Tales of Guate V: Small Victories and Last Times

I got home from a party a few nights ago, where I had had a few too many glasses of wine. I dreamt the entire night in Spanish. They say when you start dreaming in another language, it says something about your fluency. It’s hard for me to say because the dream made absolutely no sense. So, perhaps I am becoming fluid in nonsensical Spanish. Which will help me if I am put in a loony bin here, or if i continue to meet nonsensical people in my dreams.

But whether I've achieved fluency or not doesn't really matter at this point--I'm soon to be heading home. It is four weeks from today that I will be returning to the United States, and nine months of my life that I will be looking back on, hopefully, with a lot more intelligence and insight than I can possibly do at this very moment.

I am starting to enter that space where things feel like last times. A tree is a last time or a person is a last time or the cemetery in Huehuetenango (below) is a last time.

Even a hot day after school sometimes feels like a last time. Today is Saturday, and in a few days, my friend Jen Dean will arrive and we will visit Lake Atitlan. And it will be my last time.
After Jen’s visit, I’ve got just two weeks to pack it all up and head back to the States. With goodbye parties and final papers, those last weeks will fly. So, this may be the final version of Tales of Guate.

I have been attempting to mentally prepare for departure and have decided, here, to concentrate on some of my little victories.

Here is a top 12:

• I now can sleep through the blaring traffic that roars down Septima Avenida every morning just below my window (though my visiting guests can’t)

• My students finally think I’m cool (or at least they have realized that giving me that impression is helpful to their grades because I like to think I am cool.)

• One of my students pointed out a “pun” in class the other day. (For those of you who have ever taught ESL or have actually learned English as a second language, you will know what an incredible achievement this is.)
  

• The pulgas never returned, although they sent a few cockroach cousins in their stead. But the cockas are easier to kill. (Where is my ahimsa?)

• I finally made it to the synagogue across the street, which is very beautiful. It required five levels of security for my entry, and then, I was placed on the “women’s side” of the synagogue, in which I was surrounded by young mothers and children who didn’t stop talking through the whole service. They served Chinese food afterward, so that all felt very nice and American. I never did return but I can't stop thinking about the metal green light fixture that ascends from the ceiling in stacked, opposing triangles with small white lights and metal green leaves attached.

• I am still doing Yoga. I am only actually practicing about twice a week, but it is always in my thoughts.

• I found seitan at a local grocer. If you know what that is, you will be overjoyed for me. If you don’t, you probably won’t care.

• I finally figured out, after messing with all of the dials on my refrigerator, that the best way to deal with the massive leaking of water at the bottom, is to stuff a towel in it.

• In the midst of the Israel/Hezbollah conflict, some of my students started throwing around anti-Semitic comments, like, “Jews should move to Alaska where nobody cares about them”. But despite the sentiments of hatred, I was able to turn it into an opportunity for us to talk about the difference between government policy, people, and ethnicities which, it turns out, the students were really itching to talk about. And it was a great opening for a lesson on bias in journalism. Score.
  

• I learned that Guatemalans actually attach regular leather or canvas belts instead of seat belts to the side of a car when a seat belt is broken. They do this to fool the police. When you get in, you rest the belt across your lap. Do not try fastening it. You will have no success. And do not get into a bad accident. You will probably die.

• I learned the subjunctive. I don’t know it perfectly, but I know what it means and how to use it. If you speak Spanish, you will applaud me. If you don’t, you will probably not care.

• My students can speak English. They can write articles in English and interview people in English and read English language newspapers. They can criticize their government in English and, sure as hell, can criticize our government in English too. They can argue and curse in English (and they do.) They are beautiful. They are my biggest accomplishment.

But, perhaps some of the more important work that I am doing here is outside of the classroom. Or, at least, has nothing to do with journalism. I converse with my students. I write them letters to get them scholarships. I call the US to get them information about studying abroad. I go to their dance recitals and their weddings. I have them over for dinner. They come to me when they get mugged or when they have health problems or family situations. In some ways, I am not just a teacher but an older sibling. They trust me. They feel free to say anything. I think that trust is important. It's as important as any other lesson you can teach.

My favorite university teacher was this guy Chris Funkhowser. He was a poetry teacher at Albany, but he also prepared us for living in the world, for thirsting for knowledge, for welcoming the unknown. He used to make us email our term papers into him during a time when email meant typing a whole load of letters into an unsave-able screen just so that moments before you hit send, the "S" button would get irreversibly stuck down in the keyboard, like an anti-technology rat was clamping down on it inside the system, and the entire thing would implode or reject you and admonish you for using too many "S"s and apologize in a very unconvincing way before shutting down and decidedly not saving a word of your term paper. Then you'd have to start again. We hated that process. But we graduated understanding technology, learning patience, and having been taught that things don't always go as planned. It also taught us that the future keeps changing and that we must change with it.

So, in a sense, that is what I am aiming for. To put out ideas about what is possible. To frustrate my students until they can see beyond the frustration, and see not just the homework and the classes but the real lessons, the interconnectedness of us all as human beings, to see the gifts we walk past often without opening - and open them.

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So, all of this said, my time here is running out. My energies are more and more directed toward the idea of and the logistical tasks involved in leaving. I will miss this place in ways I probably don’t understand right now. I will miss it in the way you miss a section of your life that hangs suspended in memory marked by only a few incidents and people and colors, but as a section nonetheless, an epoca, a period of time that existed somehow on another plane where it seems like you can still put your hand to it, raise a glass to it, say a word to it, but it is gone, really, gone, to the place where memory holds it, trapped in intangibility and distortion.

I have been spending a lot of time here with memory, and to that effect, a lot of time with many of you who are reading this, even though you don't necessarily know it. When you live alone, you visit memory a lot. We have become old, though sometimes impossible, friends.

Living alone, and somewhat isolated, has been wonderful in so many ways. But it can be best summed up in this one sentence someone told me once: “You get to know yourself really well.” So, I know myself pretty well now. I know that I really was the one cleaning the bathroom at my old house; I also know that I really was the one using all of the toilet paper. I know that I like my quiet space but that I starve just a little without conversation. I know I like light and warm days and to be awake on clear nights, alone, when the world is sleeping. I know I like a smooth clean floor I can walk barefoot on but that I don't always have the ganas to clean it.

I’ve learned to have more patience for myself, to see each moment as only that, a moment, that will pass, that will become another moment, that will pass, too. I’ve learned that a random cry is ok every now and again and the less reason you have for it, the better.

I’ve also learned that it’s not where you go in this life, but who you are there with. I feel like I have seen enough now of the world that I can say that. This realization won’t stop me from traveling alone. But it will always keep me searching for those magical people—many of whom I have found here—who make the world's treasures so much more worth uncovering.