'Spanglish' - a hybrid language created by the fusion of Spanish and English. Commonly spoken by Latin America immigrants in North America, and North American tourists visiting Latin America. Popular examples include 'The food is muy bien', 'Do you serve American cerveza?', and 'Las chicas are hot.' The official language of Antigua, Guatemala.
I'm pretty sure that Antigua is the world capital of Spanish schools. While this definitely detracts from experiencing the 'authentic' Guatemalan lifestyle, on the other hand, it means that this is a city designed for young foreigners to have fun. Lots of bars and clubs and scenic cafes with pretty gardens - the ideal place to spend the afternoon revising irregular verbs in the preterite tense. The only problem is that everybody has the same idea - and I keep bumping into classmates in the same haunts, and instead of studying, we happily distract each other for a couple of hours. For some reason, declining the verb 'tener' in the 15 different Spanish tenses that I now know, is less appealing than shooting the sh*t about our pretty surroundings and which internet cafe has the fastest connection.
Word seems to have got around to all of the local mosquitos that there's a very pale Irish girl with tasty blood in town. Other than that, thankfully, the first week of my travels have been even better than expected. There's a great bunch of young folk here, dead friendly, and very like-minded. My host family are taking good care of me, and forcing me to speak la lengua. The mom is super happy, super keen, and manages to maintain an incredible amount of enthusiasm and warmth towards the foreigners who routinely invade her house. The dad is loco. Really completely loco. But in a very endearing way. He likes to hold court over dinner, and oversee cultural exchanges between the various students and his own family. Other than that, he works a lot, and spends his spare time teaching the parrot how to speak. That last part is entirely genuine. As I was leaving the house yesterday, I could hear him reciting vowels to the parrot over and over. (By contrast, the American newly-qualified doctors I've been living with invest their energies in trying to have the parrot say: 'malas palabras'. Alas, they both left this weekend, and never realised their ambitions.)
So that was pretty much the first week. Good fun. We'll have to see what new blood the new week brings to the Spanish school and to my Guatemalan family. It's a funny existence - everybody on the move all of the time. In any event, I better get myself moving ... to the salsa beat. My next posting will include regaling tales of my newly-discovered rhythm (either that, or my personal injuries from trying...).
Hasta la vista.
P.S. Check out some of my photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/48413187@N00/
