El diablo esta in los detalles

I think I have finally driven my teacher crazy.  I am finally learning the imperfect subjunctive in Spanish class, which opens up a whole new world of expression for me.  It’s quite liberating actually when you have been trying to express yourself adequately not knowing exactly how to conjugate the verbs properly or the correct structure of the sentence you wish to say.  Now that I have learned much more advanced grammar, I am more interested in getting all the tiny details in the stories or articles I read rather than simply getting the idea.  It’s very easy to read something and gain an understanding of what is being said when you only know 60-70% of the words.  I’ve been living on this standard for the last two months, and now I’m ready to really “hunker down” to learn this language!  When I’m in school I speak Spanish nearly all day with confidence and ease.  However, when I spend the weekend in the city with my boyfriend and we go out or we spend time with his daughters and their friends, I realize I still know only a tiny fraction of what I need in order to be fluent.  After a weekend of feeling frustrated, illiterate, ignorant, and perhaps even stupid, I decided to really focus and study harder during the rest of my time here in Antigua.

When you learn a new language, you realize that you’re learning much more than simply conjugations, translations, and grammar. One example of many is that you realize the sense of humor of a culture can be quite different from your own in a different language.  I have lots of examples of things my teacher has said or other teachers have said amongst themselves as jokes that she and they think are hilarious and I simply don’t understand the humor.  It’s not just me either.  Almost all of the students in my school are from the States, and we look at each other sometimes wondering at what are they all laughing? 

This morning I was running a little late, and I arrived at school 5 minutes after 8:00.  When I sat down at the table, my teacher said with a huge smile that she was thinking perhaps I went to the city because I was a little late.  She followed this up with a huge belly laugh that lasted a good minute.  You see, she knows I have a boyfriend in the city.  She often uses this to make jokes, but honestly I don’t understand why it’s so funny to her.  When I come to school wearing nice clothes, which is almost every day because I prefer to dress a little more formally than the average American, she laughs and has an almost creepy smile on her face and says: Oh, you must be seeing Guillermo (my boyfriend) today!!!  Again, this is followed by a huge belly laugh.  It’s getting a little old, and to be honest it makes me feel a little dirty.  I just don’t understand why she thinks it’s so funny. 

This is one of the reasons I am now combing each article, story, or workbook exercise for the exact meaning in English so I can absorb much more than just the grammar.  It is also the reason why I said I think I’ve finally driven my teacher crazy.  I found myself asking her all day today, “Si, yo entiendo, pero porque?” I felt like I was a 5-year old asking why, why why.  I had an exercise for homework last night of 5 short stories, and in each of them I had 10 verbs to conjugate.  It was a great exercise actually because it was a mixture of all of them: present, past, imperfect, present subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive, etc.  The first short story was about a guy who bought a necklace for his wife for Christmas.  He didn’t want her to find it, so he was looking for a hiding place.  She came home and when she asked what he was doing, he yelled at her forcefully that she shouldn’t look at him like a thief.  I made a few mistakes conjugating, but what really aggravated her was that I kept asking why he was so upset.  Then we read many newspaper articles, and when I would come upon a word I didn’t understand, she would respond with a general idea of what the word represented, but that wasn’t good enough for me.  I asked her why she thought a person felt that way or did whatever it was that they did.  I could tell by the end of the day she was ready for a break from me.  When I returned from lunch, she told me that some students wanted to play Scrabble.  I’m the Scrabble champ at school, and normally I never turn down an invitation to play, but today I said I’d like to study more.  I saw the look on her face, and it it looked like what I felt last weekend when I couldn’t understand all the people around me. 

I’ve realized that when you are trying to learn a new language, it’s vital that you understand your own very well, at first.  Then you get to a point where you almost need to forget your language before you can truly capture the new one.  Too many times I try to translate literally or structure the sentences as if they were in English.  That simply doesn’t work, and often you end saying something completely different.  I am determined, however.  That means that I must go now and complete my homework.  Voy a hablar con ustedes mas tarde!

