Xela, the rest of the story.

I’m currently sitting in San Pedro La Laguna at Lake Atitlan (where the picture in the title block is from). This is not where I expected to be yet, but plans change sometimes.

First of all, I spent most of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday speaking absolutely no Espanol. Why? Cause I’ve been hanging out with Americans and doing very little in the way of studying. This is not usually the way I roll, but I just happened to find a great group of kids (well, adults) from the states and we’ve just been kicking it here, enjoying life, and there isn’t much wrong with that.

Me and Joe.

So as we’ve already established, I know Joe from Seattle where we used to work together. We go way back, like four years, but as it turns out, we really don’t go way back because he only started there 8 months before I quit. But it feels like we go way back. We were some cool kids back at Herrera. That is until they laid him off and I quit. Man, that company has really gone downhill since we’ve left...

Joe. I sincerely enjoy putting up bad pictures of him.

Joe’s Spanish school was a lot more social than mine, so I mostly just hung out with him and his friends in Xela. His classmates at the school mostly consist of doctors and other engineers so in general, we were a pretty nerdy bunch. However, despite being nerdy, we managed to tie a few on. More on that later.

Gus, Me, and Joe at the bar.

So, I am gonna go ahead and say that I really didn’t like my school all that much in Xela. Everyone has their own tastes and preferences, but I didn’t really click with my teacher (lessons are one-on-one for four hours a day so that is kind of important) and the school administrators were kinda abrasive. I know they have the best interests of everyone in mind, but it just wasn’t working for me.

On Thursday, as I was walking home from school, I was feeling kinda down about my experience there, and then I ran into Joe’s friend Gus on the street and he told me to meet up with the kids from their school at 2:30 for a little bit of afternoon happy hour. I happily obliged. That lingered on into an evening happy hour (after a break for dinner with the family) and then into a night happy hour. It was fun and reset my attitude about being in Xela. It was that night that I realized it was just the school that was the bad fit, and that it was not necessarily the city.

Xela from the rooftops.

Speaking of the city, and how it is actually quite lovely, though really big, I found an excellent café with wi-fi that serves blended mojitos (that’s a different experience) and legit American nachos. It’s so gezellig (that’s for all my Dutch speaking blog readers). I love it.

Taking matters into my own hands, I ate three dinners on Thursday. I was so satisfied. I had nachos at the café, little tostada things at home with the family, and then bacon pizza with the hombres later that night. And by the way, these Guatemalans can do pizza right. Its none of that crap pizza I was eating in Panama and Costa Rica. No, this is honest to god pizza. And then just when you think it can’t get any better, they put bacon on it.

The center at night taken from the Bacon-Pizzeria.

On Friday we got a rather intense thunder storm and lost electricity for most of the afternoon. I had lunch at the school with the folks there, and we all brought the different pieces necessary to make burritos. Again, it was a super satisfying meal, and I feel like I am needing those now. I mean, this eating like a bird thing has its merits and maybe I’ll look just a little better in my swimsuit by the time I get to the beaches in Honduras, but it’s really testing me.

I napped through most of the power outage and then met up with Joe’s amigos at their potluck dinner. After dinner, Joe ditched us (for a lady…), and the rest of us went out to this bar that folks were handing out fliers for on the street and that is always a great method for choosing anything. Its name was Ojala Que or “I hope that” (that’s a pseudo literal translation) so really, how can you not want to go to a place with such promise.

The best part of the place was the cocktail menu. Something like 50 choices, all of them with crazy names, not one of them listing the liquor it contains, and all of them under 4 dollars.

We convinced ourselves to pick at random. I got the “Walter”, Matt the “Prince Alexander” and Gus and Suresh things I can’t even remember. The “Walter” was quite good, and when I asked the waiter what was in it, his response, was “good question...” Ha.

Matt with Walter.

Unfortunately, we didn’t even get to try to everything we ordered as the waiter forgot half our drinks and we just went home after forty minutes of waiting.

When I got home, I found out that I was locked out. Matt and Gus had walked me home (chivalry is not dead) and we arrived at my house a bit after 11. We said our good-byes, and the boys walked away (not waiting ‘til I was safely inside, since they are kinda out of practice in terms of implementing actual chivalry). I stuck my key in and heard the deadbolt click. Immediately I knew I was done for because that lock cannot be opened from the outside. I tried turning the key anyways and it wouldn’t go and wouldn’t go as I expected. I thought maybe that it was ‘cause my wrist is broken, you know, because I have a hard time turning keys still…seriously, I do…So, I yell to the boys who are about 100 yards down the street by this time that I need help with opening the door, and Matt yells back,

“I thought you were a fulbright fellow”

Thanks, doctor.

They do come back and none of them can get it either (sweet redemption), so I have to ring the door bell--four times--until someone comes and lets me in. I felt so bad about waking Pilar and the kids up. 11 o’clock is late down here; only the drunks and robbers are awake at that hour.

Mannequin with booty.

Saturday I spent the morning walking around the city. My plan was to take some pictures, and I took a few (see the following) but I ran into a little problem that kinda shook me up.

