The Most Difficult (but most fun) language lessons, part 2.

I seriously suggest reading part 1 (below) before venturing into part 2.

“Were you scared”

As an American male, I am not scared.

“Were you scared on 9-11?” “no, not really, I was scared for other people, but I wasn´t scared” “Oh, I was scared by 9-11.” Why was my host dad scared on 9-11, while I was not? I had far more reason to be scared. The simple answer is that the Spanish word for scared asustado also kind of means surprised. I guess I can admit to being surprised, but rarely that I was scared. I wasn´t even scared when robbed at gunpoint, seriously I took it quite calmly, maybe it was scary, but I wasn´t exactly scared.

This is not about weather some third party impartial judge would rule me scared or asustado by any one event, this is about trying to figure what the heck is the difference between what I think when I say that I was asustado, and when they here that I was.

Once again, let´s start with me the fairly typical American male (I think), when I say I was scared by something I was so scared that there is no plausible way that someone would believe me if I said I wasn´t, I am half joking, or I am trying to get a better hold of the way Guatemalans use the word. For me, being and admitting to being scarred has little consequence other than in the moment and whatever blow my pride will face from people believing that I was scared.

In my short experience here, Q´eqchi´ Guatemalans seem way more preoccupied with weather one was scared or not. It does not have to do with pride. If one was, in fact scared, it can have serious repercussions. There are two basic reasons I think: ancient beliefs and recent traumatic events.

I made the early mistake of admitting that I had had a bad dream one night. I did not understand why my family took it so seriously. My host mom reminded me a couple times to say my prayers before going to bed. I am a fairly vivid dreamer and I had problems as a kid getting over a spate of bad dreams (some of which I still remember), but it has been a long time since they deserved such worry. Recently I said how I had a dream (I think it was a dream) where I was in bed and I couldn´t move any of my limbs, I said it smiling because I thought it had been kind of neat and because I was purposefully trying to put off their worry. My host dad and brother looked at me very seriously and asked if it had been pesadilla (something pretty bad), but were visibly relieved that I hadn´t been asustado.

I recently heart my fellow librarian trying to diagnose a student who was saying he was having problems studying, he gets bored, can´t focus, and overall is just tired. There were lots of interesting things brought up in this conversation, but I´ll keep it short and simply recall a small part of the conversation “Did you have a scare somewhere?” “no” “are you sure, did you have a scare somewhere” “I don´t think so,” “I don´t believe you. You got scared somewhere. You were scared. You might not even remember it now, but you got scared. That´s what happened to me” According to the Mayan beliefs he says, you have to do something with a doll (I forget exactly what you are supposed to do.).

In another conversation between my fellow librarian and another teacher which was full of magical tales that they themselves had lived or heard about there was a particular preoccupation with being scared. I hope to write more about this subject later, but this will do for this entry.

My host father has admitted to me of not being able to sleep because of bad dreams, and I think he might have an actually fairly real problem of dealing with some sort of post trauma disorder. He spend of a lot of his life in a country going through a terrible civil war. So when I say I didn´t sleep well because of a bad dream, they associate that with the actually serious bad dreams of my host father, not with my easily dismissible soul stealing monsters or whatever new invention of my mind.

Some peoples bad dreams here could be serious trauma inducing events I can´t admit to being scared (even to myself) despite the fact that I am sometimes very jumpy when people come jogging up behind me (I was robbed once and punched once by people running up behind me in foreign countries). I am pretty easily asustado by people joking around and jumping out of shadows at me, but if you do that to me and ask me if I was scared, no I will say, you surprised me, you did not scare me.

Here, being scared can call up both recent memory and current afflictions with post traumatic events problems and can recall ages long ideas about a spiritual world totally separate from our western faith in science, progress, and a one true God which we can get to know personally.

Jordan

part 1: The Hardest (but most fun) language lessons

The language lessons one can never learn. One of the funnest, but perhaps one of the most difficult, parts of learning a new language occurs at the busy intersection between cultural values and language. Because of this confusing mangle of words that carry alternative meanings, words that mean one thing but might imply another, and words that have simple English translation that fail to capture the true sense of the word in Spanish, even the fluent foreign language speaker can be left rather confused, or even angry. There are words that I knew before I took my first Spanish class that I am still trying to figure out.