Banking

The banks here in Antigua have ATM machines, but the machines are owned by third parties.  If you go into a Citibank, for example, there is no Citibank ATM machine.  I needed some money even though I’d read about some problems a particular bank was having with people getting their debit card numbers and pins stolen.  I purposely avoided this bank and chose Citibank first because it was familiar and second because the ATM machine is located inside the bank with 2 heavily-armed guards standing in the doorway every day.  I figured it would be nearly impossible for someone to install the scanning devices (or whatever they use to capture this information) in this particular machine, so I felt safe.  The next day my bank called saying someone in New York had withdrawn $500 from my account using a copied ATM card.  I was very lucky that Chase caught it so quickly and returned every cent within a week.  Since I have to talk to Mirna for 6 hours every day, and I figured she could help spread the word so others don’t go to the same bank, I told her the story.  In response to my story, this is what she told me:

Her brother used to own a tienda selling typical artisan things, but the economy hit him hard a few years ago.  He needed to sell all of his inventory and other things in the business, so he advertised a going-out-of-business sale.  It wasn’t very long until he found a buyer who wanted to buy everything.  Her brother had a strict “no checks allowed” policy, but in this one particular instance, the guy hypnotized her brother so he would accept his check.  When he went to deposit the check, there was no money to back it up, and the guy had already taken all of his things.  He lost everything, and it was all because this other guy hypnotized her poor brother into accepting a check.  The moral of the story is never trust anyone, according to Mirna.  It’s getting more and more difficult not to laugh when she says with all seriousness things like her brother was hypnotized.  I promise you, she really believes this.

The other thing that surprised me was the lack of care shown by both the teachers and the banks themselves.  We talked about this in one of our afternoon conversation activities, and the teachers basically told me not to go to any ATM machine at a bank around the central park in Antigua because they’re purposely targeting “rich” tourists.  Apparently this is common.  I think I’ve said before that Antigua is a very international city with a lot of Europeans and North Americans either passing through or staying a while to study Spanish.  They couldn’t seem to understand my point that this really isn’t a solution.  Maybe I’m too much of an idealist, but I was surprised at the ambivalence and willingness to accept a bad situation as it is.  I explained that back in the States if a similar situation had occurred, the bank would begin a new PR campaign demonstrating “sincere” lament for what happened and exactly what they would be doing differently in the future to correct it.  That doesn’t happen here.  The government here is wrought with corruption, which in turn gives the rest of the population a license to do the same. 

The other thing that is very different is that people go to the bank for almost everything financial.  The lines wrap around the block, and I dread it when I have to go to change some dollars into quetzales, the local currency.  People go to the bank to pay their rent, school tuition, electricity and other utilities, deposit their salary checks, pay their credit cards, and of course perform currency exchanges.  Mirna is surprised when I tell her I can deposit a check by taking a picture of it with my phone.  She is amazed at technology, and I am teaching her a lot.  She thinks my iPhone is magical, but then again it really is.  I guess I will have to get used to going to banks again to conduct transactions, which isn’t the end of the world.  I think I will still be able to pay my cell phone bill over the internet…boy I hope so!  We’ll have to see.  Right now I’m just using pre-paid, which is a new experience too .  Mas luego, lo prometo.  Adios por ahora.

