Estudiantes

You know that scene in the first Matrix movie, where Keanu is strapped to a chair, has a cable plugged into his brain, and after a few seconds states, ´Whoa. I know Karate.´? This last week sorta felt like that. Even though classes with Esdras only lasted four hours a day, he put me through the ringer and I was exhausted by lunchtime. Thank God siestas are the norm. I feel like I now have a rough sketch of the whole painting -- I don´t have any vocabulary, and I take up to eight minutes to conjugate a given verb, but I have a sense now. I´m still pretty useless in day-to-day spanish, though. Esdras was a ´gordo´, as my homestay host describes, but knows his stuff, and his daily job of being a high school teacher makes him tough and relentless. Unlike in high school, however, he could tell dirty jokes to me. My final exam was to tell him one, entirely in Spanish. It took about twenty minutes, and careened wildly across tenses.

I lucked out with the homestay. My house was beautiful, spotless, and homey. The Doña of the house, Lola, was a yoda-like figure, a grandma of the old school: hardly ever wore shoes, loved to cook and watch her two soap operas ('Tempesto en el Paradiso' was quite addictive), and full of kindness, quietude and love. One of her daughters, Carla, also lived there when she wasn´t working in Belize, about half an hour away from where we stayed the second night of this trip. Finally, there was Lola´s granddaughter Evelin, who was 15. 15-year-olds are surprisingly similar, all over the world. The food was lovely, and they were very patient with my spastic spanish. Every night I would try to use something I learned in class that day, and I would be gently corrected, often accompanied by an exasperated 'ay, Lucas...'

I was further away from the school than Jina, and on my walk over I would pass a small tienda, run by Don Rene and Doña Ella. Jina and I would walk up and get a glass-bottle coke during our break, and often on the way home I would sit for ten minutes, and try to talk with them. I'm quite positive they were imparting great wisdom, but I could only understand every sixth word. When I asked for their address to write them a letter, they had to confer to try to figure it out. 'Next to the cemetery, San Andres' was their consensus. Oh, and put Guatemala at the top.