Week 6: Mellow Amarillo

Last week was pretty mellow, relatively speaking. Over the weekend some folks went to Antigua, some to Lago de Atitlan, some to the beach, but I opted to stay in Xela and study at my favorite coffee shops. It is hard to quantify how much I "got done", since what I really need to improve on is my familiarity with verb tenses and ability to access vocabulary, but I did find it easier to chat with my teacher on Monday morning, so there was some form of progress.

Earlier in the week a couple things happened worth sharing. On Wednesday a group of us went up to Tierra Colorada, a pueblo about 20 minutes up into the mountains by chicken bus, to finish up a stove. Previously when I've volunteered for the stove project the original cooking apparatus had been removed, but this time the "after" was right next to the "before". Here's the before:



And here's the after:



Pretty amazing, no? The change was made all the more poignant because the family happened to be boiling corn while we were finishing up the new stove in the other corner of the kitchen, and the smoke from the fire pit covered the top foot of the kitchen ceiling. This wasn't too much of a problem if you were pushing five feet (a common height for folks living in the mountains), but if you happened to be any taller your head was stuck in it. The cough and burning eyes the smoke imparted was expected, but what was surprising was the almost irrepressible urge to drop to my hands and knees and crawl to the nearest exit. If there had actually been a door at the exit I'm sure I would've tapped on the doorknob to see if it was hot before grabbing it, too. Thank you, Safety Town.

On Friday my maestro and I and a few other folks went to San Francisco el Alto to wander around the weekly market there. The city is smallish and very hilly, but several times a week all of the streets become filled with people vending anything from baby dresses to goats to empanadas to earrings. I didn't need to buy anything, so I just took pictures. My favorite area was an open space at the top of the tallest hill in the city, where the animal market was.



At first glance it seemed like a mosh of folks slowly strolling around with animals on twine leashes, but after a bit you noticed the constant price-calling, eye-balling, and exchanging of Quetzales and handles of leashes. It was kind of exciting to watch, except I felt bad for the poor animals.



At one point I asked how much a little piglet was going for. Without bartering, and probably getting heavily taxed for being a gringa, the lady told me Q350, about $43. If you're a hard bargainer you can usually get half of their initial offer, so now I know where to go if I ever need a piglet on the cheap :)

Tomorrow a group of us are cooking dinner at the school. I, of course, am in charge of one half of the dessert. I say "one half" because for the last three weeks of dinner there hasn't been a dessert (for shame!), so we've decided to make two desserts in an attempt to satisfy the dessert gods. I'll be making chocobananas, i.e., a banana on a stick dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts. Yum.

And, still no chinche bites! :D

Week 5: Get it in Guate

I am experiencing a lot of "firsts" in Guatemala. I hope, at the end of my time here, the most memorable ones will pertain to speaking Spanish, living with my family, and experiencing the culture, but for blog fodder there are definitely a couple more interesting, and more unfortunate, ones that are happening right now.

Of course, the one that has been at the front of my consciousness has been dealing with bedbugs. Many of you have been very helpful, sending me articles on how to combat the little f'ers, but I've also been told things like "good luck, but bedbugs are almost impossible to get rid of". That said, I have tentative good news: I haven't gotten any new bites in ten nights! If the chinches are indeed D-E-D, I will happily share the likely reason we were successful. It has to do with this article: Ohio Asks E.P.A. to Lift Ban on Use of Propoxur

From what I've been reading on the interwebs, the United States is experiencing a /huge/ resurgence in bedbug infestations, largely due to resistance to over-the-counter insecticides, and a lack of public knowledge on how to identify and combat the critters. Indeed, before coming to Guate, I had only heard things like, "Oh, avoid that apartment complex, they have bedbugs," and I couldn't have told you anything more on the subject. Ohio is having a worse time than most (true for many things), so the state is pressing the FDA to lift a ban on propoxur which is only slightly less effective than DDT at killing bedbugs. Anyway, a couple weeks back I was at the mercado buying insecticide, and lo and behold, there was propoxur on the list of active ingredients! Yup, the industrial insecticide banned in the USA because of it's crazy toxicity to humans is available everywhere in Guatemala, and I currently have a thick layer of it covering my floor, walls, and mattresses. There's a good chance my firstborn child will have three heads because of the stuff, but it looks like it killed the bedbugs, so I'm going to say it is well worth it.

