Traditional Dress, Learning K'iche', & Weekend Shenanigans

There has been a lot of excitement in my house lately, and some at school, about the possibility of me buying a traditional K'iche' outfit.  These outfits are worn by SO many women every day. I would go so far as to say that 40% of Guatamalan women use traditional dress every day. The idea was first suggested by the live-in housekeeper, Mari, a lovely young woman that I have become friends with, who is K'iche' and wears traditional dress every day.  Mari showed me a viral video of an american woman who has married a Guatamalan man. They returned to Guatemala from the US for his father's funeral. The video shows the woman, in traditional dress, fluently speaking Kaqchikel with his family members. The idea of me buying one of these outfits has become a daily topic at my house. Last night Mari brought down her fanciest traditional outfit and she my host mom tied the skirt around me. My host mom, Claudia, has a friend who is going to bring another one for me to try next week.

I talked to my teacher about all of this and tried my best to explain this thing we made up in the United States called cultural appropriation. He said that as long as I study the fabrics, and learn what they mean and where they are from, I would be using the outfit in a respectful way that would not be offensive to his people.  This is no easy task. Every city has its own traditional outfit.  When we went to the town square together last week I made him point out where every woman in traditional dress was from.  There were about 12 different communities represented within that one city block. Each region uses a different color top, a different weaving pattern for the skirt and the belt, and the tops have symbolic embroidery that can be used signify if you're single, married, etc.

Here's a great pinterest page where you can see many examples:

https://www.pinterest.es/pin/80642649550247312/

I realize I haven't said much about my K'iche' classes in these blog posts so far.  THEY ARE HARD.  It's a lot of pressure to be in a one-on-one learning environment.  When the teacher says, "Remember this word, that we just went over 3 hours ago?"  I'm often forced to admit- nope, sorry. I don't.  There's no eager beaver student in the classroom raising their hand and ready to take the heat off.  I'm often frustrated by my lack of progress. But the good news is that we only go as fast as I can handle. The one part of class that I do enjoy is the invocation. Each day, we start class with me doing the the invocation in K'iche'. It goes like this:

Good morning to the direction that the sun comes from,
good morning to the direction that the sun goes down,
good morning to the direction that the wind comes from,
good morning to the direction that the wind goes to,
good morning heart of the sky,
good morning heart of earth,
good morning creator,
good morning constructor,
good morning to today's date (whatever the date is on the Mayan calendar)
good morning teacher.

All of this is done standing, and we must turn counter clockwise to each direction, because this is the way everything naturally turns.

This past weekend I spend most of the weekend trying to memorize vocabulary. Saturday I stayed in town but on Sunday I was sick of the damp and the clouds so I hopped on a bus and went to a water park two hours south of here.  I mostly laid in lawn chair conjugating verbs. I mean if you have to conjugate verbs, it's probably the best way to go. Remind me that if I leave town on the weekend I must not return on Sunday evening. The chicken buses are so crowded that I actually received several minor injuries. I was in the outside edge of a seat that already had a family of four in it.  I had one butt cheek on the bench and the other off.  At several points I didn't have to do any work to hold myself up because there were so many people up against me I could just relax into them.  Getting on the bus, the bus-driver's helper (the guy who announces where the bus is headed and collects the fares) grabbed my butt. He received some harsh words and I was just WAITING for him to come ask for my fare so I could call him out in front of everybody but he never did. Ha.

                     This is about half of the motorcycles parked at the waterpark on Sunday.

Saturday night I went to the movies. I ate this TOTALLY naughty crepe with nutella and sweetened condensed milk. It was amazing! I absolutely paid the price the next day.

                                         This is what conjugating verbs makes me look like.