A well known example of this frustrating (but fun) part of language learning is Gordo(a). A good friend of mine, Jake Harder, came back from Guatemala when I was young and started calling me Gordo (instead of Jordo). Gordo means ¨fat.¨ It was ok because we were good friends, I was just a kid and not worried about physical appearance, and I was defiantly not fat. He explained however, as I am sure many of you know, that in much of the Latino culture calling someone Gordo or Gorda isn´t really taken as a insult like in the states. I am sure there are a lot of very weight conscious people in the Latino world who would be up set to be called Gorda, but the word is just not applied or received with the same manacing intentions or with the same sensitivity as in the US. Sometimes it is a simple statement of acceptable fact, and sometimes it is just used in a more friendly manner.

In the United States we are taught that being fat, or just a little chubby, is horrible. Admitting that one was fat or chubby would be like admitting to oneself that they were justly looked down upon by the rest of society, that there was something that everyone (including themselves) knew that they should do in order to make his or herself more acceptable to the rest of society. Allowing oneself to be identified as ¨fat¨ in Latino culture does not carry with it the same social death wish that popular culture in the states suggests that it is.

But that ´s an easy one.

“Are you sad?” “huh?.. no I am not SAD, I just want to sit alone for a bit.” How many times have I been asked if I am sad here? Triste means sad in Spanish, and it is such an easy, perfect translation, that is easy to forget that triste might encompass a far wider range of emotions than sad does. It seems to, at least where I am in the Q´ekchi´ culture in which I live. After being asked so many times whether I am triste, I have finally begun to realize that maybe those around be could be right. Maybe I can be triste and not be sad.

How could that be?

Let´s look at myself first. A general part of US culture is that we do not admit to what we think of as negative emotions. If I were back at school I would site some article by a sociologist that we read once in a history class about this aspect of American culture. We are always, “fine, thank you “ (as all the English learners at Bezaleel learn to say). If you would argue that this is not true of US culture, I can at least say that it is true for me. Sort of. I am not going to get into weather sometimes I think maybe I am sad or angry without admitting it to myself, if I am sad, but don´t realize it, am I actually sad? The end result is, anyhow, that when I am sitting on my own reading (something few Q´ekchi´do) while others are playing soccer and my host father asks me if I am triste, I invariable heartily deny this proposition.

On the other hand, however, Q´ekchi´are much more ready to admit that they are ra sa´ lin ch´ol “sad in my heart.¨ Ra also means pain.

Many Q´ekchi´ children grow up sleeping in the same bed as their siblings. My host brother of 26 years has never had his own room. Latino families are known for cuddling up, the whole family, on one big bed to watch the TV. People don´t leave their parents until they are married, sometimes not even then. The US is well known to be the opposite. The individualism that arose from single male pioneers going out to conquer the wilderness, or individual immigrants in whatever stage of history going out to make a name for themselves has made us into a culture that values striking out by oneself. The grandiose picture of individual hardiness, whether true or not, is a centerpiece to our societies self image. Catholicism (dominant religion in Latin America, if not where I live) stresses society salvation through the mediating Unniversal Church, while Protestantism (as in the states) stresses an individual relationship with God.
So when I openly sequester myself a little bit, my behavior is quite abnormal. And at least in the limited vocabulary of Q´ekchi´ Spanish speakers (using the easy and direct translation between ra and triste) I seem rather triste.

Am I right then, to deny this?

My actions, according to their cultural definitions of normal human behavior, most defiantly mark me as being triste. In the states, I would say that I am not sad, I just want to be alone for a little bit. And this is the point where the seemingly perfect translation between triste and sad fails. Where I am living, the emotion of “wanting to be alone” can be conveniently shortened and jammed in with the other meanings of triste. I am not sad because in English we do not like taking an emotional state and applying a negative label like sad. More importantly, wanting to be alone is extremely respected. Here, this is weird, possibly disrespectful, and certainly indicates an unhealthy state of being.

hopefully there will be more to come.