By sharing this next "first" I am running the risk of never getting a foot massage from Caleb ever again, but here it is: probably because my feet are eternally damp here in Xela (I wear my Chacos in the shower and it always rains in the afternoons), I have a bit of athlete's foot between two toes. Ew. This isn't a big deal for many folks, but for this here hypochondriac medical student, I want the fungus DEAD, right now. Especially because the fungus is only one toe away from my big toenail, which is still all messed up from running. You see, damaged toenails are cozy spots for fungus to grow, and the last thing I want is this.

Usually a combination of keeping the area dry (and therefore inhospitable to fungus) and applying a topical fungicide will get rid of athlete's foot, so I went to one of the many pharmacies in Guatemala to get some ketoconazole cream. As I've written about earlier, I had prepared a short conversation in my head in which I quickly and successfully bought ketoconazole cream from the pharmacist. But as you may guess, the conversation went nothing like I was expecting: when I asked for ketoconazole cream, the pharmacist looked at me, took a deep breath, and began rattling off every antifungal imaginable for purchase. People (med students and doctors, especially), you can buy oral grisofulvin and terbinafine over the counter here! Or almost any other medicine imaginable, for that matter. You just have to know what to ask for. So after I got over the shock of this realization, I politely declined the smorgasbord she offered me, and asked again for plain ol' antifungal cream. Two ounces of it cost me $1.50, a tenth of the US price. So yup, the pharmacies are super cheap here, too.

***

Enough with infestations and infections. How is Guatemala? How are my studies going? All pretty well, I'd say. My Spanish is getting better each day; I still am speaking very slowly, very simply, and very incorrectly, but I can get my point across most of the time. The hardest thing so far has been conjugating verbs. It is tough to choose the right tense and verb ending within the split second required to not sound like a stuttering idiot ("Ella tien- no, ha...hi...hic...hiz...hizo. Hizo! Ella hizo un montón de tarea anoche."). I'm working on it.

My family is great. They're beginning to realize that I can understand much of what they're saying at the dinner table (I'm pretty amazed, too), so they're engaging me more, I'm speaking more, we're bonding, it's good. Rodrigo, the grandson of the house, has warmed up to me considerably. He used to hide behind one of his aunts whenever I entered the room, but nowadays he likes to take me on adventures around the tiny courtyard, where we usually end up chasing the cat, Sol, together. Here's a picture of him pouting right after Luna, the beagle, took his stuffed animal:



Most of my activities haven't been picture worthy, so I apologize for the dearth of photos. I should have some good photos after tomorrow, because I'm going to San Francisco el Alto, the biggest mercado in Central America. It is basically the less touristy, more down-and-dirty version of Chichicastenango, the mercado I was planning on going to last weekend (those plans fell through, but I'll go eventually). So instead of leaving y'all with a photo, I'll tell you about a small cultural difference I found interesting:

Guatemalans point with their lips. My first few weeks here I thought the people I asked for directions were suggesting I kiss them. But no, they're just pointing in a more efficient manner :)

Week 4: Mejor

The battle with the bed bugs continues, but I think the humans are winning. Both of my moms have been really helpful: Guate-mom has been helping me coat my room in insecticide, and US-mom has sent me an essentially-hermetic mattress cover. The latter will be helpful in case they're not all killed by the time it actually arrives in the mail.

I have a feeling there are still a couple left, because I got a few new bites two nights ago. Since then I've reinspected the mattresses, sheets and bed frame and sprayed all over the place, and it has been quiet. But I have yet to actually find one of the f'ers, so it is difficult to say if they've done died or are just hiding out digesting their last blood meal. Regardless, thanks for all the well-wishes concerning the chinches! Hopefully next week I'll have good news to report.

Bedbugs aside, last week was fairly quiet. On Thursday we said goodbye to a whole slew of folks at the school dinner, which was chicken curry this time. As I'd hoped, it was quite tasty. Bonus: it was supplemented by rum drinks made with actual coconuts. Here's a shot of Katy preparing one (for some reason I've only taken pictures of her while she's wielding a machete).



