Me estoy volviendo loca.

If it weren’t for my budget, I would be SO ready to move out of this house. Yes, it was great at first for the nice roof and the open air and the view, but here’s the reality: the dog downstairs never shuts up, he’s eaten four of my dish sponges, and thinks that me hanging my clothes to dry on a clothesline is a fun game for him to play. I still think there may be rats lurking around occasionally, I stepped on a giant anthill in my yard a couple weeks ago and didn’t realize it until my foot felt like it was on fire and I looked down and it was submerged in tiny black moving things, and last night I walked out of my room thinking “oh my god, that’s a huge moth in my apartm—FUUUCK IT’S A BAT” and sprinted back into my room screaming. My landlord came over promptly after that episode and killed it by smashing it with a broom as I watched in absolute horror. Despite me not wanting a bat in my house, I also didn’t want him to kill it. He also assured me that he thinks my rat problem is actually a cat problem. I’m skeptical. Although it changed my perspective on the problem a little bit—instead of my apartment being a filthy rat den, it makes me happier to think that it can now be a safe place for hungry, stray cats to come for dinner. (Which then made me realize that I’ve finally completed my transformation into the crazy cat lady—although I prefer the term enlightened cat enthusiast—that I’ve always known I would someday become. It was really only a matter of time. Now all I need to do is to stop bathing and start wearing a sack and hoarding stacks of newspapers to use as furniture. Because who has the time for hygiene when there are cats to feed?)

But seriously, I’m about to completely lose it one of these days with all of these animals. I’ve stayed over at co-workers’ houses the past two nights, returning only in the mornings to shower and eat, because I’ve become increasingly overwhelmed with the animals and other various nuisances that have creeped their way into my life.

Oh, Guatemala. Never a dull moment.

Also, I saw a pickup truck flatbed full of gringos yesterday. Pana is a strange place. But I still love it oh so much. (All apartment infestation issues aside.) Last Wednesday was my friend Karyn’s last day at work, and it made me start to get sad because not only am I bummed that she’s leaving and I’ll be the only development intern for a while, but also I now have less than two months left here and that makes me sad as well.

And stressed out because the clock is ticking on finding a real job for when I come home, and my slowly dwindling bank account is constantly reminding me of this fact. But this is an unpaid internship, so I knew what I getting myself into.

Karyn and I, both being unpaid and soon to be unemployed, have been having job-searching and resume-writing parties. How do you make job searching a party, you ask? Simply add chocolate and a box of wine and it becomes much more fun! But is it effective? Not always, because if taken too far, your cover letters end up looking like this:

Dear sir or marndma:

            U shld hire me czu I am the BESTD. THE besSt. evr.

            srsly. plz? m catz need food.

                        -hammr

ps—nailed it.

^^I’ll let you know if I get that sick job at UN headquarters.

In all seriousness though, I have landed a couple of interviews! Which gives me a little bit of hope. We’ll see what happens. If I have any luck, you all will know soon. Or if not, I’ll keep at the search with increasing diligence. Because I have no choice.

Working here at MG is still going well, and I’m really enjoying it. I was kind of excited about that blog post I got to write for the website. The executive director even decided she wanted a version of my post to go out to all of our newsletter subscribers in an e-blast, to which my boss reacted: “OH SHIT HANNAH YOU’RE ABOUT TO BLOW UP.” I love working for her.

Also, the group of mothers and daughters that we have to entertain arrives later tonight in Guatemala City, and they’ll be here in Pana on Monday after they visit Antigua first. Next week will be a little crazy because of that. And may give me some good stories related to my inability to talk to adolescents. I found out that all the daughters are actually in grades 6 through 8, instead of being in high school like I originally thought. This stresses me out a great deal because I really just don’t know how to deal with tweens. And I have to like, make friendship bracelets with them and shit. I’m not even kidding. Good thing I’m not going to be with them for the whole week because I think would explode from awkwardness overload. And so would everyone else just from watching me interact with them.

But seriously, what do you talk to 11-13 year old girls about? Not a rhetorical question. This is something I actually need to figure out before next week, you guys. Any help is appreciated.

