Mail Makes Me Happy

On Friday, Maria and Vilma went to check the mail in Chimaltenango and pick up the week's letters and packages. When they came back, boxes overflowing their arms, Maria yelled to me, "¡Casi todos son para ti!"

"Almost all of them are for you!"

Yessss. :)

So a giant thank you to everyone who made my weekend via photos, letters, Valentines, candy, junk food (thanks Dad -- best candy combo bag ever), and warmer clothing (thanks Mom -- I've been wearing my boots nonstop). My room and office area are now even more decorated with love from the States, and my food cubby is the envy of everyone in my house. :)

The Girls of Jerusalén

The 350-ish kids here at NPH Guatemala are divided into about 15 sections by age, grade, and maturity level. There are four sections in the Babies' House, four sections in the Girls' House, six sections in the Boys' House (there are significantly more boys at NPH than girls right now), and one section in Castillo Mágico -- our center for children with severe disabilities.

As Home Correspondent, I decided that I wanted to "feature" one section every month I was here (doubling up a few times) and write sort of a "Spotlight" about them for the website. I'm obviously just getting started with it, but I think it's going to be fun. It should hopefully be a great way for me to get to know the kids in all the sections (at least a little bit), hopefully they'll have fun being interviewed and having some photos taken, and hopefully donors and godparents will like that the by the end of the year, they can essentially check in on every child at NPH via our website. :)

For my first section, yes, I chose the easy way out. I decided to write about my own section: Jerusalén. But hey, I've only been here for a few weeks! It makes sense to write about the kids I know best!

Anyway, a week or so ago I held group and individual interviews with them, and they were SO into it. When I finished with my list of questions for them, they weren't ready to end it! They started yelling at me, "Ask us what our favorite animals are! Ask us what our favorite colors are!" They gave me more than enough information to work with for my 800-word article. :)

I also let them run free with my camera, which was by far the funniest part of the entire evening.

The story has been submitted and is awaiting official publication on the site, so I'll let you all know when it's up there. For now though, here's a summary of what I had on my camera by the end of the night. Welcome to Jerusalén, haha. :)

Fidelia and Juana

This was the second take with Dania. I took the first one horizontally and when she saw it she yelled at me, "No! Get my whole body in it!"

Celeste and Marta

They scream at me to take a photo with them, and then they won't smile for it haha.

Irma

With Estrella, Georgia and Juana

They love to play jacks. I'm getting pretty good at it now.

Each girl has her own locker for all her stuff. They are obsessed with decorating them, and it's pretty adorable.

And now my favorite collection of photos. They ran off with the camera...and came back with about two dozen photos of magazine cut-outs of their favorite singers.

(Daddy Yankee, FYI haha)

Weekly Story Update 2

Our publishing schedule is a little bit behind right now, so there's only one new story up on the website since my last link update. Womp womp. I have two others sitting in the queue though -- where are they?? Here's today's:

NPH Guatemala Kicks Off A New School Year - NPHG's students head back to school this month.

Three Months Ago, I Never Would Have Believed My Brain Could Function Like This

During the past four days of crazy-busy workweek chaos, I have suddenly realized something: if you had told me three months ago that my job here would involve what it has involved these past few weeks, I definitely don't think I would have believed you.

Basically, I can't believe my brain is still alive after all the English-Spanish ping pong I have put it through so far.

Coming into my job here, I knew a few things. I knew that all my writing for the website would be in English. However, I knew that my co-workers would speak Spanish, and I knew that many people I interviewed would also only speak Spanish. What I don't think I knew was just how much of my day would be spent acting as a translator, both for myself and for others.

Here's an example: Last week I received a set of questions that needed to be answered about the NPH Guatemala house, and I needed to find our Public Relations Coordinator in order to get those answers. Here's how it went down.

Questions emailed to me in English. I emailed the Public Relations Coordinator in Spanish and attached the questions. She came in to tell me she didn't understand enough English to answer them. So, I looked at the question in English, translated in my head, and asked her in Spanish. She answered in Spanish. I wrote down in Spanish. I translated back to English for the original document. I then sent the completed list of English answers back to our National Director with an email written in Spanish.

Exhausted from trying to keep up???

Welcome to my daily life. This week, it was another set of questions -- except this set was seven pages long and required I chase down about 10 different people. Also, I already write more work emails in Spanish than English. I have moments during the day now when I have to stop and think "Ok, writing in English right now." Otherwise, it ends up being a really bad grab bag of both languages...and not very articulate.

At first I didn't believe the older volunteers when they told us that during your year here, your English sort of...um...atrophies haha. Now, I think I get exactly what what they were talking about.

When I stop and take a second to think about it, the whole thing just seems crazy. I can't believe I'm working with all the important coordinators at NPH Guatemala, sending professional emails to NPH fundraisers all around the world, doing it all in Spanish (or in both Spanish and English), and somehow communicating well enough to make it all work.