Other than that, last week and weekend consisted of learning the future tenses with my teacher Ulises; studying at local coffee shops with Merete, my favorite Norwegian (see picture below); and going out dancing with new and old friends.



Yesterday the power was out at our house for the whole day, so we prepared tacos by candlelight. Here's a shot of daughters #3 & #4, Jessiecka & Cathy, as well as my Guate-mom Lucrecia.



Tacos in Guatemala, and seemingly everywhere else besides Taco Bell/the United States, consist of a 3" soft corn tortilla with a bit of meat, pico de gallo, salsa (usually a salsa called chirmol in this region), and a touch of lime on top. They're really tasty.

My Guate-mom cooks three meals a day for the family and me, and I'm really enjoying the "comida tipica". It is true that many meals consist of some combination of black beans, tortilla, eggs, and salsa, but there's a surprising amount of variation and supplementation, and I haven't been bored. Nor haven't I really started eating food from the street vendors, and that's a whole other world of culinary goodness (and traveler's diarrhea). I will be posting more on this topic in the near future.

And that's that. Next week's post should be more interesting, since this weekend Merete and I are going to Chichicastenango. "Chichi" has the largest indigenous mercado in Guatemala, so it is the place to go if you're interested in buying anything handmade.

Week 3: When Chinches and Pollitos Attack

I have concluded there are one bajillion tenses in Spanish. Okay, a slight exaggeration. But I spent an entire week struggling with two tenses, conjugating verbs incorrectly all over the place, at times frustrated as all get-out, but! slowly learning. And just when I started feeling comfortable with the preterit, boom, my teacher drops the imperfect tense on me, then offhandedly informs me that there are 26 verb tenses total. Totally dismayed, I wikied to check for validity, and it turns out are there only 18 tenses. Only. I can tell you right now, I am already eternally grateful for having taken Frau Crocker's grammar class way back in high school. Knowing what a past participle/auxillary verb/possessive pronoun is has helped keep the frustration at bay. It is also nice having gone through this to a lesser extent with German, which only has six tenses. But wow, learning Spanish is going to be no small feat.

In terms of how my Spanish is doing, I would say it has progressed well. It is hard to quantify, but I can say that am catching more and more of my family's conversation (which is at real-person speed), my teacher and I don't speak English anymore, and I was successfully able to explain what my "We Do What?!" t-shirt meant last week.

Besides studying a whole bunch last week, I did a few fun things:

I went to salsa lessons with friends. No pictures and not much of a story, but really fun by the end. I'm planning on going once a week.

I also attended the weekly school dinner. No one volunteered to cook this week, so we had Dominos. Whomp. If you're wondering, it tastes exactly the same down here, except 1. you eat it with salsa dulce (ketchup), which is kind of tasty; 2. the ham slices are actually ham slices; and 3. the crushed red chili packets are really spicy. Even so, it was still Dominos (I think even Chinese take-out would've been more interesting). Anyway, the meal was saved by the profuse amounts of Gallo and Cabro we all drank. This Thursday we're having chicken curry cooked by an actual Indian, so I'm looking forward to that.

This weekend I went to the beach. Champerico, to be exact. It is on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, and is a popular destination for highland-dwelling folk to go for a daytrip. Ten of such folk, myself included, went there on Saturday. It was a welcome change to be in a place where you can wear shorts comfortably (Xela usually is in the low 70s, sunny and pleasant in the morning, but with heavy rain every afternoon. Long pants and shirt weather most of the time.). And the water! High 70s, at least. I'm tempted to call it bathwater. It was a lot of fun splashing around in it, but swimming wasn't really possible owing to the insanely dangerous undertow. Standing thigh-deep was asking for it, and this the locals knew: anyone, gringo or not, who went deeper than knee-level was watched closely by them, often with cell phones in hand. This way they were ready to take a picture right after the poor bather was bowled over by a wave, tumbled around underwater, and emerged sans bathing suit bottom or top. I spent a couple hours battling the waves, and survived without any indecent photos being taken, but my sinus did get a good saline flush on several occasions.