Jordan

The Other Day in Carcha

two men were caught trying to rob another man and they were stripped nakced and parated down the street. My mom told me that one jumped in the river to try to get away but pepole went in after him. I do not know if these men were delivered to true authorites.

Meanwhile on the news yesterday was a story about a man getting shot in the city and the police not doing anything about it.

One polititian calls for radical change in the government and a renewed effort to respect human rights. These rights, he said, immediatly (magically through the powers of a free trade system) bring wealth to the country. Sounds great, and despite the fact that he claims that this is how China found such success (WAY OFF, IDIOT) the whole new respect for human rights jargon sounds pretty good.

THen there is news on one station about how the news in the best paper available in Guatemala, The PRensa Libre, was started by the CIA ans still carries a strong bias against certain political canidates. One in particular is very popular among many people I have talked to. He did good things for the people. He also, however, stole money from the state.

In order to exacerbate all this confusion, the educational system is far from being adequatly funded....

What is one to believe in Guatemala??

saber

Jordan


me playing soccer on valentines day. I made one awesme goal. If you look closely you can tell I am in the middle of an.... interesting... experiment with facial hair.

Listening cont.

I had to, because this has been on my mind.

SaaabER (like bear) and VerDA: Thats Saber (verb for "to know") in english and verdad (truth or maybe truly). I love these two expressions andthe way people say them here. Saber means literally "to know" and Verdad means "truth or truly". Here in Guatemala people will just say "saber" instead of "Quien Sabe" (who knows) ans who knows would generally be the best way to translate it. But it is not like they never say "Quien Saber" either.. SSSSOOO, to take things a little to far.... the way people say saber (saaaaBER (again, like bear))sometiems soudsn to me like tehy are saying much muchmore than simply "who knows." Or they could have choosen NO sé, "I don´t know."The fact is that they are not saying quien sabe (whoknows) but ahve chosen saber (to know) instead. Sorry for the repetitive ness Penny Moon, but I just want to make sure everybody gets it. Anyways, it soudns to me liek Guatemalans are making a very modern (postmodern really) commentary on what it measn to know anything anyway. Like I said, they could have made other linguistic choices, I think that not only does "saber" have more elegance, it also carries more meaning. It´s as if guatemalasn are questioning anyones ability ot know for sure anything about this "reality" (those quotes the Guatemalans put there). "where did the dog go" "to know..." maybe they are saying , "to know, to really know something, si something outsdide of our capacity as humans, you don´t know where the dog is, I don´t know where the dog is, maybe the dog does not really exist if neither of us can see it." or "I don´t know, and what does it really maen to know something anyways.... 20 years ago I knew me and my brother were going to ahve a good harvest, and then my brother was killed by the army and they burned our land and I lived the next 7 years in exile, so I try not to KNOW anything anymore." On the other hand, when Guatemalans I know really do feel they know something, they really do know it. verdad is like "truth". My host mom asys "VerDA" I might say ¨boy, it´s cold¨and she´ll say ¨VerDA", Truly... now that´s something on which we can all agree. This feels to me (or at least thisis how I Like to think abou it) like a frustrated or, actually, maybe elated response to the constant Guatemalan postmodernist-esque whining Guatemalans do throughtheir "saber" and it´s implied belief that it is impossible toarrive at any truth anyways. "puchica, mas ké" "VerDAD" "boy it´s cold¨"now that´s the truth"... I don´t care what you asy about ti being impossible to find truths, it´s flipping cold!

I might go deeper into thehistorical reasions why these sort of far out ramblings on Guatemalan spanish might actually hold some water, but for now let´s sum up the possible reasons with: exploiration of humans, war, ineffective and extremely corrupt governance for a long time (ie unfinished roads, promises not kept), war, lot´s of mountains which slow communication and still, even today, seperate people thus creating distinct languages and isolated communites that are ignorant of the world around them, but know enough to know that there is a ton out there that theyjust will never know, and competition between mayan spirituality and Christian belief.

more

CRAP: the soudn I make when I realize I´ve changed into my boxers before brushing my teeth. I then have to go outside to the pila (cenment thing with water) to do it.

Big SPLAT: the soudn of soup spilling all overmy pants at a recent wedding my host sister invited me too.

little SPLAT: the soudn or peaple spitting under the table at the weddign reception.