Very cool.

My brain may be exhausted a lot of the time, but I'd say it's definitely all worth it. What a crazy experience. :)

Three Random But Amusing Things About Guatemala

Ok, sorry folks, I'm not feeling very clever right now. Nor am I feeling like writing for too long. I'm actually swamped with work this week (in a good way though -- you know I love to-do lists!), so I should probably be doing more work and less blogging. However, I've become way too addicted to this more-or-less daily blogging. So, here is today's (somewhat lackluster, but maybe entertaining?) entry!

1. Random But Amusing Thing #1

The Yellow Pages phone book in our office. One day last week, we were cleaning out and rearranging our office setup (my desk is now over in a much quieter corner, not practically in the doorway anymore -- woohoo!), and I saw a copy of the Guatemalan Yellow Pages being tossed around. I had to snap a photo. Guatemala would have a giant drawing of the Mayan ruins at Tikal on the back cover of the book haha. Love it.

2. Random But Amusing Thing #2

Last weekend on our errand-running to Chimal, we visited Chimaltenango's equivalent of the Dollar Store. It's called "Hogar Feliz," which is hilarious enough on its own (translation = Happy Home). Hogar Feliz has the most random stuff (read, junk), but it is pretty darn cheap. Anyway, we came across this puzzle/game, and I wanted so badly to just buy it. Photo instead. I hope the kids playing this game are intellEgent enough to not pay attention to the poorly-spelled English.

3. Random But (a little less) Amusing Thing #3

No photo for this one, but it's a daily event. Don't ask me why, but every single day at about 4:30 or 5 p.m., Gmail stops working. Either that, or it's really really slow. (And hey, my work email is through Gmail too, so it's not like I'm just upset that I can't Gchat you all after 4:30 p.m.) I'm not sure if it's an NPH network thing or a weird country-of-Guatemala thing, but it's pretty weird (um, and a little bit annoying). I mentioned it to my house one day though, and Celeste confirmed that it happens to her too. So, I'm not crazy! Weird though, right?

Ok, back to story-writing!

New Plan: Be Trilingual. Learn Kaqchikel.

Today was so cool. Of course, it started out really frustrating, but then, really really cool.

I (sort of) took a class in Kaqchikel language!

This year at NPH’s school, they are requiring for the first time (because of a new government decree) that all students study Kaqchikel. Kaqchikel is one of the 21 Mayan languages still widely used in Central America, and it is spoken by nearly half a million people in central Guatemala.

Indigenous culture is so present in modern Guatemala (one of the things that makes this country so unique) that it’s impossible to not notice the importance of indigenous languages when you live here. There are 23 national languages in Guatemala, and Kaqchikel is recognized as one of them.

For most people in this area of the country, Kaqchikel is their first language. Spanish – what foreigners like me assumed to be the only really important language here – is only learned by many people as an afterthought. Kaqchikel is their native language. Learning Spanish is just for practicality’s sake. (In fact, the family I lived with in San Pedro only used Spanish when they spoke to me. Among one another, it was usually Kaqchikel.)

So, what the heck was I doing learning Kaqchikel this morning?

Well, I wanted to write a story for the website about the new Kaqchikel classes now being taught at the NPH school. For this, I wanted to talk to the two new Kaqchikel teachers here: Yami for Montessori and primary school, Tomás for middle school.

For some background info, one of the major reasons that things move so slowly here/nothing gets done quickly or efficiently/productivity is often painfully slow is because, at least here at NPH, there isn’t exactly a system for getting a hold of someone.

People don’t necessarily have offices. Few people have NPH email addresses (or internet around here), and even fewer check their email anyway. No office hours (so different from college!), no immediate email responses (so different from U.S. office culture!) – I’m definitely having to get used to this.

As a result, when it comes to writing articles I probably spend about 80% of my time wandering around, unsuccessfully finding the person I need to find, and 20% doing the actual interviewing/writing/editing/photographing/website updating (a.k.a. the actual work) once I find them. A giant portion of my days are spent checking and re-checking empty offices and asking a lot of “¿Sabes donde está ella? ¿Sabes donde está el?”

This was the frustrating part of my morning.

However, my mood does a complete 180° once I find the person I’m looking for. Yes, success. Check this off my list.

So this morning, I was pumped to catch Profe Tomás. I explained that I was writing an article, and he seemed super excited to help out. Now, here’s the part where I don’t know if we had a major language communication issue or not. We sat down, and he proceeded to give me a 20-minute Kaqchikel lesson. It was the real deal too: me taking notes, practicing my pronunciation, learning the Kaqchikel ABC’s. I kind of forgot where I was for a second. Oh wait, I’m supposed to be interviewing you right now, not practicing these new vowel sounds.

