I came to Guatemala
knowing a lot of English, a good bit of French, and no Spanish whatsoever. It was an interesting problem, considering
that 60% of all Guatemalans speak Spanish and the remaining 40% speak their
native Amerindian languages. Here I was, wanting to teach Guatemalans how to
play piano when I couldn’t even ask them for a glass of water!
Needless to say, I had my concerns about living and
teaching for a month from the moment the plane landed. After a crash course in
Spanish in the car from the airport, a night’s rest, and a quick skimming of
Spanish musical words and phrases the next morning, I felt like I would never
be able to learn enough Spanish to get through a piano lesson. So I did the
most reasonable thing: I told Mrs. Hadfield that I wasn’t ready to give piano
lessons yet. She laughed, and told me to “just figure it out.” I’d like to say
I did, and that I became a fluent Spanish speaker five minutes into the lesson,
but in reality I couldn’t do more than say finger numbers, note names, and
pantomime the rest. Half of the lesson was spent actually teaching music, and
the other half was spent looking up words in my Spanish cheat sheet.
Thankfully, the students in each lesson were very understanding, and just
smiled as I fumbled through barely-coherent and fragmented Spanish
explanations.
The teaching got a little easier as the first week
went by. My students grew used to my mix of Spanish and English words I used to
communicate, and little by little I picked up more Spanish words and phrases. On
Friday of week one, we took a walking tour (in English, thankfully) through the
nearby city of Antigua. The tour took us through museums with ancient artwork
and artifacts, a jade factory, and a couple of abandoned cathedrals. Afterwards,
we went out to a coffee plantation just outside the city, where we each tried a
shot of espresso for the first (and last) time.
The second week went by in a breeze, and by the end
of the week everyone had established a quasi-rhythm to their daily schedules. It
still amazes me how quickly the students were able to learn, and how grateful
they were to receive lessons (even from an Americano
who spoke in broken Spanish!). Not a single day went by without some sort of
progress, and no matter how challenging the pieces were, the students always
left the lessons with smiles on their faces.
At the end of the second week, we took a trip to
Lake Atitlan for an overnight excursion. Being surrounded by mountains and
volcanoes on all sides, views of the lake were no short of breathtaking. In San
Juan, one of the small towns on the lake, one of the women selling hand-woven
tapestries offered to show us the weaving process. Of course, we agreed, and
the woman led us up a steep hill and through narrow, unpaved walkways with
tin-roofed shacks on either side. She led us into what looked to be the workshop,
with a dirt floor and a couple of large weaving looms, where two men were hard
at work weaving patterns into the tapestries. The rest of the visits were
filled with similar experiences, walking through local outdoor markets,
visiting town cathedrals, and exploring local events.
By the third week, we were all ready and eager to
fulfill another week of piano lessons… or so we thought. Towards the beginning
of the week, a group of about 10 boys and 5 mothers showed up for lessons in
the afternoon class, effectively tripling our class size for that hour. They
were all eager to learn to play and fairly obedient, but of course the lessons
went much slower as it became harder to keep track of each student’s individual
progress. Eventually though, we all figured out a way to teach the larger
groups, and eventually settled into a rhythm by the end of the week.
Roughly halfway through the week, Mrs. Hadfield
brought out some Spanish lesson CDs for all of us to listen to. What surprised
me most was how we went through the first 5 CDs and I was able to recognize and
understand almost every word from the unit recordings. It was only then that I
realized how much Spanish I had actually picked up in just under 3 weeks of
teaching. We decided that there was no
point in continuing the CD lessons shortly thereafter.
For the third weekend, we flew into Flores, in the
northern part of Guatemala, and took an hour-long drive to Tikal National Park,
where we visited archaeological sites in the ancient Mayan city of Tikal and
hiked up the ancient pyramids. At the hotel later that afternoon, it became
clear to us that the hotel only had electricity for about six hours each day,
in the early morning and late evening. That meant that hot water wasn’t
available for showers until the generator was up and running. It didn’t turn
out to be a problem, as cold showers were the perfect remedy for the hot and
humid weather in Tikal. What did turn out to be a problem, though, was the fact
that the fan in the hotel room didn’t work until the electricity was turned on.
We were able to solve this problem by taking very long and very frequent cold-water
showers.
The next day, we traveled to the island city of
Flores, which was small enough that we were able to walk around the entire
island in 20 minutes. After a couple days of walking around, eating ice cream,
and browsing through souvenir shops, we finally made our way to the airport in
order to catch the flight back to Guatemala City. After waiting through an
hour-long delay, we were finally able to board. The plane taxied onto the
runway and began to take off, only to be cut short and sent back to the
terminal due to mechanical issues. After an extra two-hour long wait for
another plane to arrive from Guatemala City to pick us up, we finally made our
flight back home.
The fourth week of teaching was by far the most
productive week of all. We sensed that we had little time to finish teaching
the students, and they were more ready than ever to soak up the information we
taught. When we finally reached the last day of lessons, the feeling was very
bittersweet. It was amazing to look back at how far each student had come and
how much they had learned since the beginning of the program, but also sad to
see the lessons come to an end so soon.
Looking
back, Guatemala was a constant learning experience for me. I learned that
sleeping under the covers is the best way to avoid mosquito bites at night. I
learned that corn tortillas are infinitely better than wheat tortillas when
dipped in sauces. I learned that walking on cobbled streets is much more
comfortable than driving on them. I even learned that people are capable of
learning or achieving anything as long as they have the will to do so. What was
most surprising though, was that I learned how to speak Spanish in a month.
No comments:
Post a Comment