Getting (re)started

Hola amigo/as and enemigo/as!

As some of you know, and the rest of you are going to know, I’ve once again decided to shirk responsibility and jet off to an exotic location instead of being a grown-up. 

Also, I dyed my hair pink. Except it got faded about 5 days later when I marinaded for too long in a hot spring. 

This time, I’m in Quetzaltenango in Guatemala for two months, where I’m hoping to gain something resembling fluency en espanol. I’ve always wanted to have a second language under my belt, and it’s been increasingly annoying to me that I don’t.

Why Guatemala? Good question. My plan was always to end up in South/Central America, but when I started googling where was the best place to learn Spanish, Quetzaltenango kept on coming up. And because I love and trust the internet and know it would never to anything to hurt me – I booked a flight.

Nek minnit – here I am.

Well, look at you Xela, standing there all perfect like.  

Quetzaltenango. It’s pronounced Kwet-zal-ten-ango (I’m spelling this out because it took me about three days of being here to have a crack at pronouncing it).  Conveniently, the city has a Mayan name – Xelaju, which is mercifully shorter, and in common parlance is shortened even further to Xela, which is pronounced Shay-lah. It’s Guatemala’s second largest city at  about 150,000 people (the largest is Guatemala City, which has three million), and is considered to be a great place to learn Spanish because there aren’t many tourists here, so many people don’t speak English. Having been here for a few days – I can attest to the latter.  So even if learning Spanish turns out to be a bust, I’m coming back with wicked charade skills.  So I can be even more fun at parties.

I’m hoping to be a marginally less terrible blogger in the future and actually keep this updated, but on the other hand, you all know that I am fundamentally incapable of keeping my shit together for long, so don’t be too mad if this falls to the wayside, or even worse, if I start posting in Spanish to get more practice. If I end up with a couple Spanish posts and you decided to put it through Google Translate – I trust you will assume all coherence issues are purely the fault of the website, and not the author.

Oh hai. What are you doing up there?

I’ve started language school this week, which has been tough, but also really great – mostly because I might have permanently damaged my rotator cuff during an especially vigourous request for directions. I’m jumping in at the deep end with 5hrs a day of one-on-one lessons and given how much fun I had attempting learning Danish a few years ago, you can expect some hilarious videos of me learning to subtly roll “r”s .

So that I get a bit more Spanish, and can learn a bit more about culture here I’m doing a homestay with a local family while I’m here.  I was really nervous about doing the homestay, when I arrived yesterday they were having a birthday party for their three (ish) year old, Angel (but pronounced, an-*static throaty sound I can’t make yet*-el), and 11 year old Jasmine.

All in!

It was a big gathering with their friends and relatives who all live in the same street – we had piñatas, and games and cake and football. Everyone was so lovely and welcoming, it has made me so so so excited to be able to speak with these wonderful strangers who are letting me invade their home and their lives for the next eight weeks.

Oh yeah, this is Olly - my family's completely adorable dog. 

Let the adventure begin!

Literally the greatest photo I will ever take.