various attempts at correcting myself). At this point there are moments when it comes out before I've had time to think it over. Since being here, however, there have definitely been some struggles along the way (in Spanish AND English). I’m about to share some of those with you all.

     -About a month into my time here, we were having dinner at Caty’s (Todd’s wife) parents’ house. Yanna (Todd and Caty’s daughter), had been getting on my nerves (she often felt like a little sister to me) and was fooling around at the dinner table. For some reason, she started chewing on her plastic spoon and I (for some reason) tried to tell her to stop in my beginner’s Spanish. In my frustration, however, it came out a little differently.
            “Yanna, no esta bien a comer tu cucaracha.”

The word for “spoon” is cuchara (koo-CHAR-a), and the word for cockroach is cucaracha (kooka-ra-cha). So I ended up saying that it’s not good to eat your cockroach. And, of course, she burst out laughing and continued to ignore me, so I gave up.

     -The day before I moved to Nebaj, Todd and I went to do my visa run in Mexico (I have a tourist visa, so I have to leave Guatemala every three months to renew it). We decided to stop for lunch at a comedor (com-eh-door, a small eatery, with typically two or three options to choose from). We went inside a large building where there were several comedors packed in like cubicles in an office building. All of the women (typically women own and operate the comedors here) were trying to get us to come to their comedor. “Pasa adelante. We have beef soup, chicken soup, or vegetable soup.” Most of them offered the same options. While we were deciding, Todd advised me that it’s best to go to a comedor where there’s already a good number of people—it typically means the food is good. Personally being rather passive and sometimes even timid in new situations, I told him, “I’d probably just go to whoever molests me the least…I mean bothers me, hahaha.” Luckily, as a Spanish-English speaker, he knew what I meant. In Spanish, the word for “to bother” is molestar (moll-es-star). It does NOT mean to molest.

      A common mistake English speakers make while learning Spanish is wanting to say “I’m embarrassed,” but actually saying, “I’m pregnant.” The word for “pregnant” is “embarrazada”, but it’s a false cognate. Be careful what you say, folks. Learning Spanish has made this fast-speaking extrovert slow down and think quite a bit over these past few months.

Hope you all are doing well. I am currently visiting a permaculture site located near the INCREDIBLE Lake Atitlan. It’s a lake surrounded by mountains, and some of the fruits and plants that grow here are: banana, papaya, avocado (new favorite for the Indiana girl), coffee, among other things. I hope to write about my experience here later.

Peace and Growth.