Jordan

ps. more on spit. In grade schook I was indignant abuot the fact that we weren´t even allowed to spit at recess. I still did all thetime (at recess) and was never caught.... untill my very last day of grade school when I was reprimanded by some lady with a whistle. I was SO mad, I had gone all that time without getting caught. I remember telling my dad when I got home. I wonder what he thought.

It´s been a while

You guys remember that song that was huge for a little while while we were in High School. Sort of a grundgish (sp) sort of song "it´s been a while since I could say.... that I wasn´t addicted" stuff like that, well my innocently written title suddenly brought back the shameful recollection that I liked the song. oh well. Anyways, for a long time now I have held fast to the rule that I need to respect my former self. That is, I need to respect the ideas, views, or ideas of what fun is, that I used to have, even if now I think it is stupid. I realized a long time ago that if couldn´t promis myself to respect (in the future) what I think today, then today will end up being pretty crappy and useless because I´ll always be worried about what a future, more intelligent (supposedly) perhaps more dignified me will think. If I don´t have respect for my formerself, my futre self might logically not have respect for my current self, and if I realize that, then why should me current self have respect for itself? So I promise to respect all of my selves... anyways.... This strategy has already benefited me. For example, when I was a little kid I thought that it was just downright disrespectful and stupid that my older brother sometimes went to peoples houses and TP´d them.... for fun. When I was in HS I learned that it was "cool" to do this very thing. I refused many an invitation to join in on this activity (which as a HS and with pure pressure and with the distorted but intelligent enough reasoning of my friends didn´t at the time seem so bad) largely on the basis of wanted to respect the strong opinions of my former self.

ok, enough of that, let´s get back to Guatemala, it´s been a while.

I just got back from MCC meetings in the city. It was a lot of fun to hang out wth the MCC team here. They are all a lot of fun and they are all very good people. I am constantly amazed at how different everyone on the team is, and yet how well we all get a long.
The highlight of our time was geting ready for our performance in a talent show which will be held at the regional MCC meeting in Nicaragua in January. I won´t reveal what it will be for fear of spy´s from SALTers in other countriçys in Central America who might read thsi and reveal the secret of what we are going to do. Suffice it tosay that it was a lot of fun.

It reminded me of the annual "talent" show which happens at my Penner sides Christmas gathering. I will miss that.

Anyays, we spent a lot of time talking about thefuture of MCC in Guatmala, values, and methods,. It was good. We also had a lot of fun, and for me it was just nice to be in a new place, get different food, and have a hot shower and room where the sunlight woke you up in the morning. My room in Carcha has a window, but it has no screen and it is not made of glass, but wood. So there is only light when it is open.

We also had a Christmas dinner which, being prepared by my former hostmom inthe city, was amazing. I also helped in hte making and earing of sugar cookies. We followed up dinner witha rousing game of pictionary. David Janzten, Beth peachy, and I won. I did bad drawing but twice I the first guess to come out of my mouth was correct, giving our team aneasy victory. One was Christopher Columbus ( guess as soon as I saw two little boats and what appeared to be a land mass) andtheother was Rocky Mountains. I have never played such an intense, hotly contested game of pictionary. THen we played the dictionary game which was also a lot of fun. Though I think we had a bad dictionary. I think in the first seven words no one guessed the correct definition, and it was because the definitions usually just sounded badly writen. I reminded myself of my dad with this entry for one word with the successful definition, "A man of unusual proportions" . My dad is not a man of unusual proportions, that just seemed to me like a very typical way that my dad might word the less politically correct, ¨that man is fat." Earlier that day we had also eaten pizza (it had been a while for me) and played soccer. Saturday we relaxed in theMCC apartment, went out to get coffee (I had gelato), I visited my former host family, made an excelent dinner, and hung outlate into the night talking, listening to David play his new guitar, and singing along. Very fun.


