Across the lake

It’s been very easy to make friends here. The first day, I was accosted by a Dutch girl volunteering and concerned about whether she would really be making a difference, and at night I ran into a Mayan scholar from here who wrote a book about the Guatemalan civil war, who I ended up spending several hours with, talking about linguistics and seeing his powerpoints.

This morning, I headed down to the docks for the 8:30 boat to the towns across the lake, but got there at about 8:35.



Fortunately, I then ran into a group from Decatur (right next door to Champaign!) They were here to spend their free day on a one-week mission trip sightseeing and shopping, but hardly spoke a word of Spanish- so I translated for them in exchange for a free boat ride and lunch. When they said grace, they thanked the lord for me. They were magnets for weaving/keychain/souvenir vendors, but very nice people.





This boy, Miguel, followed us for over two hours and was really quite endearing. He didn’t speak a lot of English, but had quite a skill for mimicking the midwesterners: “Hey Tony, come on, let’s go!” He told me how to say some things in his native language, Tz’utujil, and changed a dollar for quetzales with me. He claimed he was going to school in the afternoon, which I hope was the case. Though he tried to sell us keychains, he mostly seemed to hang out just for the attention, cookies, and coins.



I got an email from Lwin Pedro Mateo today (my contact in Santa Eulalia) saying he’ll be in Guatemala City till next Wednesday, and that I should wait until then to go up to the mountains. So much for an early start on my linguistics project! It looks like I’ll be going to Antigua (another major tourist destination and the home of OKMA, a linguistics organization) and Xela (a medium-sized city and home of ALMG, another linguistics organization) to mix some tourism and research first.