I love my new life in Chimaltenango. I absolutely adore Dora, my host mom. She and I can talk for hours, which is rather remarkable, considering that I only have 2 months of experience speaking Spanish. The fact that I love to talk to people and hear their stories has made the learning process rather easy. Of course, I still have daily moments of verguenza (embarrassment), but those moments are often wonderfully chistoso (funny). The past two weeks I worked with the children of the women in the Corazon de Mujer group. Working with the two to six-year-olds was a humbling experience, let me tell you. I have never been known for paciencia (patience). I had the expectation that I would be teaching them English songs and games and we would all hold hands and skip afterwards, needless to say, this did not occur. I had babies running here and there, biting each other, crying, and doing everything but listening to the Gringa (me). After a day of complete and utter chaos I decided to try a new approach: do anything to keep the kids from eating one another and/or crying. We played with play-doh, drew pictures, and read stories. Only two kids cried the second day and only one got bitten. I used art as the vehicle to teach the kids words in English and they really seemed to like this approach. And while we had very few supplies to work with, my kids were definitely not lacking in the imagination department. For several of the days I also had the opportunity to work with the older kids, ages 6-13, and that was a blast! I really connected with them and they were extremely eager to learn (aprender) English; we played games and sang songs, though we never got around to the holding hands and skipping bit.
Another exciting bit of news: I learned to weave. No joke. I spent 13 hours weaving a scarf (pictures of the process will be in the next post). I think Dora was a little nervous to teach me, because it's actually pretty hard to learn, but I caught on quickly. :) It was actually kind of funny because when her friends and sisters came over she brought them into the room where I was weaving and bragged to them that I was better at weaving than most Guatemalans. Of course this caused me to blush furiously and fumble with my weaving (I've never been very comfortable with an audience). Although her praise made me embarrassed, it also made me feel like she is starting to think of me like a daughter (hija). I feel so lucky to have her as one of my Guatemalan moms, because she is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I'd love to tell you all about her amazing story, but I need to ask her permission first. I'll post again soon! Thanks so much for reading and please keep my Guatemalan family and me in your prayers! :)