So I was walking down this empty street in the touristy part of town and thinking: oh, how beautiful, I should take a picture. I get my camera out and I take the photo and then a woman walks into the very upper part of the frame from around the corner. She sees that I am taking a picture and lays into me for being a f’ing gringo bitch, and good for nothing whore, and that I needed to f’off and go home, etc, etc…and yes, I know how to say this stuff in Spanish so her point was not lost on me. And all of this for taking a picture of an empty cobblestone street.

The offending picture

So I know that there are some indigenous folks around these parts who believe cameras steel your soul or something. I respect that. I never take portrait pictures unless someone asks me to and generally if people are in any of my pictures, it is an unavoidable as I would prefer them not to be there. But I have to say, this was a picture of an f’ing empty street.

And furthermore, she was wearing shorts. To a lot of you that last point doesn’t make sense, but if you know life here, it is somewhat obscene to kick around the city in shorts, especially if you are a woman so really she couldn’t have been that offended by me taking a picture, could have she? I really wanted to tell her to shut up and f-off (‘cause how often do you get to practice those words in the real world!?!?!). But I didn’t; I just walked away. And she just kept yelling at me. Everyone tells me she was just crazy. But still, the experience kinda stuck and now I am scared to take photos of anything.

That afternoon into evening into night, we all went to the hostel nearby and hungout on the patio and drank and talked and joked and loved our lives. I don’t drink beer, so I was pushing the cheapest rum we could find on anyone who was capable of making bad decisions. We wandered over to the hostel around 5pm and I didn’t leave ‘til about 12 hours later (I napped at the hostel with some new friends and then went home after the sun had risen and the robbers had gone to bed).

Mural at the hostel.

We started with about 6 folks drinking beer basking in the late afternoon sun, and later, well into the night, we had acquired about 15. For the most part, we were all American which is somewhat odd (usually I come across many more Europens on the tourist trail).

For the record, I also would like you all to know that I gave a brief lesson in fluid mechanics to everyone at sunset as we admired the fantastic clouds (subject matter: thermal stratification in the atmosphere and turbulence, however, not stratified turbulence).

Here are some photos of the evening and you can tell these pictures were taken at a fiesta:

I woke up to a 5.6 earthquake Sunday morning at 7:30. Actually I was laying in bed already awake when the earth started shaking under me. It was strong but gentle shaking (not very violent). It lasted about a minute and I kept thinking to myself, “At what point do I start to worry about this?” I was in that 6.9 in Seattle in 2001 and then I’ve been in some more 4 and 5 point ones in Cali these last few years, but really, I still don’t know what to do. I suppose I was waiting for something to fall off a table and that would have been my cue to take cover under the desk with my water bottle, cell phone, and snacks, but that never happened so instead I just remained laying in bed.

Saying adios to Diego, who slept through the earthquake.

I tried to come here to Lake Atitlan Sunday, but it turns out there are no busses on Sundays, so I stayed in Xela another night. No big deal. I love taking life just as it comes and I am relishing in being able to give up my Type-A personality for a while. We did nothing on Sunday but wander and eat. I took a full body shower with hot water, which is worth noting. I also ate some fried chicken. It was so great. I love that fried chicken is the go to meal down here.

Joe and new friend Sarah

I’ve been here a week now, so I am venturing into the world of street food. I know it’s a bad idea, but it all just looks so good. You can all say “I told you so” when I am laid up with parasites in three weeks.

Fresh squeezed OJ in a bag with a straw from a street vendor.

I actually got to San Pedro La Laguna today at 3 or so. It took a lot longer than expected. I took a “chicken bus” named as such because sometimes people bring chickens on them (its a gringo term, the locals do not use it). It is really just an old school bus from the US that is pimped out and possesses questionable stopping capabilities. A lot of the busses have phrases like, "My God Help Me" painted on the windshields which do not make you super confident about the things going on inside. However, I was exceptionally impressed by the skill of the driver today. We were on some tortuous one-lane roads and it was handled very well.

Chicken Busses

Crazy market next to the bus station.

So now I am here, and I am staying in a little one room bungalow at the new Spanish school (cost of house= 25 dollars per week). I will start classes here tomorrow afternoon. I already feel that this is a better fit for me. There is a significant part of this town that is very tourist-ified (e.g. there is a yoga studio), but first of all, it is a town, second, I am about 100 yards from the lake, and thrid, I am a bit out away from the main drag and I feel very more based in nature (yes, I just wrote “very more” and there is nothing you can do about it).

Speaking of my excellent English, I am gonna try to limit my English exposure to one hour a day here (writing, reading, and listening) and not physically speak ANY at all for a week, starting tomorrow. This of course is going to be impossible, but I am going to try. My new friend Sarah came over here with me, but she is staying somewhere else and she speaks el Espanol well enough that we can speak it to one another to practice. Aside from her I might try to just not make any Anglo-phonic friends here. And with that I must away before I become totally unintelligible in my native tongue.