Now I am back in the office finishing up my project and wrking on getting ready for a Work and Learn team to come my way to Bezaleel in January.

oh yes, while visiting my host dad in the city he told me, ¨Ya casi no tenés accento gringo" or "you almost don´t have a gringo accent anymore" so that made me feel pretty darn good. Though I think in that moment I had been talking particularly well. I still stumble around sotimes when I am not sure what to say or how to say it. I am still, probably pretty much everyday, reminded that my vocabulary is limited, I need to get back to the books (maybe even with a dictionary) and continue learning vocab. I really want to learn higher level vocab. It wil be dificult here though because spansih is the second langauge of most people here too, andmost don´t read, so it will really need to be a conscious effort form me. Also my listening skills need to improve. They talk slow here and I am afraid that if I went to a faster speaking place I would ahve problems.

Anyways it is about time I go on and get home.

I think with Christmas season coming, thinking about all the traditons of my family and with people at Bethel College, I am entering a little bit of another period of missing home(s). I even kind of miss the whole commercial aspect of Christmas which has hardly hit Carcha. The cheesy Christmas songs that have nothing to do with Jesus and everything. It is all part of a season which I miss.

I did however, receive andelectronic Christmas card from Barry and Brenda Bartel and THE WHOLE BETHEL COLLEGE CAMPUS COMMUNITY. I thoght that was funny... thanks guys!! ok enough, fun, I actually did kind of appreciate it. I do feel apart of an extended Bethel community that is still worth something despite being so seperated. Thanks Bethel, you will always give me warm fuzzy feelings.

ok, I need to go

Jordan

Language School is Over

I know I haven't really written anything about language school, but now that it's over I figure I should write something really fast. I received one on one classes with an extraordinary teacher, Marta Calderon. A lot of the time we just talked, and hung out, so often times it didn't even feel like class! We studied the subjunctive tense a lot, however, and I now feel a lot more confident with it. Funny though, how sometimes you still make a lot of elementary mistakes. I've been really bad recently mixing up the gender of words, or not agreeing them. THis is maybe the hardest thing for me when I'm speaking, hopefully just by continuing to read, talk, and listen my mistakes will decrease. For some reason recently I've caught myself saying Yo me gusta a time or to... really stupid. And the other day I said tenes hombre. I am also kind of getting the hang of vos too, which is nice because that's what young men here use with young men. If they use tu, apparently it sounds like you are homosexual... definately not a good thing here in Guatemala if you want male friends. Luckily as a foreigner people are forgiving!

My family has been wonderful. I get good food and I've really enjoyed hanging out with my host dad, Noel, talking about all sorts of things, from sports to politics to religion. We are both into the playoffs this year. Congratulations to all the blue blooded Dodger fans in my family. You guys are looking pretty good. A lot of people visit the family, so I meet lots of random people too, which is great. And a lot of them are nice and want to take the time to include a gringo in the conversation too.

I just finished the book El Senor Presidente by Miguel Angel Asturias. It's a very difficult book and I am prett proud I finished it and understood it. Though I am positive I do not have a level of understanding that allows me to fully appreciate it. I am just happy I was able to appreciate it at all. Let's just say it had a fair amount of words that weren't in my dictionary, and that can be frustrating. I did about a 15, 20 minute presentation on it today, and at times I felt pretty terrible, but other times were alright.

I've also had a lot of fun witht he other students here. Besides the two other MCC'ers, David and Raquel, who are always a lot of fun, there are four others, Tina and Cari: former Bethel students like me, Jennifer one of my brothers best friends, and Audrey, who, despite the fact that I didn't already know her has also been fun to get to know. The despite the fact part was a joke. We have had fun hanging out at CASAS, going to a soccer game, getting lost, shopping at a great market, worshiping at a Catholic church built on Mayan ruins in which people still mix in ancient religious traditions, visiting Mayan ruins, and playing some intense games of spoons... to name a few.

So I will be going out to my placemeant between Monday and Thursday. Finally. I hope I am prepared for it. I am definately ready to start though. THe family I was going to live with there is not quite ready though, so I am going to live with a different family for about a month and then move in with yet another family. That my not sound like the best situation, but the way I see it, it will just give me more close friends in Guatemala.