What the hell did I talk about at that age? I can’t even remember. Possibly all the boys I had crushes on in middle school that I ended up finding out were gay once I got to high school. Should I warn them about that before they meet the same fate, and end up crushed and in denial when everybody starts coming out of the closet at band camp? I would have found that information useful at their age. They’ll thank me someday when they realize that this gift of knowledge helped them to avoid the path to becoming the cat lady you now see before you.

Other than that, I got nothin.

(help)

semi-legit thing i kind of did

Amigos,

I wrote a blog post for the MG website that went up today! Read it here:

"When you are working with Mercado Global, you see things differently."

El hijo de la gata, ratónes mata.

My parents have been set loose in Guatemala until Thursday. Warn the policía.

Kidding. We had a good time, especially at Tikal.  Last Tuesday, I chicken bussed it all the way to Guatemala City to meet up with them (cost me all of $4 for the three hour ride, but the downside is the muscle soreness that comes from holding on for dear life the whole time), and we flew to a town called Flores and stayed the night there. We left to see the ruins in the morning, and we thought we were just hopping on a shuttle there, but it turned out that there was a tour guide coming with us and we could choose to go off on our own or take a tour of the park. We decided on the tour, to get some history out of it.

It was a great decision because our tour guide, Samuel, grew up in what is now the park area, and so he knew all the jungle trails and shortcuts, which allowed for us to see way more wildlife than we ever expected. Spider monkeys, anteaters (and anteater babies!), toucans, wild parrots, and lots of other cool birds. We even came across a tarantula on a tree near one of the ruins, and Samuel thought it’d be cool to put it on my neck, as he’s telling us about how they can smell your adrenaline levels when you get nervous or scared. Which then started a little feedback loop in my brain because I started getting nervous about trying not to get nervous, which is difficult when a giant spider with fangs is inching closer and closer to your jugular vein. My dad tried it on for size too. I think it liked his jungle shirt I got for him in Africa because it seemed like it wanted to just hang out there for a while.

As for the ruins—amazing. We were able to climb some of them, and the views were incredible. And I think Mayan history is super interesting. The amount of stuff they knew about astronomy back then was insane. And of course, only god knows how they were able to build those temples back then. The mysteriousness of it all is what makes it so interesting. So I’m really glad I had the chance to go there with my parents. And we met some nice people on our tour from California and England—most of their names escape my memory except for Captain John, the 76 year old boat captain, but my mom aptly nicknamed the British people Kiera Knightly, Captain Underpants, and Blondie. Not to their faces, of course... but they were all really nice, and for some reason all really wanted to be best friends with my dad.

Having my parents visit Pana was fun too, although with all of us staying in one room…as the Guatemalans would say, “el huésped y el pes hieden al tercer día.” (Again, kidding. I learned that from my Spanish teacher yesterday and wanted to use it.)

They explored Pana on Friday while I was having a nutso day at work trying to catch up from 3 days of being gone, and then over the weekend we went to the nature reserve in Pana and then went to San Juan, San Pedro, and Santiago on Sunday. It was nice seeing San Juan and San Pedro because I hadn’t gotten over there yet. San Juan is very quiet and quaint, and we got to see a little bit of their Corpus Christi procession through the streets, which was cool. San Pedro is a little bit more touristy than San Juan. It’s a lot like Pana, in that it’s where a ton of foreigners hang out and there’s apparently a big nightlife scene there. We went there for lunch, and then it started pouring while we were there but we had to get back to the boat, and then we went to Santiago in the monsoon-like weather while everyone else was running for shelter. We eventually got back to Pana soaking wet and cold, but it was a nice day nonetheless. Mom and Dad left on Monday for Antigua, and are heading home on Thursday. It was really nice seeing family, although we were of course missing Stephie, and were wishing she could have come too.

Since they left, fun things have happened. Like, I found out there are rats in my apartment. I knew $65 a month was way too good to be true.

