Integration has been keeping me busy!

So I had a pretty fun week filled with a good amount of integration. Sunday I went to two church services with this new family that I´ve been hanging with. One was an hour prayer session with just the family at their house and the other was a two hour culto as they call it (no it doesn´t mean cult) at another guys house who the church is trying to convert. This family is Evangelical, and I´m discovering that the majority of people in Guatemala are either Catholic or Evangelical and that no one really knows much or have even heard of anything about other sects of Christianity let alone other religions. In some locations they have this parade during Semana Santa where someone puts on some costume pretending to be a Jew, whatever that is, and then runs through the town while the rest of the parade chases him. How wrong is that? Yes it´s anti-semetic but I don’t even think people know what Judaism is, or even realize that Jesus was a Jew, or that the Romans killed Jesus. So I went to this two hour service where an hour and 15 minutes of it was spent singing, and where the scripture readings seemed kind of shallow. By this I mean that those chosen stated how God loves us, which is important, but there was no deep analysis of the text or any application of the text to the lives of those at the culto. The message didn´t make me think, but maybe that´s the point. Despite the lacking service, I was able to meet some new people and the pastor invited me to give a health chat to the congregation.
On Monday all the schools in my district had what they call a Dia de Convivo where all the teachers meet in Xela (the second largest city in Guatemala) and eat lunch and give out some awards. The director of Xecaxjoj Irma invited me and offered to pay. I was able to bond with my teachers outside of the school setting, and meet some new people. So I was sitting focusing on my hunger pains instead of the presentations, when I heard the word norteamericana. My body tensed as I could feel all these eyes turn to me. Juan, my counterpart´s secretary, had pointed me out. So I stood up, smiled, kind of half waved, and sat down, but noooo this wasn´t enough. He asked me f I wanted to say anything, and I said no, but then everyone started clapping and chanting this word that I didn´t understand, but it wasn´t hard to figure out that they wanted me to get up and say something… and yes there was a microphone. As brief as I could be I stated my names, why I was in Guatemala, which schools I worked with, and where and with whom I lived. It wasn´t that bad, and I guess it´s a good think that they acknowledged my presence and wanted to know more about me, but sometimes it´s just too much. I was also able to meet Irma´s children. She told me in the past that they had the same skin complexion as me, but all Guatemalan´s think that the darkest person they know has my complexion, so I didn´t believe her. But to my surprise, her two oldest children are the darkest I´ve seen in Guatemala as of yet, and her son looks like Nat King Cole. Turns out that her husband is very dark, I actually think this is one of the reasons she likes me.
Tuesday I went to a K´iche class given to the teachers in my district twice a month. K´iche is the indigenous language spoken in my department of which I want to eventually learn. I learned personal and possessive pronouns, and how to conjugate verbs in the past present and future. Everyone tells me that K´iche will be easier for me to learn because the sounds are similar to English… I beg to differ.
in – I uj - we
at – you ix - they
aré – he, she, it earé – they
Some new verbs (all infinitives end in ik):
B´jnik – to walk
B´xonik – to sing (x is pronounced like sh in English)
Atinik – to bathe
Etz´anik – to play
Xik´anik – to run

Wednesday I went to Tierra Blanca and gave a lesson on Germs (Microbios). The director Leonel planned a trip down to the river for recess so I went and brought my camera. Let me just say that this was the steepest mountainside that I´ve ever traversed (even worse than the volcano) and climbing back up wasn´t fun, but I was able to get some cool shots of the kids playing around. The river water was really muddy, not something I would have jumped into, and it was clear that the kids didn’t connect my Microbio talk to the muddy river water, but I have two years to change habits. When school was out I went to Leonel´s house to meet his family. His kids were so adorable, and the family welcomed me right away. I had an amazing lunch called Caldo de Res (beef soup with vegetables), and really connected with his wife Suli who was very open minded and knowledgeable, unfortunately not a characteristic of many of the women I´ve interacted with. This visit was crucial for me because represented my interaction with another family who really opened up to me and welcomed me into their house. In contrast to the host family I´m staying with now who keep a clear line drawn between myself and the rest of the family. Wednesday was a great hump day.
Thursday I went to Xecaxjoj and gave the same lesson on Microbios to 5 out of the 8 classrooms. When I go to Xecaxjoj I come back exhausted because the school is so big and lets face it teaching is exhausting. Friday I went with the teachers of the school located in my site, where my host father teaches but not where I work, to an amusement park called Xetulul. I went on an actual rollercoaster and had some good laughs. Many times I miss out completely on jokes because of the language and cultural thing, but I actually understood a couple and didn´t have to fake laugh. I also met a Guatemalan pro soccer player Juan Carlos Plata, and all the teachers in my group made me take a picture of them with him. After the amusement park we went to a pool, and instead of bringing my bikini, I brought shorts and a tank top. It´s been hammered into my head that the culture here is very traditional, so I thought that all the women would be in t-shirts and shorts so that´s what I brought. Instead I was the odd one out, and a woman even offered her one piece to me… I politely refused. My host dad an I really don´t exchange more words to each other than Buenos dias, tardes, noches. Which isn´t what I prefer, but I don´t think he´s much of a social person. So turns out that he also went to the amusement park, but neither of us knew that the other was going until that morning when we showed up at the same place. Isn´t that bopth weird and awkward? We live with each other and don’t speak. His coworker invited me, and I´ve only spoken to her three times in my two months in site, and I see him every day and apparently am no thought of. That´s bizarre. But it´s not just me, he was the only teacher that didn’t bring one of his kids (he has 4). Oh well, I don´t think I´ll ever understand him.
So all in all a good week. I think people are starting to know me and more importantly feel comfortable with me. Poco a poco!