Reflection 3

I am now literally taking a deep breath and trying to reflect on the second week of volunteering (which is now over... tomorrow is an Antiguan fiesta, sort of their version of Independence Day). Firstly, I am thankful that I finally got a better volunteering assignment. This morning was fairly interesting, at least for the first hour of the four hours. I took blood pressure and weighed patients. Not exactly surgery, but it`s better than standing around in a 2-room clinic hoping I get a chance to take out a couple stitches or give a few shots (which I did... but only a few).
The afternoons have also been long at the school. ``La Union`` is basically a converted old courtyard-style house a few blocks from the Central Park of Antigua (where everything happens and where I am right now). There are a bunch of little tables everywhere with 2 or 3 chairs around each one of them, mostly filled by Guatemaltecas, Americans, and Europeans chatting away at some level of español. I am paired with another guy from State named Alex who is at about the same level as me. We talk Spanish for 4 hours, although there`s a 30 minute break in the middle. We mostly just talk about random stuff, writing down words that we come across that we don´t know. We also go over some verb tenses.
I realized early on how amazingly hard it is to become good enough at Spanish to be able to actually understand most of what native speakers say. They are working from an incredibly large database of words and with a comfort and familiarity with verb tenses and constructions which a gringo like me will simply never attain. I just have to keep telling myself that I need to focus on building my vocabulary one word at a time and not try to think too much about the big picture. Kinda like life.
Tonight I had a first-bench seat in Central Park for a high-schooler fist-fight among a group of Antiguan high schoolers whom I had been besumingly observing off and on for about half an hour. It`s just amazing how they are exactly like McDowell High students and high school students I`ve seen everywhere I`ve been in the U.S. They apparently even have emo kids down here.
Kinda funny, considering their great-grandparents were probably Mayans living in the hills just 50 years ago.
Speaking of my views of the locals, I want to figure out how much ``real`` Christianity is actually down here. There are tons of old cathedrals or ruins of cathedrals (from an earthquake in 1773 which still has not been cleaned up...), and everyone claims to be catolico. Yet much like catholicism everywhere else I`ve been, the Catholics only half-believe their own church. It`s as if they don`t really buy what the church is selling, but are content to rent- for a lifetime- an identity, comfort, and social network from the church. Which is about like the state of mainline evangelical churches in America today.
I asked my Spanish teacher, a catolico, today (in the future conditional tense) what he would like heaven to be like. His answer included a lot of feel-goodery but not God. I pointed this out to him. He said of course, it`s all about God, too.
God is apparently just a footnote.
I have seen a few evangelicals and pentecostals... basically, non-catolicos. It`s distracting in a funny way that their word for the Lord is El Señor. Anyways, I will hopefully get a chance to talk to some of them before I leave, but we are doing stuff every Sunday so I don`t know if I`m going to get a chance to go anywhere. This weekend, we`re going to the Mayan ruins of Copan. Next weekend, the Pacific beach. The next and last weekend, Lake Atitlan, which is surrounded by three volcanoes and apparently one of the most breathtaking spots in the hemisphere.
Tomorrow I watch Fight Club at a local theater. So get ready for some more ridiculosity. Story 4 is gonna be extra-special, I can feel it.