Monday night I heard something outside my door, like a bag rustling, and I brushed it off thinking it was the wind or I imagined it or something. I came out of my room not long after and found my loaf of bread had a chunk bitten out of it, right through the plastic. I assumed it must have been the dog downstairs (Chino) sneaking up into my apartment, because he’s done that before, and he’s eaten two of my dish sponges since I’ve moved in, so I wouldn’t put it past him to eat my bread. I went downstairs to see if the door was open from him coming upstairs, but it was shut completely. I hoped that maybe it still could have been Chino, and my neighbors just shut the door for me. Wishful thinking. I left the bread out on the table during the day yesterday to test my theory, and made sure the door was locked and there was no way Chino could get upstairs.

I came home to half of the loaf of bread gone. With bite marks all over it. I told my neighbors, and they think it’s probably rats or an opossum or something. I considered calling Karyn to see if she’d let me stay at her place, but I thought about it and I don’t think there’s any way those little bitches can get into my room. I just have to start keeping my food only in my room and in the fridge where they can’t get at it and always keep the door to my room shut and I think I’ll be fine. I’m just grossed out that they were on my table/counter. Going to start bleaching that regularly.

Also, the rats came right on cue right after my roommate left for a month. I guess they didn’t want me to be lonely? I’m calling my landlord today to see if he can help me with this problem, otherwise I’m trying to decide if this is a problem worth moving out over. There’s a room available at the house where two of my coworkers live, but it’s just that this place saves me so much money that I can’t wrap my head around paying twice as much if I move in to their house. And electricity and internet on top of that. It’s still very cheap compared to rent in the US, but keep in mind they don’t pay me here and I have yet to find a job for when I return home to calm my anxiety about running out of money. So until that happens, I might just stay here with my new furry roommates.

…ughhh.

Espera.

I heard this poem on a podcast that I’ve been listening to lately, and I kinda liked it:

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

  -- David Whyte
      from Everything is Waiting for You 
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press

Here was the explanation the author gave in the podcast interview--

"...and that would be written in the form of myself giving myself a good telling-off. And reminding yourself what is first order, and reminding yourself how much energy you waste at the periphery, which disappears into nothingness, you know? And how much energy which is given at the center turns into this beautiful, surprising somethingness, which is inviting you on and bringing in all kinds of other people into your life to share the adventure at the same time."

Maybe you'd have to hear the whole podcast episode to really grasp what he was talking about there, but I took this poem, and the explanation that came with it, as a reminder to shut off my inner monologue every now and then and pay attention, be more present in my surroundings, and appreciate everything more. I just want to be here in this place, and to try experience everything that it is without having to add in any judgment of my own ability to function within it, or my personal impressions of other people within it. And to let go of any feelings of loneliness that may occur from episodes of cultural miscommunication. It’s all just stuff that’s in my head. And as we all have probably found at some point in our lives, our personal feelings and impressions about places and people and ourselves don’t always correspond to reality. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t. There’s always some distortion. And those distorted perceptions that come from being inside your head too much are often what hold us back from great experiences.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense. But I heard this poem and thought it was a good reminder to get out of my head and let go of the things that don't matter. And I thought maybe some of you out there might resonate with it too.

Thank you for entertaining my more abstract thoughts. I’ll now move on to more normal sounding blog-post type updates.

Not too much has been happening lately—just enjoying the nice weather we’ve had lately. Despite the rainy season being practically here, it hasn’t been too cloudy or rainy in the last week or so, and there were a couple days where we actually had a few good sunsets, which I either enjoy by taking the extra-long way home along the lake after work, or I head straight home to watch it from the solitude of my rooftop.

