Today, I was fighting my daily battle with the
snooze button when all of a sudden I felt my bed shake. Now, this wouldn’t be the first time someone
came in my room uninvited. So, I was at
first ready to tell someone to get out of my room and leave me alone. However, when I opened my eyes, no one was
there and my bed was not the only piece of furniture with a tremor. The whole room was shaking. It soon dawned on me that I was experiencing
an earthquake. My tired body probably
should have moved into a doorway, but I instead laid there observing my
surroundings. It was very short, so
after a few minutes of contemplating whether or not it was a dream I got out of
bed and started my morning. At breakfast
I confirmed that it was not my imagination.
As difficult and stressful as this language course
has been, it is also hard to see it go.
During our last lesson in the morning I was not feeling very good. It is always hard to focus when I am
physically miserable in some way. So I
did ok at best during the review, though I managed to limp my way through the
new lesson about weather. Ixkaj
mentioned in class that she wasn’t feeling so good today, so I sat by her and
talked about that during the break.
Misery loves company, right? I hope to
maintain contact with her after the conclusion of class. I couldn’t eat hardly at all during
lunch. Ixkamey asked if she could have
my food that I wasn’t going to eat, and I of course said yes. I looked over 30 seconds later and saw that all
the meatloaf was gone and she was digging into a potato. I assume she packaged the meatloaf somewhere,
but she looked at me with big eyes and said, “I have 2 mouths!” You had to be there, but I assure you it was
hilarious.
For the afternoon, we played a role reversal; we
taught them English. This was fantastic,
because it shows what they are doing to us.
We were completely lost and terrified about being asked things that to
them are the most basic questions in the world.
Today, we got to witness the same fear and apprehension in their eyes,
though some of them already knew an ok amount of English. We taught greetings, names, and a few
body-parts. Our format was almost
identical to theirs, where we would do something amongst ourselves, then start
including students, and finally require students
to do it all. So great. Slow, deliberate, almost painful, but
hilarious. We also gave them all
American names. The best one was for the
guy, who we named Tucker. I lost it
every time we called on him. I felt kind
of bad for Ixkaj, because she was the only one who hadn’t had much previous
exposure to English. I wanted to see
Lajuj B’atz’ (the guy) struggle, because he could handle it well and he was
never ashamed to make us do uncomfortable things during the class. Nonetheless,
it was interesting to be on the other side of the confused, terrified look that
masked my face for the last 2 weeks.
At the very end, we were all presented with our
diplomas by a teacher. Since I worked
with Ixkaj more than anyone else, she gave me my diploma. This moment and those that followed were
bittersweet. In one sense, I was very
ready to be done. The last 3 days were
rough due to my illnesses. But, it was
really a great group of people and I will miss them a lot. I will probably never see most of them ever
again. Daniel was almost teary-eyed
because everything was hitting him so hard.
We all exchanged emails and phone numbers, which is great, but we know
how that tends to go. Below are some of
the highlight pictures of the day:
My whole class, left to right: Back: Me, David, Lajuj B'atz', Daniel, Samantha, Carolyn. Front: Ixkamey, Louisa, Ixim, Ixkaj, Ixtoj
Receiving the diploma!
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