{"id":692,"date":"2010-10-19T18:25:36","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T00:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=692"},"modified":"2010-10-19T18:25:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T00:25:36","slug":"mi-vida-entera-esta-en-el-subjuntivo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/mi-vida-entera-esta-en-el-subjuntivo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mi vida entera est\u00e1 en el subjuntivo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, an entire week has passed since I posted,\u00a0and it is probably due mostly to the fact that I recently discovered\u00a0that phone calls are free from Guatemala on\u00a0gmail.\u00a0 Es loco!<\/em>\u00a0 I can call the States from any computer with a mic (which is not that easy to find, believe it or not) so now when I am at the internet cafe\u00a0I use up most of my time dialing mi familia y mis amigos<\/em>.\u00a0 Of course, I am not there that often because now I have to pay to use the facilities.\u00a0 When I was a student at Celas Maya I received 5 free hours a week which I used up\u00a0primarily to upload\u00a0pictures to this blog.\u00a0 My new school has the equivalent of Wangs and if I am lucky enough to get online, it is usually\u00a0time to go back to class.<\/p>\n

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A Pop Wuj teacher, Kika, me and Leticia (she is a Quiche liaison who works at Pop Wuj in the morning, I think) with a Quiche family in Tierra Colorado. I mixed the cement that plastered the hole we had to make in a metal sheet roof to allow the chimenea to pass through. Taken with my handy dandy phone camera.<\/p><\/div>\n

So where do I begin?\u00a0\u00a0 I have been at Pop Wuj for a week now and it isn’t that much different than Celas Maya, except that they use part of the proceeds from tuition to fund a medical clinic\u00a0and contribute to the safe stove project.\u00a0 The classes are structured pretty much the same way, 8 until 1, with a 1\/2 hour break at 10.30.\u00a0 Sometimes a school bell will ring, but not with any consistency like at CM.\u00a0 I am probably learning just as much as I did at CM, although this teacher lets me speak more, in conversation a veces<\/em>\u00a0but\u00a0since the poor guy probably wants to choke himself everytime I pause and say \u00a8ummmm\u00a8and then spit out some mangled version of a\u00a0sentence construction,\u00a0he mostly makes me read articles in Prensa Libre<\/em> <\/a>and El Quetzalteco<\/a><\/em> out loud to him.\u00a0 I honestly think he is multitasking…he gets his students to read to him instead of reading the paper himself,\u00a0 and he can work on their pronunciation at the same time.\u00a0\u00a0I actually can’t believe I am\u00a0paying someone to listen to me read the newspaper out loud.\u00a0 I can do that\u00a0on\u00a0a corner in Inwood, and maybe even make a few bucks.\u00a0\u00a0The entire exercise makes me long for Pat Kiernan, maybe I can get a job at NY1 en espa\u00f1ol<\/em>.\u00a0 It does help with my pronunciation which is pretty damned good, close to excellent if I must say so myself, but I was always good at this part of foreign language learning, even French.\u00a0 My voz\u00a0alta<\/em> is envied by many an estudiante <\/em>and it gives the impression that I am more fluent than I actually am.\u00a0\u00a0I also read out loud faster and more naturally\u00a0and sometimes even understand what I am reading while I am reading it.\u00a0 So what if\u00a0I can’t actually express myself…that’s probably a blessing in disguise.<\/p>\n

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Kika using a kitchen knife and hammer to cut a hole in a rusty tin roof. This whole operation spelled HOSPITAL to me, from the wooden plank they laid on the already unstable \u00a8roof\u00a8 to support their weight so the metal sheet wouldn't pop up to the precarious position of the kitchen knife looming over Luke's face adentro <\/p><\/div>\n

All kidding aside, Oscar has definitely helped me improve speaking.\u00a0 In addition to reading the paper (four days of the Chilean miners and their amantes\u00a0was\u00a0more than enough for me),\u00a0we do reading comprehension exercises where I read a\u00a0story\u00a0about Mayan\u00a0history or traditions\u00a0(out loud, of course), then I reread it slowly\u00a0in my head while Oscar runs errands, texts or stares out the window at the traffic, when I am done I tell him what the story is about in mis propias palabras<\/em> and then he gives me a few paragraphs to translate in written Spanish.\u00a0 I absolutely love that part, and all three of my teachers say my translations are very good.\u00a0 I don’t really know what to make of\u00a0that assessment given that their grasp of\u00a0English is questionable, but at least I am writing something correctly and cohesively.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Oscar also chooses topics for us to discuss, and we ask each other questions in the tense of the day.\u00a0\u00a0 This is usually a pretty productive exercise for learning how to use different parts of speech and expression.\u00a0 Although he does also seem to be a big fan of the lecture instead of actual\u00a0conversation.\u00a0 My male teachers are just not that interested in hearing about life outside Guatemala.\u00a0 Lo siento<\/em>, but if I have to endure one more conversation about the freakin’ military, maestro<\/em>, you are going to have to listen to how I make soup out of chicken bones.<\/p>\n

Still working away on the calendar and updating another flyer in multiple languages.\u00a0 So far it has been translated into French, Italian, Catalan and English (the English by me)!\u00a0 I really am hoping to have everything finished by the end of this week, because me and Stef have a meeting with the printer in Guatemala City on Monday (yikes!)\u00a0 I already made contact with the printer in Spanish via email asking for page specs and he understood me and I understood him!!\u00a0 I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it really is for me…I had to ask about specs for bleed pages and folds and write a professional letter in Spanish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Lety packing on the cement on the safer roof.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tomorrow’s post will be mostly dedicated to the safe stove project with some musings about Xela nightlife.\u00a0 I put a few pics up here from last week that I took with my camera phone, but I will be taking the Canon T1i with me tomorrow.\u00a0 I also shot a little video\u00a0with some beautiful children last week that I\u00a0hope to convert and upload as well.\u00a0 Back to work now! Hasta ma\u00f1ana!<\/p>\n

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Luke attaching \u00a8el sombrero\u00a8to the chimenea<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This whole operation spelled HOSPITAL to me, from the wooden plank they laid on the roof so the metal sheet wouldn’t pop up to the precarious position of the kitchen knife looming over Luke’s face<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}