chapter three: in which things take shape

There are seven spidery plants in pots in front of me, sticking out tendrils to explore the thick stone windowsill. It seems odd to have a computer with internet between me and the plants-- I'm already getting used to life incommunicado, and all these avenues for communication are quite overwhelming. This last week... was a week. 

On Monday I made my first appearance in Itzapa, one of two towns where I'm teaching. I climbed up on the roof where the laundry and the corn dry out with Neil, my mentor-figure and near-twelve-hour-a-day companion during the week, so he could smoke a cigarette and get me oriented. I greeted the cows to the left of our classroom, the volcanoes dominating the horizon, the other part of the school across the street swarming with kids in a mix of traditional woven skirts and t-shirts, jeans and embroidered blouses, rain boots and leather sandals. Our first class was (is) a group of moody teenagers, Lester (the death-metal son of Doña Elena, whose house hosts a bit less than half the school) and his friends and a trio of almost silent girls. And now this is tempting me to give you a profile of each of my classes, which would be a truly daunting undertaking, since we teach different kids in the mornings and the afternoons and from day to day-- ultimately we have about eight classes worth, six of which meet twice a week and two of which meet once a week. They're grouped by ability rather than age-- one class varies from 14-20.  The most basic class is starting with 'Good afternoon. My name's Leslie. What's your name?' 'My name's Mayra. Nice to meet you.' 'Nice to meet you too.' The most difficult class is currently circling, since it might be receiving new members soon. We've talked about sentences, about housework, about colors and birthdays and clothing and classroom supplies, and all my concerns about the imperialism of teaching English to an already-impressively-bilingual population melt before the double blast of the practical concerns of passing school and getting a job and the instant affection and enthusiasm these kids show me. Half the girls in my afternoon class in Santa Maria were giving me hugs before they knew my name. The littler kids, the ones taking math and spanish literacy and learning that verbs are to be conjugated, will lean on me and coerce me into playing sharks and minnows and ask me to read them stories and offer me maracas for wee musical interludes.

And now I'm realizing I really should have selected some sort of organizing principle before I started writing today, because the flurry of things I want to record will not take turns. I think I'll have to leave it sketchy for the moment. 

As for the ten million dollar question (How long will Leslie stay in Guatemala?) the answer is a minutely changing thing. Teaching scares me still. There's a constant lining of anxiety in my belly, a thin uncertain sense that I'm a fraud sliding by on Spanish speaking and some degree of rapport with kids that will vanish when they realize I have no idea what I'm doing. There are also moments when I feel like I'm doing the perfect thing, that I love these kids instinctively and fiercely, that I could, if teaching comes to fit, stay here for a long long time. We shall see.