Stranger in a strange land

     

My long-suffering maestra-Maria Luisa
at Casa Xelaju

 Greetings from Quetzaltenango  Guatemala—I’m back at Casa Xelaju, the school where I studied Spanish 18 years ago.  Time is passing quickly and I am already more than half way through my time here.   My head hurts from conjugating verbs and trying to grasp the subtle difference between por and para. Half the time, I feel like I’m picking my way through a mine field.   Every time I open my mouth, a verbal land mine is waiting to explode in my face.  One wrong vowel at the end of a word, one misplaced accent can earn me a blank stare or worse, the dreaded correction.  My very patient teacher Maria Luisa is gentle when she corrects me, nevertheless, my first week at Casa Xelaju is a real ego-buster.  

 Me:  “Er, donde es…

ML:  (slowly enunciating each word)”….esta, donde estaaaah…”

Me: “Oh, yeah, right, er, donde esta la ollo?

ML:  (again slowly) “La olla…donde esta la olla?”  She draws me a hole (hoyo) and a pan (olla) so that even an idiota like me can tell the difference.  Sometimes my long-suffering maestra has to get her point across with crude but charming little cartoons. 

Me: (gritting my teeth) “Donde esta la olla?”

Her:  (emitting a tiny sigh before flashing me an encouraging smile) “Muy bien, Angela!”

     There is no dignity trying to master the minutiae of the language I’m currently butchering. I cringe with embarrassment as Maria Luisa marks all of the dumb mistakes I made conjugating a long list of verbs I used to know.   I tell myself I’m so much better seeing the big picture—I’m just not a detail person.  

     The second week goes better.  I can now speak a sentence, maybe two without Maria Luisa having to correct me or draw a cartoon.  By the end of week two, I know I am making progress when I manage to enthusiastically describe the plot of the Wizard of Oz to my bemused teacher.

 “Como se dice munchkins?”  Of course, a lot of frantic hand waving goes a long way towards covering the considerable gaps in my vocabulary.   I even perform a few songs from the classic film much to Maria Luisa’s amusement.  Okay, so maybe I’m jabbering like a spider monkey, but I’m confident that I’m one of the more entertaining students at CasaXelaju.

     Why am I going through all of this brain damage? I’ve always had a love affair with Spanish ever since my Dad sang my sisters and me songs about stoned cockroaches and told us stories about the small village where he was born in the high desert plains of Coahuila, Mexico.  Twenty years ago,  I put considerable effort into learning my father’s native tongue by enrolling in two immersion programs—one in Costa Rica and the other one here in Quetzaltenango (better known as Xela).  But when I got home, I had few occasions to use it so over the years I lost the ground I gained.  When I started working as a chaplain in two urban hospitals I found that it was tough trying to effectively serve the many Hispanic families I regularly encountered there.   So I decided it was time to return to Xela--a funky colonial city in the Western Highlands of Guatemala--the place where I had such a wonderful experience so long ago.  

      But honestly, besides the obvious need for a repaso I think there is a deeper reason for being here.  I’ve come to realize that the real point of studying Spanish this time is to give myself permission to make mistakes; to be gentle and accepting of myself when I make them; to let go of the need for perfection.   The incongruity between my identity as a not too bright student prattling away like a three year old and my identity as an articulate well-educated woman with an alphabet soup behind her name has created a certain inner tension which frankly, is making me come alive.   Someone once said that the whole point of travel is not so much to explore exotic cultures as it is to explore ourselves while being immersed in an unfamiliar culture.   

      Being a stranger in a strange land can definitely be a challenge, but as I gingerly taste the unfamiliar words on my tongue, I am grateful for this precious opportunity which is stretching me beyond my comfort zone.   I can’t wait for tomorrow—maybe I’ll even be able to get three whole sentences out without a correction.  Bring it on, I say!