On a more somber note, recently we have been inundated by sombering news having to do with violence here in Guatemala city. It is quite bad, our CR from Colombia says it is much more dangerous to live here than there... so keep Guatemala in your thoughts and prayers. Guatemala's biggest problem is gangs. There are lots of single parent househoulds, and here doing that is even harder than it is in the states. The reasons for all the single parents here are complex, I think, having to do with culture, government policies, a violent recent history, and poor economic conditions, that I really don't know enough about to write anything worth your while. Anyways, kids end up growing up on the streets and joining gangs for support. Not a lot of public systems are set up to prevent kids from going the gang route. They end up doing things like killing a 26 and 24 year ould bus driver and aydante for not paying the taxes the gang had imposed on them. Or giving death threats to a community organizer. Meanwhile, families outside of the city are forced to move off of their land becaues of rising prices. They then have to try to squat on unused land of large landowners. The get evicted from there and have nowhere to go... all the while knowing that the land they were evicted from was gained by the large land holders because of unjust land policies enforced by liberal- not in the sense of politics today in the USA- dictators... all in the name of 'progress.' Yes it can be a sad story, and I haven't even mentioned the still recent cival war here.

But anyways, things are still good for me personally here.

My little while or strong feelings of nostalgia for the past have moved on and write now I am very happy to be here doing what I am doing. I can be a pretty nostalgic person sometimes, but I think I generally do a good job of staying present in the moment. That is not to say I don't want any of you, if you ever feel the disire, to write me a note and pull me back to Kansas, California, or wherever, please do!

Anyways, hopefully, I can put some pictures here sometime of Guatemala, I don't have my camara cord though, oh well.

Hope all of you are doing well!

Jordan

A short update

Today was my third day of language study and it has been going pretty well. It's four hours, but with a thirty minute break which can turn into a 40 minute break. My maestra is fun and a lot of times we just talk about a variety of things- immigration, Obama vs Mccain, spanish literature, racism in Guatemala and the United States, school systems... many times the time se fue volando (went by really fast). Today we listened to music. It was a fun exercise. Sometimes I talk pretty well, other times not.

The other with my host family night we watched the new version of poseidon on television. Kind of fun.

I am now starting to read the book El Senior Presidente which won a nobel prize and is by Asturias, a Guatemalan auther. So for it is pretty difficult though.

Today was also my first day in which I went to school on my own. Yesterday my host brother showed me the way. I decided to be safe and walk today, although it took a long time and isn't too fun with the traffic and pollution.

Jordan

changes and other random things

first Q´eqchi´sentence- lub´lu li ishk sa ha´ which means She is tired from swimming (we were watching the olympics). Not everything in this sentence is spelled right and it might actually literally mean someting more like she is tired from water, not sure. In Kechi (easier way to spell it) to eat means to eat corn (like in Khmer but with corn instead of rice).

changes-¨teaching english¨the lame pat answer I generally had for asnwering what I was going ot do in Guatemala has rapidly given way to ¨Idon´t know.¨ I will be helping in many ways. Hopefully I can attack one of the core Guatemalan problems and give self confidence and empower many of the younger generation here in Guatemala through my work at the Bezeleel school.

changes-I have actually been enjoying strong Guatemalan coffee regularly. I´m kind of scared, but I still drink at least one cup of water in the morning before having any coffee whatsoever. And I am only drinking a little bit.

random information- In the late nineteenth century, with the encouragment of a liberal Guatemalan government many Germans invested in Coffee in Guatemala. The government declared lands where indigenous persons lived vacant and let foreign investors take the land. For many years the government forced, through various strong-arm tactics, these same indigenous persons to provide cheap labor for coffee growing and harvesting. Bringing the market economy into central Guatemala not only forced many formerly self-sufficient farmers into wage labor through the introduction of cash crops, it also changed the nature of Mayan religion. No one is really sure how it all happend, but the tzuultaq´as (mountian god´s that mayans believed they relied upon for good crops) began to appear in dreams to the Mayan people, looking like Germans. Apparently the Germans ownership of the land was just that much like the tzuultaq´as ownership (to whom Mayans had to pray and sacrifice to in order to receive permission ot plant corn) of land to cause this crazy conflation of ancient religion and current social-political circumstances.
The availability of cheap labor that the Guatemalan government provided also contributed toward kindney stones in the United States.

also- David Janzen can play a mean Canadian folk tune

Jordan