The beach itself was a bit dirty. It is black sand to start with, and there was a fair amount of discarded coconuts, water bottles and beer cans strewn about. But this was made up for by the groups of boys ambling around on horseback. They were fun to watch.

Lunch was an entire red snapper, deep fried, served with salad, fries, and corn tortillas. Delicious! And only $6. Voila:



****

Although my days last week were spent studying with friends and a doing a bunch of fun activities, the nights have been a different story. I've not been sleeping well at all. There are two reasons for this:

1. Chinches. You know them as bedbugs. From what I can tell, it is a relatively not-talked-about problem in Guatemala. Ask a teacher or your host mom and you're likely to get a puzzled look (my teacher: "chin-que?") or a staunch denial (a friend's host mom: "you don't have bedbugs, you're just allergic to pork"), but almost half of the students I've talked to here have bedbugs. Show a fellow student your itchy bites and most will inevitably say something to the effect of, "I have those too!" Fortunately for me, my host mom was familiar with bedbugs, although she says it is only a problem with the students and that her family has never had a problem. Her theory is that bedbugs like gringo blood better; my theory is that students tend to be a more mobile population and are more likely to come in contact with them, thus spreading them from bed to bed.

Unfortunately, I confirmed last week that my bed has them. It took me several weeks to be sure because one of the hostels I stayed in at the beginning of my trip also had them really bad, so when I arrived in Xela I already had about a dozen bites on me. The bites last for weeks, so when in the first week I noticed another two or three bites I wasn't sure if they were new, or if they were bites from the hostel which I'd missed on the first inspection. The second week I didn't get any new bites, so I was cautiously optimistic that I'd lucked out and been given a chinche-free family. But last week it seems the bedbugs decided it was Thanksgiving and I was the turkey, because I've gotten another dozen bites since. It has not been pleasant. Perhaps the thought of tiny insects living in your bed and feasting on your blood while you sleep doesn't bother you, but it sure as heck bothers me. Consequently, I've been sleeping terribly, and waking up to new itchy bites just makes things worse.

I had to put up with a few days of new bites because I wanted to be sure-sure that I had them before telling my host mom, since saying you were given a bug-infested bed to sleep in isn't something to say without total confidence. She was understanding, and so we're going to try killing the f'ers. To do so, you put all your clothes and sheets in the wash and Raid the heck out of your bed, dresser, bed frame, wall sockets, etc. This is what mi mama and I did this morning. My fingers are crossed that they were living in one of the places we sprayed. If we didn't, they'll be back*.

2. Pollitos. These dudes made my last two nights even worse:



"What the?!", right? These are pollo del dia, and you can buy them in any color imaginable at the market for about Q1 ($0.13).

The sad thing about these guys, as their name suggests, is that they only live for a few days. My host mom claims this is because they're essentially genetic chicken rejects; they can't lay eggs nor will they be especially meaty. Somehow chicken farmers can recognize these guys when they're born. Normally they just kill them. But someone had the (ahem) bright idea that, if you dunk them in a vat of food coloring and market them as novelty children's toys, you could get a few bucks out of them before they died anyway. I'm not quite sure what I think about this yet. I'm curious to hear what y'all think.

Anyway, one of my host sisters bought two pollitos for her son, Rodrico, and for two days and two nights they peeped constantly. The first night they peeped quite vigorously, which made it hard to sleep soundly, which made me wake up more frequently, which made me think about chinches eating me, which made it hard to get back to sleep, etc., etc.

The pink one died quite suddenly on the second day. The green one survived through most of the second night. But, my goodness people, the poor green one suffered a long, rage-against-the-dying-of-the-light kind of death. It peeped right until the end, softer and more slowly as the night wore on. It was horrible to listen to, and it made me cry.

Which brings me to today/this week. I'm tired, but am hopeful I'll be sleeping better shortly. I don't think I'll be going anywhere super exciting this weekend, since I'd like to buckle down and study. Kind of like med school, there's always more to learn :)

*If it becomes apparent the chinches can't be beat I'll change families, but I really, really like my family, and so would like to stay with them if possible, even if that means fumigating my room a couple of times.



A typical Xela afternoon.