3 Weeks Down

Today marks the beginning of week 4 in Guatemala, which means there are 31 more days left of this adventure and to be honest, I am counting.

It’s not that I don’t like it here. It’s just that it’s not my home. It’s also that I had romanticized this experience in my mind. It was a new beginning, a fresh start, an adventure.

And I guess it is still those things, but not in the way that I imagined it to be. Not at all at the fault of Guatemala. The country is beautiful and the people are incredibly gracious and kind. The school I am attending is my favorite part about the whole experience. I enjoy the teachers and the learning process and even though it’s hard to learn a new language, it’s the good kind of hard.

I read a quote the other night that talked about when our hopes and wants don’t match up with the reality and how that it’s not wrong to want something, “but that a whole lot of life is spent picking up the pieces of any number of fantasies we’ve really wanted to believe.” The chapter ended with “I’m still hoping for a happy ending, but if there is one, it will be a little off-kilter and not nearly as tidy and poetic as I’d hoped. It will carry inside it a whole lot of tears and longing, and a few good lessons learned watching the lake one Saturday afternoon.”

And I think that’s where I’m at. And maybe I will be quite literally as after the last week of school, we are going to lake for the weekend and I actually will be spending a Saturday afternoon there.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this trip is and I’m not sure I will know, but I’m confident that it wasn’t what I thought it was: to learn Spanish for a future job. I think it’s more about being broken down and having the things I hold hardest onto be stripped away and realize that I’m still standing, even if it’s less sturdy.

If at the end of 2 months that’s all I’ve learned, maybe “vale la pena” still.

It’s going to be a choice that I have to make consciously, but  I’ll try to “to choose to believe that sometimes the happiest ending isn’t the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are.”

In the meantime, here are some things I love about Xela:

•     The school (I love the teachers and the process and some of the afternoon activities)
•     La Chatia Artesana (It’s a café where we spend all our free time. The workers are super friendly, the coffee is good, and food is so fresh and tasty.)
•  Walking everywhere (I love that everywhere is a walk away and I like being outside.)
• The views (the mountains and volcanoes are quite spectacular)
•  The roof of the school (it’s a great place for the 30 minute school breaks we get each day)
• Wifi (although limited, it’s keeping me connected with those I love most- I know that wifi is a lame thing to love, but I love it all the same.)
• Empanadas and avocados 
• The kids in Huehue, but they aren't in Xela so I don't get to see them really ever.

My wise buddy (woo, woo)  told me that not everything that is hard is bad and that pretty much sums up this experience. It’s hard, but it’s not bad.

And the happy ending is there, I just can’t see it from where I am right now.

But it’s there.