Friday 2 July 2010

Hablo, Hablas, Habla, Hablamos, Hablan

So yes, I'm at Spanish school in Antigua, and spending my holiday learning to conjugate verbs. When I got to Antigua the accent and speed of speaking made it very obvious that I would need to speak more Spanish. As did the complete lack of English speakers. This being the most touristy town in Guatemala, and understandably so, makes my lack of Spanish skills seem all the more pressing. Fortunately my Spanish comprehension has come along in leaps and bounds, and I am even capable of dealing with a call centre in Spanish after only one week of lessons. Unfortunately I'm not capable of getting what I want out of the call centre (them to actually deliver text messages sent to me to my mobile phone...), but I'm certainly capable of explaining the problem and hearing “no es posible. Espara por favor”. For those of you familiar with Spanish this won't be a surprise, for those of you not, I'll give you one guess. Seriously, you don't need more. So I have one more week of Spanish lessons planned in Antigua, and I'm now learning the past tense, meaning that me and my teacher may be able to move on from topics such as: her ex-husband refusing to pay child support; Fairtrade; why telephone companies try to mess you around in Guatemala; and the problems macho men have in this day and age, and instead start discussing what I did on the weekend.

And mostly what I do in my free time (when I'm not taking lessons in how to make tortillas or in Salsa and Merenge) is take photos, because Antigua es uno puelbo muy bonito. All the streets are quaintly cobbled and reminiscent of colonial era towns in Spain, just built on only one or two stories. This means that the new cars drive slowly (so as not to destroy their suspension I would guess), the old cars drive fast (presumably to even out the bumps because their suspension no longer works) the mopeds ride fast and not necessarily in the right direction down the one way streets, and the chicken buses drive at breakneck speed, never actually stopping to let passengers fall off or on.

The houses are all brightly coloured, and of course shop-frontage or signage is practically non-existent. Whereas you may see the word “tienda” painted down the side of the stone door frame, or over the mantle, you will actually have to enter the shop to find what it sells, in most cases hidden behind bars with just enough space to allow you out of the afternoon rain. Antigua having so many tourists mean that it has the advantage of a dedicated tourist police-force, resulting in a rather safe feeling atmosphere and a rather strange bubble effect where many gringos seem afraid to actually leave Antigua.

Another major feature of Antigua are the sheer numbers of churches and ruins (although I'm pretty sure that these are far outnumbered by the number of language schools!). At one point Antigua was the capital of Guatemala. The capital was moved to Guatemala City after an earthquake razed Antigua in 1773, resulting in the virtual abandonment of the city. This mass movement of people meant that there were no longer enough bums for all the church seats, and many of them are still in ruins. Those that were re-built have been rebuilt in a slightly more sensible style for somewhere surrounded by volcanoes and rather earthquake-prone: short, squat, and none of these silly fancy spire things that Europeans seem to want on places of worship.

The general theme I have found of Guatemala is that the people are friendly and talkative, and really don't care whether you speak Spanish or not, they will still chatter away quite happily at you, and all you need to bring to the conversation is a smile and the occasional “si”. If you tell them that Antigua is beautiful they practically glow with pride. A bella city, bella people and bella handicrafts, combined with bella food and a bella setting it tells me that I have to leave and see some of the “real” Guatemala before I get too comfortable! And learn some more vocab...

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