Tropical Storm Agatha

Guatemala received a lot of rain from tropical storm Agatha. For a hint of the damage, check out this frightening sink hole. The heavy rains caused flooding, more than a hundred deaths, and significant crop loss. More info here.

The government of Guatemala is canceling school this week and the GVI schools, where I am teaching, will be following that guidance. A lot of the kids are getting exposed to viruses and bugs because of the flooding, cold weather, lack of clean drinking water, etc.

We were told that one student in one of the schools lost his father and three siblings in the flooding. I don't know any more than that, but it seems so unimaginable and avoidable, this kind of loss. I really can't comprehend it. We were also told that many of the students' families crops have been ruined. Most of these kids have parents who own (or use) plots of land and grow corn and other crops. They don't make much money from this, but it's all they can do to earn money.

What do you do when you lose you're only source of money? It's simple, really. You don't eat. Many of these kids deal with starvation on a daily basis. Again, I can't imagine it.

As depressing as these pictures, anecdotes, and thoughts are, they are part of the reality of many of the world's children. And they help explain the context with which I will be teaching in very shortly (hopefully).

This podcast, from the NPR show "This American Life," profiles the situation in Haiti and the efforts of NGO's and local people to escape poverty. A lot of the same things apply to the situation here in Guatemala. It has really informed my view of the difficult decisions involved with alleviating poverty in developing countries.

Lift off

So, I've now been back in Guatemala for 2 weeks now. The first week was spent going to Spanish school. The second week was spent fighting traveler's stomach. This week, I should begin teaching at the school. We were supposed to teach today, but because of a tropical storm, the school is closed.

Week 1: Spanish school

Each day, for six hours a day, I talked and completed exercises in Spanish with my teacher, Sylvia. Sylvia was my teacher from my last trip here and I was delighted that: 1) she was still teaching at the school and 2) that I was her student. At our first lesson, I could tell that my Spanish had improved tremendously. She even said so.

I was in a completely different place than I was 2 years ago when I went through this exact program. At that time, I barely knew how to conjugate verbs in the present tense.

I was given a new workbook for "Intermediate Spanish Speakers." It's a book of activities that the Spanish school has self-published. I was excited to be labelled "intermediate" and took some pride in that designation.

The first days were pretty easy. Sylvia quizzed my knowledge of irregular conjugations of verbs and various terms in Spanish. I completed this exercise with surprising ease. Those first two days, we went through various exercises. Most of them were reviews of terms I already had a decent grasp on. It kind of felt like the first day of school when you're a kid. The teachers basically review things you learned last year and you feel pretty confident ("I'm a 3rd grader now and this stuff is EASY!").

The third day was a bit different. The energy that I had on the first two days seemed to be missing, along with my immediate and ready knowledge of Spanish words and phrases to explain what I wanted to. Spanish at my level still consists of translating words from English to Spanish. I feel, with my practice, that I've learned a number of shortcuts and the limitations of my ability to communicate. It gives new meaning to the term "intermediate." My brain works as an intermediary between English and Spanish.

I don't "think" in Spanish yet. However, there are some signs that I'm sticking one foot into fluency. Repeated exposure to certain phrases become embedded in my brain and come forth immediately in speech and thought. For example, I find myself say, "Creo que" and "Creo que si" frequently. They mean, "I think that" and "I think so." I'm surprised by how often I used both of this phrases. They're very useful and they roll of the tongue easily (I don't have to search for them).