Moving On
Tomorrow I will say goodbye to my home for the last month, Xela. Goodbye to the women in my hostel who may or may not hate my guts, and goodbye to a city that I have exhausted in every possible way. (In a good way!)
Tomorrow I will be traveling West to a small coffee and banana farm called Santa Anita La Union (www.santaanitafinca.com) There I will be doing volunteer work and I have plans to stay for at least a week. I know very little about what I will be doing there, what sort of living accomodations exist for me and where each meal will come from but I am hoping all of these things will quickly become apparent upon my arrival. This being totally dependent on the fact that I find it. I have an idea where it is, sort of.
My last week of school commenced last night at the graduation dinner. Each graduating student usually prepares a speech or song or any sort of entertainment that expresses gratitude and sadness about their departure. I followed suit and said a few words about my time at the school and accused the student in front of me of stealing the speech and song I had prepared. I did this only because he sang to the tune of the national anthem a song in Spanish about the school and all of its great qualities. A song I would have most definitely been able to whip up had I had the time and vocabulary.
I had requested to spend another week with the teacher I had the second week, Ailsa. I fantastic woman who has given me so much gossip about the teachers, students, and staff to get at least 3 people fired. I will of course keep these juicy tidbits to myself but I have found them to be great icebreakers when appraoching new students. “Hi Im Kellen, How is your frist week? Did you know your teacher had a baby with one of her past students…” or something along those lines. We also took a special trip to a bookstore to buy a dictionary of vulgarities. The book has brought many hours of entertainment to my friends and I and has almost tripled my existing vocabulary and pool of comebacks. I wont give an example.
We had another great week together with homework consisiting of urban legends, tongue twisters, and riddles. Remember this is all in Spanish. Describing to my teacher the legend of Big Foot (Gran Pie), Hansel and Gretel, and the boy who cried lobo (wolf), turned out to be quite the challenge. I love her dearly and will miss our 5 hours a day together. She is an amazingly strong woman, as are all Guatemala woman, and has opened my eyes to the injustices that they face, and have faced for generations. I hope I can in someway help her to provide a better life for her children even if it is only by telling the Guatemalan story to those who may not know it.
Tonight is the birthday of one of the other students which will almost certainly be great fun. My last night in Xela, but I am excited to head to the mountains and get some fresh air and some manual labor under my belt.
Con Amor!