I finally started taking Spanish lessons. It’s just one-on-one tutoring basically, and I’ve decided to go twice a week, just to brush up on my grammar. To be honest, I don’t think the lessons will help improve my fluency much because it’s a very slow and methodical teaching style. I was a little impatient with that at first, but I think it will help me improve at learning the grammatically correct and incorrect ways of saying things, and then having conversations with people helps me with everything else. So I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

I spent some time with a bunch of Spaniards yesterday though, and oh my god, their Spanish is so different. My friend Karyn, the other intern at MG, has roommates who have friends who live in this really pretty area near the lake, and they were having a lunch party thing on Saturday so she invited me along. The people who live in the house are from Spain and invited a bunch of other Spaniards, and then there were a few Americans, and a few Guatemalans. I realized that I cannot understand Spanish from Spain to save my life. Maybe I could figure it out if I spent some time in Spain, but I’m so used to Guatemalan Spanish now that it was all nearly unintelligible to me. When Guatemalans speak, it’s very clear and every syllable is pronounced and it’s much easier for me to understand what’s going on around me. With the Spaniards, and my coworker Laura from Venezuela, everything sounds much faster, more mumbled, and they don’t always pronounce every syllable so it’s hard for me to distinguish words from one another. I’ll admit it sounds really pretty to hear them speak, but as far as trying to understand them, I gave up after about an hour. Instead of hanging out with the adults, I hung out with the Guatemalan children that were there, because they were adorable and I feel like our levels of vocabulary and conversation skills were similar. So I had a little more fun with that. They were telling me jokes and riddles in Spanish and I tried to guess the answers, and I learned a few fun Spanish puns and then they taught me how to dance. It was fun, and educational. And I had a lot of Sangria and delicious food, so I was content with my day.

Riddle time:

Q: ¿Qué es una comida que espera?

A: Es pera.

Lolz. They had tons of those, but right now that’s the only one I can remember. I probably wrote that incorrectly. I don't know.

Other happenings--I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, since I haven’t posted in a while, but a little over a week ago I got to visit another one of MG’s cooperatives. It was in a really beautiful area, near a city called Nahuala, about an hour and a half by bus from Panajachel. The purpose of the meeting was to get a new community to join Mercado Global. Once again, the whole meeting was in an indigenous language, so I didn’t understand anything that was going on until later when we left and it all was explained to me, but it’s always interesting for me to observe these meetings anyway. I like seeing how things are done out in the communities where all the magic happens, rather in the office, where all I see is donations coming in. When I go out on these visits, I get to see what those donations can make happen, and it’s quite a bit more interesting to me than what I do in the office.

Other than that, right now we’re doing a lot of planning for an organized donor trip to come down for a week at the end of June with their daughters who are in high school. A “mother-daughter trip”, which is pretty cute. I don’t know how much of that trip I’ll be tagging along on, and how much I’ll be in the office that week. I hope I don’t have to spend every waking minute with them, but I’m kind of crossing my fingers for a free trip to Antigua out of the deal, because any activities I attend will be reimbursed. Plus, I was the one who organized the Antigua tour and scored us an awesome deal+discount, and on a Sunday to boot, so I hope I get to go. It’ll be a busy week though, but it should be fun.

But before any of that, my parents are visiting, which I’m very excited about! We’re going to Tikal, an area with a lot of ancient Mayan ruins, for two days, the 28^th and 29^th of this month, and then spending a few days here in Panajachel. I can’t wait.

It’s crazy that I’ve now been here over a month! It went by so fast, as things like this tend to. I miss everyone back home, and hope you’re all doing well. Congrats to everyone who just graduated! Good luck landing full time jobs or grad schools or med schools or whatever’s next—I’m definitely still in that boat with you. And good luck to everyone who still has a semester or two left, hope you all enjoy the summer!

Much love.

Rompiendo la cáscara

I feel really good after this weekend. I had a friend come stay with me for a couple of days, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Her name is Maggie and she was in town visiting so she could renew her visa because she’s currently living in Mexico. While I don’t actually know her very well (we have mutual friends from Madison, but had only met a couple of times,) it was nice having someone around who also really wants to learn and experience things in a new culture—rather than just the expat culture, which is kind of its own little world around here. She was really fun to have around to go exploring with me for the weekend, because she’s a lot more outgoing than I am, which helped me to realize that it’s okay to get out of my shell a little bit and stop being so fearful of talking to people. 