But Kaqchikel is cool! Here’s what I learned:

My cool Kaqchikel notes.

-Kaqchikel, like any other language, is divided into vowels and consonants. The word for vowel, k’uxatz’ib’, literally means “the heart of writing.” The word for consonant, ch’akultz’ib’, literally means “the body of writing.” Profe Tomás probably told me a thousand times – heart and body, you can’t have one without the other. That’s why you need both vowels and consonants to create language.

-In Kaqchikel, there are 10 vowels and 32 letters. ‘ is a letter. Yep, just that apostrophe. It’s a letter all on its own.

-In the Kaqchikel alphabet, there is no c, g, f, v, ll, ñ or h.

-The same word is used to mean “sun” or “day.” And the same word is used to mean “moon” or “month.”

-Consonants sort of remind me of music notes. You can have a b and a b’. The roughly translated idea is that b is “b simple” and b’ is “b glottalized.” Kaqchikel involves a lot of hacking and gagging sounds.

And this was the really really cool part of my morning.

Ok, enough nerdy linguistics blogging. Just thought I’d let you all know. Maybe I’ll come back to the States fluent in two new languages. :)

Cuatro, tres, dos, patada

("patada" = kick)

This weekend was the first weekend at NPH when I literally had no plans. No program dinners, no NPH events, no big nights out in Antigua. I was so excited to have the entire weekend to do as little or as much as I wanted, and it ended up being awesome.

Friday was (fellow volunteer) Daniela’s birthday, so we threw her a big fugata (bonfire) in the fire pit behind one of the volunteer houses. I must say, man did we make one successful fire. And of course, at first mention of a bonfire, the Americans went out and bought marshmallows to roast and ingredients to make s’mores.

Our fancy bonfire!

Happy Birthday Daniela! She LOVES turtles (tortugas), so all the volunteers pitched in to buy her a tortuga mobile we found in Antigua.

In Guatemala, marshmallows are called “angelitos” (little angels) and are about three times the size of marshmallows you normally find in the U.S. When Cheryl was out buying them, she sent me a text saying “Oh wow. I just bought marshmallows and they are the size of baseballs.” She wasn’t kidding.

The s’mores were delicious, but as we looked around, we realized that only the American volunteers were eating them. Clearly, putting a giant fluffball of sugar on a stick and plunging it into a flame isn’t quite as cool everywhere else in the world. Huh. I guess I would have thought that we were crazy too if I had never seen a s’more before.

The rest of the weekend involved a trip to Chimal for errands (our house bought a coffee maker!), Taco Bell (yes, again), and Sarita ice cream (When you ordered one scoop in a waffle cone, your second scoop was free!! Best day ever!!!) and some roasting of the leftover marshmallows over one of the burners on our stove. There was reading, sleeping in, painting my nails, and watching two movies I’d been wanting to see – Julie & Julia and Fame (both were good, and yes, buying bootleg movies here is as easy as walking down the street to one of the 15 bootleg movie stores in town). Yesterday I made a trip to the Sunday market for vegetable and fruit buying, and it was my cheapest day yet! Only 22Q (less than $3) for bananas, a watermelon, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, and cucumbers; I was excited. We also had a house welcome dinner last night where the old volunteers in our house cooked dinner for the new volunteers! We ate delicious homemade deep-dish pizza, and we were all in food comas afterwards.

Yum! Homemade pizza courtesy of Katie and Leeah!

So, great weekend – and that’s not even the best part.

Best part?

Yesterday morning, I taught a Boxilates class (half Kickboxing, half Pilates, duh) to three of the girls I live with. We pushed aside the kitchen table, blared some tunes, and worked up a sweat. It was hysterical.

Thank you, self-timer, for this hilarious photo.

For those who don’t know, I taught classes like Boxilates at William & Mary’s Rec Center for three years, so this isn’t quite as random as it might sound. However, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t still look like an idiot. It’s been a while since I’ve taught a class, so I’m sort of out of practice. I also don’t own any kickboxing music of my own, so we ended up working out to The Killers’ Mr. Brightside on repeat for half an hour. Not kidding. One song repeated for 30 minutes. Oh, and did I mention I taught this whole class in Spanish???

Yep, with Letizia’s help, my Spanish vocabulary expanded immensely this weekend and now includes such crucial words as knee, step, stretch, kick, and gluteus. I have also mastered the art of counting down an 8-count using Spanish numbers.

¡Ocho más! ¡Ocho, siete, seis, cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, otra vez!

So much fun. The volunteers in my house have already requested a second class for Tuesday, and they told me I should definitely talk to someone at NPH about teaching classes for the older sections of girls here. I’ll keep you all posted.

Well, that’s the weekend update! How is it February already? Til next time, hasta luego!