City Mouse, Country Mouse

It's a good time now for me to reflect on my time here in Guatemala City. Classes ended this week, and I find myself inside another microcosm of change.

Sometimes I like to think about it in terms of circumstances. This week, I found myself in a car with three other people driving to El Salvador in the pouring rain. We found ourselves 15 minutes from the border when a bridge caved in and we had to turn around. The next day I found myself back in the capital, sin further plans to go to Santiago, sitting in a cafe. I was reading about the torrential rains while watching the rain. I have found myself with wet shoes alot, and wet feet and wet socks. And wet laundry that doesn't dry.

My friend Maria found herself in a new home with a new family in El Salvador. She found herself in a new city with new brothers and sisters, and a new job too. But she found herself without her Guatemalan family, and I found myself suddenly somehow within it. I hope she's doing well.

So I found myself without an English-speaking companion, thinking about the ironies of mastering a language. I was thinking about that while I was talking in Spanish, so it was then that I realized that words were coming out of my mouth. It happened while I was walking down the street talking to a friend. I didn't know who I was, but only for a split second. I think our identities have to be able to encompass that. It's a kind of forced growth- being able to say that all these things happened to me, that I met and talked to all these people and saw all these places. When are you gonna do it? When are you gonna meet people you're not gonna meet? It's a travelogue. And in some sense I had to do it. I had to meet them, in that moment, and talk to them, and eat with them. But in an another life I didn't have to, so I didn't. But it's like another variety of religious experience, and, strangely, people covet it, most likely because they're never gonna meet people they're never gonna meet.

I went to a birthday party and talked with a lot of people. I went to the mall to try and liberate my iphone. For the first time, I wasn't scared to talk to them. But, for some reason, I have this horrible fear that I'm going to forget how to speak English.

Currently, the plan is to leave for Santiago Wednesday, at which point I will finally settle in to the place in which I will live for the next 10 months. I won't be forgetting these days here in the city, though, for a long time.

It's strange thinking about what happens when you meet a goal.