For the past few weeks, as much as I have been enjoying Guatemala so far, I’ve felt kind of in a funk because I’ve been trying and failing to establish connections and acquaintances in the area here who are from Guatemala—not just fellow foreigners. It’s been kind of hard for me. For those of you who know me really well, you know that I can be really shy and I really have trouble taking initiative in social situations and being the first one to reach out and make a connection. Since I’ve been here, this has definitely been a hindrance to me as far as meeting local people because not only are they strangers, but there’s also the chance that they might judge me for my Spanish skills. It was nice having Maggie around because she’s been living in Mexico for a few months now, and seems almost fearless and very willing to embrace the culture of whatever place she finds herself in—more so than some of the Americans that I know here. I share that same desire to just dive in, but sometimes I get so caught up in my head worrying about how I’m perceived by Guatemalans, that it’s easy for me to forget that despite the difference in culture, in many ways, people are really the same everywhere, and all you have to do to make connections with people is to say hello and ask them a question. About anything, really. And as much as I get hung up on my language skills, I’m really trying to let go of the fact that my Spanish isn’t perfect. Of course, if I don’t practice, I’ll never get better. And if I put myself in their shoes, I can realize that if a foreigner in the US was trying to talk to me in broken English and said something incorrectly, I would never judge them for it because they’re trying their best. All I can do is hope that people are patient with me, and if that’s not the case, then I have to let it go and forget about it.

So anyway, Maggie and I spent the weekend just hanging out around Pana, mostly just eating and people-watching and exploring. On Saturday, we went across the lake to Santiago. It’s another town about the size of Pana, and it was pretty cool. There was this statue to a Mayan deity called Maximón there, and when you first get off the boat in Santiago, a bunch of kids and teenagers kind of swarm around you wanting to take you there for 5 quetzales, and we wanted to go looking for it on our own so we wouldn’t have to pay, but after a while we gave up and found a little kid who we paid to take us. It was kind of awesome, because it’s a saint that drinks hard liquor and smokes cigars, and while they were performing a ceremony, they were lighting cigars in its mouth and drinking beer and jack daniel’s. Pretty sure all of the Shamans there were drunk. But it was a pretty cool little ceremony to watch.

The rest of the day we just wandered around and hung out in Santiago, eating things like patín, which is like meat smothered in tomato salsa wrapped in a banana leaf, and ice cream that tasted like horchata, and whatever else we could find. Then we went back to Pana and walked around near the lake, sort of near my neighborhood. We found a family playing basketball and soccer and they invited us to join, so we did and it was really fun! The only time I ever enjoy sports is if I’m playing with people who aren’t competitive and either don’t care if you suck, or are also not that good at sports. It was just like their family fun day, and it was really nice of them to let us join. We made friends with them, and have been seeing them around town since then. Actually, a couple of hours after we played basketball with them, we walked into an empanada shop and saw one of them there—turns out his mother owns it. The empanadas were amazing, and now that I sort of know the people that own it, I will probably soon be a regular there.

And that’s what I’m talking about when I say it's easier to meet new people and make connections when you’re not all by yourself. For me, it takes the pressure off when talking to people for the first time. By myself, I maybe wouldn’t have accepted an invitation to play sports with a bunch of strangers. But now that Maggie left to go back to Mexico, I’m going to try to keep up the momentum from the weekend and keep trying to get out there and keep talking to the people we met and talked to for a while—like Maria and Maria, the two ladies who make tortillas across the street from my house every day. I might just go buy tortillas every day even if I don’t need them. It’s just nice to have acquaintances around town, so that you can start to feel some sense of belonging, and some sense of feeling at home. Even though I’m not going to be here all that long, it’s important to me to have that feeling so that I don’t get as upset when I have those experiences that remind me that I’m a foreigner.

Anyway, so there’s kind of the run-down on my emotional state since I’ve been here. Long story short, I’m going to try to get past the fear of people judging me as I’m trying to live in a new place. I went through this same process when I was in Ghana, and I guess I mistakenly thought because I went through it once, I could bypass it this time. Or maybe I just forgot what it feels like. But I’m learning that it’s always going to be a new process because I’m in a completely new and different place. But it helped to have someone here for the weekend to hang out with me and also serve as an example of how to break out of one’s shell in a new culture. If I try a little harder, I think that things will start to get a little better from here on out.