...Though there are, of course, daily adventures:
• Going to the hardware store to buy paint, and finding that in order to buy anything, one must sit down at a desk and have an extensive conversation with an employee, who then brings out each item one by one from the back for you to inspect. At the end of this conversation, one must go to several different check-out stations to buy each item individually.
You know how when you're learning about different cultures you're always told, "It's not good, it's not bad, it's not weird— it's just different"? Well, yeah. Sometimes things are weird. And make no sense.
• The ongoing linguistic adventures. I often find myself straining to think of words, some of which I just forget in the moment ("It's like clothing... but for your hands!" "Gloves?"), some of which I miraculously remember just when I need it (the word for "pet" when I'm asking a random person on the street where to find the pet store), and some of which I never knew in the first place. (This process reminds me of the brilliant series, Lernen to Talk, which chronicles one man's efforts to learn German.) I find that my everyday life is more of an intellectual workout; I have to perceive and then describe the same phenomenon in a number of different ways so that I can be understood. My high school English teacher once noted that non-native speakers often speak more poetically than native speakers, because they may not know the most direct way to say something, so have to reach for the long way around, the quirkily descriptive, the metaphorical. I know I sound in turn awkward, poetic, and just plain stilted when I try to describe certain things here. It's tiring but it's kind of fun, too.
• Taking it all in stride, such as the fireworks that went off above my roof from 9pm to 1am the other night. In another context, I would have thought they were gunshots. Here, though, it was just an enthusiastic celebration of The Assumption of Mary, a Catholic holiday I had never heard of before Thursday, when I suddenly learned all about, very loudly.
• The slow process of boiling down my American life to its bare necessities, and adjusting to a totally different context. Every morning I delete dozens of e-mails that were relevant to my life in the States, but are totally meaningless here: e-mails proclaiming the the Gap is having a sale, or that my college alumni group is hosting an event in Boston, or that I could save 50% on a weekend trip with Orbitz, or 60% on a magazine subscription!
• Re-configuring, financially: I make one-fifth the amount of money teaching here than I did at my last job in the States. Though things locally cost far less— this morning I treated myself to a full breakfast at a restaurant (I needed to get out after being shut in by the rain!), and spent a little under $2— I have had to recalibrate items that are on an American scale. I have to go to Guatemala City twice in September (more on that when it happens), and am trying to figure out a way to get there without paying a $30 shuttle fare (which caters to American tourists) each way— because this is, realistically, out of my reach. I just renewed my digital subscription to the New Yorker, which tucks me into bed every night, which was a huge expenditure by Guatemalan standards. (I've decided it's the one thing I'll splurge on, because it makes me so very happy.) There are so, so many earrings sold on the street here, which are so beautiful and interesting and inexpensive— they'd be $60 a pair in the States, and sell for $2 here!— but I have to be very careful about how much I spend. Suddenly the "but it's $2!" proclamation carries a lot more weight than it did before.
All is to say: I'm settling in, getting acquainted with life— and my life— here. Every day this week I've been going to the school to help set up. This past week, I painted the entrance.
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