Education System

I started writing something else before this piece, actually 2 other posts, but before I finished them I realized one in particular was becoming too long and difficult to follow without having any of the knowledge I’ve gained in the last 6 weeks.  Therefore, I decided to break it up into a few major categories: education, government, the markets (and by markets I mean the manner in which you can purchase and sell things here in Guatemala), and the dangers of living in a third world country.
I’ve been fortunate to be able to learn more than just a new language during my time here in Antigua.  I read the newspaper every day, ask a lot of questions, and one of the “games” we decided to play in the afternoons is invite a couple other teachers and their students to have a discussion about a particular topic.  I like these a lot because I use them as a way to learn from other teachers and not just my own about how life works here in Guatemala.  I’ve come to realize as I learn more complex grammar that it is becoming more and more difficult to have advanced conversations with my teacher.  I know that sounds arrogant, but I certainly don’t mean it as an insult to her intelligence.  I believe intelligence is much more a reflection of a person’s ability to gain more knowledge and knowledge is really just information.  It is a fact that I was fortunate to have a much more in depth education, and she will be the first to tell you that the public education system here is broken.  She is a product of the public education system here and works very very hard to make sure her children can go to a private school.  In fact, some of the things she says are so off-the-wall I’m thinking about starting a book called Sh*t Mirna Says…
I worked in the education sector in the States for 9 months providing financial education and planning to teachers.  During that time, I learned a lot about the ratio of children to teachers, salaries of teachers, experience levels, etc.  If you have a beef about the public education system in your state…listen to this. 
Here in Guatemala the current President, who is ending his term this year. made the public school system free.  At first glance, that sounds like a terrific plan.  Before Alvaro Colom, current President, made public schools free, there was a one-time registration fee for each student.  Principal (Pre-School & Kindergarten) cost Q40 for one year; Basico (Elementary & Jr. High) and Secondario (High School) cost Q150 for one year; Universidad San Carlos (Public University) cost and still does Q200 each semester.  The problem with this is that the number of teachers were not increased.  I have no way of verifying this next piece of information, but according to Mirna, the teachers in the public schools make much more money than the teachers in the private schools.  This seems opposite to me, but it really doesn’t matter.  The point is that the number of students per teacher has nearly doubled, and nobody seems to care about this.  Right now, there are 60-80 children per teacher in the public schools in Guatemala.  Enrollment was certainly increased, but the quality of education of each student has significantly decreased as a result of Colom’s “generous gift.”  The children who may have had a chance in the past attending a public school really have none at all now.  In my opinion, he took a bad situation and made it worse.  The really bad thing is that he really did it just to win votes.  More on this topic later.
You don’t have to work in education to know that 60 children, worse 70 or 80, for just one teacher is an impossible task for that teacher.  I’ve heard and read newspaper articles on public schools that are having a very difficult time getting some teachers to even show up to the school to teach.  Each time, the article stated that the teacher’s salary has not been affected by such behavior.  When you take into account that the teachers themselves are products of the past public education system, it almost seems hopeless.  I have a lot of respect for Mirna for trying so hard to make sure her 2 children have a better life and better opportunities than she did.  Being a single mother is hard enough, but I imagine being crippled by your economic situation and sacrificing all that you can to make sure your child has a chance in a system such as the one here in Guatemala is infinitely more difficult. 
One final thing before I go…I feel so incredibly fortunate for all that I have had and for being able to recognize just that.  I’ve stated before that common sense is not all that common when you don’t have a basic education.  There may be things wrong with your school district, but there’s a lot that’s right about it too.  Don’t forget to look at those things.  When I went to Santa Maria de Jesus (the place where the streets were used as a trash can and the water holding tank for the people was in the cemetery), we visited a school.  These kids were thrilled to see us, and they couldn’t stop giggling when we said hello or asked how many years they have (that’s how you ask how old you are in Spanish).  I have to admit they were pretty fun.

Weekend in the City

I truly love Antigua, and I am enjoying my time here very much, but I have to say as soon as I reached the city last weekend, I was grateful to be there.  Last Thursday was technically a holiday here, as is every June 30.  It is Army Day, and in all honesty I did not learn much about the significance of this particular holiday, but I imagine it's similar to our Labor Day.  The government declared the holiday to be celebrated this year on July 1 so everyone could have a 3-day weekend, and so I headed to the city Thursday evening.

View of the city from a helicopter - yes I took the pic!

