On Speaking Spanish and Special Occasions

I thought I'd reflect a little on the thing I've been doing every day here - speaking Spanish. I was really nervous about it beforehand, since even though I took 5 semesters of Spanish I had never used it outside of my classes and occasionally with friends. But I quickly learned to get over being nervous, and that I just had to dive into what ever I wanted to say and figure it out along the way. I'm still far from perfect but I can definitely tell I've improved. I can speak faster and native speakers have told me I speak Spanish well, which is an awesome confidence booster. I do have some tricks though... if I can tell I'm not understanding what someone is saying, I just nod thoughtfully and say, "Ah, sí, sí" and hope they weren't asking a question that needs an answer. The kind of annoying part, though, is that most people don't speak Spanish all the time, and some not at all. So I can't practice by listening to people on the street, and every time I hear people speaking tz'utujil I think they're talking about me. Well, I guess not every time, just when they same something in tz'utujil and then look at me and point. They're probably just saying, "Look! A white girl!" And it's also hard when I'm in the hospital or health center and the patient doesn't speak Spanish, since it's so much different working through a translator than actually talking to the patient. It's hard to connect, and it's showing me the true importance of communication in the medical setting. I'll really appreciate being able to talk to and completely understand my patients after this!

The other thing I wanted to talk about are the special occasions here. A few times there have been processions in the streets with music, huge crowds of people, etc. This morning was one of those times. I kept waking up to sounds of music and helicopters, and when I finally got up and went downstairs for breakfast, my host dad said there was some sort of church event outside, with "alfombras" (the Spanish word for rugs). The alfombras were strips of designs down the entire main road leading to the Catholic church, very intricate and made out of what appeared to be colored sand. Lisa had told me about a similar event during Semana Santa, and I'm really glad I got to see this. People apparently work all night making the designs, just to have it on the ground for a few hours. The music was coming from a truck with men singing and playing instruments in the back, and it drove slowly down one side of the street, while people started streaming from the church and lining up on either side of the alfombras, all holding candles. When the truck and people carrying a golden cloth canopy passed by, everyone poured into the center of the street, walking over the designs until they were a stripe of muddled colors. The road was packed at this point, and I followed the people for a while but didn't even reach the end of the procession before I headed back to my house for lunch. Kids were scooping up sand and putting it in bags, and people started sweeping it out of the street but you can still see the colors now. The helicopters I heard this morning turned out to be Americans delivering "víveres," or provisions & food, which my host dad told me after he saw them land on the soccer field. I'm not sure if they were connected to the Church event, but when they flew over the lake everyone was pointing excitedly. I just kept to the edge of the road taking it all in.

I'm not sure if I described this event in a way that you all can picture, but I wanted to attempt since I enjoyed it so much. There are some things I won't miss about Santiago (my hard bed and lumpy pillow, nothing to do after 6pm, not being able to throw toilet paper in the toilet), but experiencing the culture like I did this morning is definitely something I will miss.