Last week of training!

With training coming to a close in less than a week, I’ve become rather restless. (To be exact, training will culminate in a brief swearing-in ceremony this coming Friday at the Ambassador’s house in Guatemala City). The past few weeks have flown by, leaving little time to socialize with my host family and community in between site visits and additional training sessions. In about a week I’ll have to leave the town and the family that have been my home for the last two and a half months.

Amidst the anxiety of this transition, we’ve also had several unique opportunities, such as lunch with the Ambassador to Guatemala at the training center as well as a brief introduction to Kaqchikel, the prevalent Mayan dialect in my new site.

Six out of my group of thirty are headed to heavily Kaqchikel sites, so I fortunately did not have to brave it alone. Although, the absence of some of my peers might have encouraged better pronunciation, keeping in mind the guttural nature of most of the words. True story: one of my friends accidentally burped during class that day and her teacher thought she was actually speaking Mam, another Mayan dialect.

We were lucky enough to have a well known bi-lingual education advocate who also happens to be a Mayan priestess for our short lesson. As you might have guessed, the first try was a little rough. But, see if you can pronounce a word spelled with apparently arbitrary vowels and apostrophe marks formed from an alphabet of thirty letters. Here’s a quick example; our first phrase to learn was “xkaq’ij’ka.” (good afternoon, in case you were wondering). So, as you can see, there’s a reason this language had never been written down. But, as our professor assures us, “It’s easy! Especially compared to that crazy English of yours.”

I'll be an offical volunteer the next time you hear from me!
Until then..