Although I grew up in a suburb and my high school years in what many would call "the sticks," I am a city girl through and through.  I thrive on the people, and somehow being around interesting architecture has always energized me.  This, by the way, is one of the reasons I love Antigua so much, but this piece is on the city.  Cities bring many modern-day amenities that are easily lost or forgotten in beautiful far-away settings, but I have to admit it was really great to be around tall buildings, people, malls, grocery stores, and the like.  Antigua has 2 grocery stores, but it's really hard to call these "grocery stores."  They're more like tiny warehouses stuck between centuries-old buildings, and there's really no rhyme or reason to the product placement, and really it's just "different."  In fact, it's so different that the first time I spent a good amount of time in the city, I was very interested in seeing the grocery stores there because I was really only familiar at that point with the ones here in Antigua.  My guide that day was laughing at me a little bit because as soon as I saw a real grocery store in Guatemala City, it was ummm...just like those in the States.  There's a regular produce section, an imported foods section, health/beauty supplies, and all the rest of the food nicely lined up in aisles and organized efficiently.  In fact, Wal-Mart Mexico just bought the largest grocery store chain here, which used to be called Hiper Paiz, and so now I shop at Wal-Mart again...

Giant Map of Guatemala in Zone 2

The point of this entry is to explain to you what life is like in the City.  I'm not 100% sure, but I'm guessing that the city has a population around 2 Million.  The city is separated into zones, with zone 1 smack dab in the middle.  The rest of the zones follow a sort of spiral-like pattern and go all the way up to zone 25 even though zones 20, 22, and 23 don't exist yet.  It's kind of confusing for me still because you will be driving down a road and zone 9 will be on one side of you and zone 14 will be on the other.  I could have this totally wrong, but the point is that from the ground level, it's difficult to understand the pattern.  Zone 1 is the old historic zone where you can find the old National Palace, which is a very beautiful building, and nearby there is zone 2 where you can find a giant map of Guatemala with every point of interest marked.  It's like a 3-D topographical map scaled to size where you can see all the volcanoes, lakes, cities, mountains, and it really is quite interesting.  I will be living in zone 15, and when other Guatemalans ask me where I'll be living, they are always quite impressed that I will be living in zone 15.  I have to agree it is a very nice area, which is very clean and pretty, so I will take their words for it and consider myself fortunate.  In zone 10, which borders zone 15, you will find Zona Viva!  This is the part of town about a 5-10 minute drive from the airport where there are lots of hotels, bars, restaurants, and other shops.  I've hung out in Zona Viva quite a bit, and I'm hoping to find a job in this area so I won't have a long commute every day.

Speaking of shopping...weren't we speaking of shopping?  Well anyway, I like to go shopping, and I have to say I'm impressed with the malls here.  There are tons of brands with which I am familiar, and lots more that I am growing to adore.  Actually, many of the stores here are from Spain.  I find that there is still quite a Spanish influence on the culture here besides the language.  There is even a Spanish grocery store, which I had the pleasure of visiting last weekend and bought some fantastic prosciutto!  Coming from Chicago, I had some of the world's best shopping at my finger tips (one very charming part of winter in Chicago is shopping along Michigan Avenue during Christmastime!).  I was pleased to find a Zara (Spain), Pull and Bear (Spain), L'Occitane, Bershka (Spain), Guess, etc.  The funny thing though is that almost everything is imported, so the high import taxes make clothes and shoes more expensive here than in the States.  I guess I'll have another reason to go shopping when I visit my friends and family!

My favorite part of the weekend besides spending time with my boyfriend was having the privilege of meeting some more members of his family.  I was a little nervous at first because his mother only speaks Spanish, but somehow we made it work.  I also got to meet his younger sister and her family, and we had a very lovely visit.  Her three children have been learning English since practically pre-school, so they were very cute and tried to speak to me in English.  The oldest daughter had spent some time in Joplin, Missouri last year for an exchange program, so she was excited to learn that I am originally from Missouri.  We had a really wonderful time, and I am so happy to have met such wonderful people.  One thing that is interesting about the Spanish language, and I guess culture as well, is that his mother is already my suegra, mother-in-law.  Although there is no in-law paper binding us together I now have an entire other family already!  It brings a warm feeling to my heart, much like the, "Bienvenidos a la familia," I received from my suegra upon departure.

Disfruta!  Hopefully I'll be able to sneak myself into a few of the upcoming pictures.  Adios por ahora amigos.