¡Ya queremos pastel!
The Guatemalan birthday party has come to be a common routine for me. Somebody invites me, or my site mate and me together. We go bearing soda or something to share. We become the center of attention at the party, where people sit in chairs, lined around the perimeter of the room. And I can always count on someone asking me to sing one of my favorite Spanish songs or say one of my favorite local Guatemalan phrases. And even if they don’t think I understand everything they say, they ask me to say “puchica” (wow) or the like, and I can fit in as if I’m a local.
Perhaps my favorite tradition, of course aside from serenading the group with one of my favorite Vicente Fernandez songs, El Chofer (“Voy a arrancar, soy el chofer…”), is the presentation of the birthday cake. The Guatemalan birthday cake always tastes a little different than it looks. The design is elaborate, and the inside is more like bread, soaked in fruit juice. One of the hosts brings the cake to the birthday boy, girl, man, or woman, and group sings, in English, “Happy birthday to you…,” followed by, “Ya queremos pastel…” And after singing, the guests scream for the birthday boy, girl, man, or woman, to take a big bite. And after he or she takes that bite, I usually step in to take a picture of the cake covered face. And then we eat, and people ask me to sing or say more select local words.
In May, we celebrated my birthday at my site mate’s house. My sister and brother-in-law returned Peace Corps Guatemala volunteers were visiting, and volunteers from near-by sites also came to celebrate. We made homemade pizza, I wore a birthday hat, and we ate cake (though I did not smash my face into the center of it). But when our Guatemalan friends came over, we put on the Spanish music, and per usual, I sang my favorite lines from Vicente’s greatest hits. The day would not have been complete otherwise.
Language Acquisition through TV and Film
Sometimes I find myself hanging around my house on a Friday or Saturday night, when I don’t feel like traveling part-way across the country for entertainment. And many times I find myself lingering after I cook dinner, at which time I find out the latest news, the best argument on Guatemalan talk shows, or a familiar dubbed movie. It was not until the family flipped the channel to Chucky the other night, that I had learned my host-mom is such a fan of horror movies. Daily, we make jokes, she listens to music while washing clothes, and she bakes bread in the brick oven (all very tranquil activities), but in the evenings when we see the horror line-up, she laughs at the little “muñeco” that happens to come to life. Simultaneously strange and amazing!
Sometimes I feel like every moment of my life here is like I’m in class, whether absorbing new vocabulary and engaging in conversation, or learning new cultural gems, such as the happiness a horror movie brings.
The Clash of Three Languages
Len nan.
(Buenos días señora.)
[Good morning ma’am.]
Ti nik’x teya?
(¿Cómo está usted?)
[How are you?]
B’a’n intine chjonte, yatzan teya?
(Bien gracias. ¿Y usted?)
[Well thanks. And you?]
B’a’n.
(Bien.)
[Well.]
Kwentanx tib’a, qin we.
(Cuidese, hasta luego.)
[Take care of yourself, see you later.]
Ku cheb’xa.
(Que le vaya bien.)
[Go well.]
At the end of July, I began weekly Mam (pronounced “mom”) class (the Mayan language that 94% of the people in my municipality speak). And though learning at least some words and phrases in Mam will be sufficient, while I hone my Spanish skills, the language (spoken predominantly in Huehuetenango and San Marcos), varies drastically in dialect from municipality to municipality.
The three schools where I teach are located in the municipality of Santa Barbara, anywhere from 20 minutes to an-hour-and-a-half from my town center in San Se. My schools are bilingual, meaning the kindergarteners are just learning Spanish and they are learning the majority of their curriculum in Mam, and as the years go on, students continue to learn more Spanish until the entirety of their curriculum is taught in Spanish. But even if I want to teach and/or greet my classes in Mam, I need to learn the Santa Barbara dialect.
Mam does not have similar sounds as English or Spanish. Mam is spoken manly from the throat. Of the 36 characters in the Mam alphabet, 13 of the characters include an apostrophe, which makes a sound that I am not trained or perhaps even able to make. I often feel like I’m beat-boxing, while I’m really just saying, “How are you? See you later.”
And more than anything, I think that translating from Spanish to Mam, while often thinking in English and translating my thoughts to Spanish, makes it that much harder to learn. This may be a sign that I need to stop thinking in English all together—in which case, I lose command of all languages and cannot communicate with anyone.
While the synapses work in rapid fire, completing my English thoughts and my Spanish words, I’ve found myself speaking Spanish and every once-in-a-while, absent mindedly slipping an English word into the dialog, confusing listeners more than they might already be confused by my Spanish, and/or my Spanish with a Midwestern accent. Even if I speak grammatically correct, my words are meaningless, if I slip a long Minnesota “a” (which makes a harsh “ay” sound) into any Spanish word.
But perhaps the most candid moment of the shift from English to Spanish, happened in the grocery store the other day. I was looking for milk (“leche”—a simple Spanish word). But somewhere else in the store, I saw the word “saludable,” shifted to English and thought “healthy,” switching to thoughts about my program “escuelas saludables,” and then pulling up a mental vocab. list concerning words for my health classes. Still, I couldn’t find where milk might be shelved, but all the time, I was looking for “leche materna”. Mother’s milk?! To which I had to think, “Wait…is that really what I’m looking for?” Generally confused by my Spanish and English thoughts, I was relieved that I didn’t ask someone in the store, “¿Disculpe, adónde puedo buscar leche maternal de la pechuga?” Yikes.
The preceding paragraphs were a jumble—such is my mind.
