May 24-25, first days in Santiago
This morning the different groups of students were sorted by homestay destination and quickly dispatched across the lake to meet their families. Mine was the very first group, it was interesting to note that the people running the lanchas are exclusively Mayan.
Santiago is gorgeous, and much bigger than I expected. And my family is fantastic so far, for which I am INCREDIBLY grateful. Doña Marcela/Mercedes and Don Salvador don’t speak too much English, and I’m really happy for it because hopefully I can learn some Tz’ut’ujil! It’s amazing how similar it sounds to Yucatec, the pronunciation and a lot of the verb conjugations are exactly the same. I’d be interested to study the linguistic origins of both languages, as I’m sure they came from a common ancestor. It blows my mind that Yucatec and Tz’ut’ujil are only 2 out of 31 Maya languages.
There is a small store in the front of my family’s house where the eldest daughter Lolita (around 45 years old, I think) works. They sell EVERYTHING. This is so different from the US, where everything has a specialty store.
I think Lolita will be my best ally and friend within the family, she’s taking me under her wing already! I asked if I could help her in the store, and she told me I could but only after I come up with a suitable topic for my project. Tim and Carla weren’t kidding when they said our families would push us to get our work done.
My family is evangelical, I went to church with them tonight. There was a lot of clapping, and a lot of standing but I was really happy I went. I want to find out when and how evangelical Christianity spread to communities like this one, I was under the impression that most Mayan communities either practiced Catholicism or some syncretic religion but I guess not! Apparently church will be 2 times a week.
The church service was in a baffling mix of Spanish and Tz’ut’ujil, even when the congregation stood up to read Bible verses everyone knew when to use Mayan and when to use Spanish! It must be from practice, I can’t think of any other reason for the exact same mix of languages other than maybe a tendency to replace certain words in Spanish with ones in Tz’ut’ujil.
I’m not sure how much time to spend around my host family, I ask every time there’s an opportunity if anyone needs help cleaning or cooking but I feel like I’m in the way mostly. Everyone is really eager to talk to me, just not when they’re doing chores so I hope that over the next week or so the family starts letting me help out. I’d hate to live here for 7 weeks and be waited on, but I’m sure that’s not the way it’ll be. I need to remember it’s my first day here and just let things happen.
Lolita says that people will most likely be EAGER to talk to me about the civil war, so long as I do it in a friendly way and make sure to talk to people when I meet them on the street or in passing instead of making appointments. She said no one will come to appointments and she doesn’t know why, I imagine it’s either because sitting down with someone and being interviewed is a nuisance or it’s just not a priority to talk with someone they don’t know or trust. Either way, her advice is encouraging.
I lost my damned digital voice recorder. Will they sell some kind of replacement anywhere near here?
Lolita apparently used to have a husband, I can’t work out exactly what she said because I think she was being purposely vague but it had something to do with him getting too sick to live with her anymore and having to go to the hospital. I’m happy she felt comfortable telling me that, I wonder how attached these families get to us students or if they do at all really?
The youngest sister of the family told me that people keep yelling ‘kanche’ or ‘kanchi’ at me, which means ‘blondie’. Apparently I was also offered a free cab ride, which I hope persists because it’ll save me lots of money.
I’ve been noticing no one has any qualms about calling me out on being on the chubbier side, it would have offended me a few years ago to hear that falls won’t affect me because I have ‘bien carne’, but now I’m (more) able to put comments like that in the context of the culture I’m in.
The youngest daughter in my family left this morning to go to work in Guatemala City, from what I gather she only comes home once a month. She’s been at her job for 9 years and she’s only 25, I wonder if I can find out more about how the educational system/moving on to full time employment works here.
Related to the last item, Lolita told me that a lot of times evangelical church rules prevent women from getting as much education as men in Santiago. Need to find out what these rules are.