"Jach Ootilen, Mina'anten Taak'in"

June 9th, 2009

I had a delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast accompanied by a plate of sweet pineapple and my daily apple wrapped in a plastic bag for my trip to class. Christa was absent for the second time in the past seven classes, which left everyone wondering what tragedy had befallen our most ill-fated classmate. I had to read my homework assignment first again today, a small letter answering my father’s request for money. I think that Ismael quite liked my approach. Instead of agreeing to send money to my father for an ailing brother I replied that I was quite poor and had a small income, followed by a statement telling him to ask my rich sister instead. “Jach óotilen, mina’anten táak’in. K’áat ti’ in kiik,” or “I am very poor, I have no money. Ask my sister.” Ismael couldn’t stop laughing and repeated the lines in question over and over again until it was equally enjoyed by all of my peers.

After class we remained in el centro to grab lunch at a simple restaurant directly across from the Hotel San Juan, our brief accommodations from last summer, and the establishment that I will book for Tim’s first night in Merida. Lunch consisted of a sandwich on the freshest whole wheat roll along with a cold glass of my favorite beverage, jamaica, in the company of Mark, Allison, and Pablo. Afterwards I walked to the UADY library to use the internet and enjoy the copious amounts of air conditioning before our four o’clock lecture on cultural linguistics. Christa made her grand appearance at the lecture regaling us with her tales of theft and robbery as her notes, textbooks, and laptop were stolen from her project’s van the previous evening. In my kindness, which sometimes I question, I loaned her my tediously typed notes to photocopy, as did Stephanie from Level III. I do try to follow the golden rule once in awhile, even though this particular instance backfired later. I will have to remind myself not to attempt any sort of interaction with Christa…ever. The lecture proved to be two and a half hours of pure boredom for me as it was presented entirely in Spanish. Thus, my rather sad attempts to follow the presentation quickly diminished after the first fifteen minutes. The entirety of my notes is as follows: blah, blah, blah, linguisticos, blah, blah, anthropologia, blah, blah. Obviously I took quite a bit away from the lecture. What you cannot see are the hearts in the margin drawn around Tim and Heather, the list of items to be sent from Chicago, and another list of various names beginning with G for my next encounter with one of Gideon’s rather cute yet unwelcome friends.

My light at the end of the tunnel was a pre-planned short phone call to Tim, of which I emphasize the word short. It can be assumed that the conversation did not last mere minutes, though one does wonder how many times you can say “I love you” in one thousand two hundred seconds, which is twenty minutes for my mathematically challenged readers. It was so good to hear his voice, and yet it will certainly make the next eleven days drag on forever. Sleep came quickly with my happy heart filled for a short while with the sound of my love’s voice.

June 10th, 2009

Last night Christa informed us of a rather frightening exam on everything we’ve ever learned in Maya to take place during today’s lecture. Apparently our fellow classmate was informed on Monday in a private conversation with Ismael. Something just doesn’t seem right about this situation as one student should never know about an exam two days before the others. Luckily her information proved faulty, as we all assumed anyway. Ismael does love to joke around, though Christa is certainly the type to believe everything she hears. And then of course any jokes are often lost in translation from Maya to Spanish and Spanish to English. However, cue horror music now, the dreaded exam will occur on Friday instead. We were given a rather long translation for homework and decided that a few of us would gather at five o’clock to decipher the text together.

After class I spent a few hours at the pool before Connie and I walked to the Parque Aleman and a comfortable table overlooking the kids laughing on the carousel and street vendors selling their wares. Our table was situated outside an ice cream shop and so Allison, Connie, Chris, and I each bought a deliciously cold and deliciously sweet fruit popsicle, the tangy lime my personal favorite. It took all four of us and four different dictionaries to complete the text in just over two hours. At least these gatherings prove to be useful as each of us required the use of each other’s dictionary and so four heads are definitely better than one.

Dinner proved to be another American classic, the hot dog with onions, mustard, and ketchup, or catsup as it is referred to here, pronounced “cat-soup.” Blanca still has to learn the size of my appetite as she laid a plate of four hotdogs and three buns on the white tablecloth directly in front of me. I still wonder in what universe any person would be able to eat that many, and what about the lack of a bun for the forth sad and lonely hot dog. Afterwards I had the most delicious cinnamon bun covered in a mass of icing. The remainder of the evening was spent trying to study a list of fifty six verbs for Friday’s test, which really amounts to one hundred and twelve verbs considering that the test will be in Spanish and so I also need to memorize the Spanish equivalent of each.