Why is there a wastebasket in the stall?

Three weeks into my semester in Guatemala and I am catching on to the Xela lifestyle.  It’s finally become natural to put soiled TP in the wastebasket not the toilet.  Flushing TP or really anything but number one, number two and everything in between is a no-no in Latin America because they don’t have a souped-up sewer system here like we have in the states that can handle TP and everything else we think to flush.  Moreover, I've done more than potty train myself here.

Quetzaltenango is a city of 250,000 people, making it Guatemala’s second most populous city.  Located 8,000 feet up in the Western Highlands, the city is more commonly referred to as Xela (shay-la) short for its Quiche name Xelaju.  The people of Xela have a sometimes not-so-friendly rivalry with the capitalanos (residents of Guatemala City), especially when it comes to futbol.

Some things about Xela are not very different from a typical U.S. city.  First off, norteamericanos and europeos are everywhere.  Many are here to learn the language, as I am, some are here to experience a more genuine Guatemala than engineered-for-tourists Antigua, and some seem to be content simply to be leading the affordable easy-going Xela lifestyle.

It’s not just the expatriate population that harkens el norte, young Guatemaltecos wear the same clothes as young people in the US.  Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister are popular here although I get the feeling they paid a fraction of what we pay in the U.S.  Perhaps these designer t-shirts were manufactured under the supervision of Guatemalteca hands in the first place.

Youngsters here have also seem to have succumbed to that unfortunate fashion trend in which you gel your hair into some bizarre formation, don dark-colored clothing, perhaps pierce bodily orifices, sport a melancholy sort of gaze and otherwise look like the riff-raff I imagine at a Panic at the Disco concert.  Also all too familiar is the norte-style mall called Hiperpais (Ee-per-pie-ees) which features a superstore owned by Walmart.  The foodcourt includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, McDonalds and Subway.

There are also stark differences.  For one, there are absolutely no skyscrapers in Xela.  Most buildings have one or two stories and never more than ten.  In Zone 1, which is the center of the city, to call the roads cobblestone and narrow would often do them too much justice.  The roads are uneven patchworks of miscellaneous-sized rocks sometimes wide enough to carry simultaneously a stream of cars and pedestrians.  The roads bear the droppings of the city’s stray dog population.  The strays rule the streets at nights rummaging through bags of discarded garbage for treasures.  During the day, the dogs pass out on sidewalks just like homeless men.  The grass at parks here is off limits, and since parks are the only places where there is grass, it is difficult even to find enough open space to toss around Frisbee.

But, what makes Xela Xela is the Mayan culture here.  Wikipidia says that perhaps the name Xelaju may refer to the ten mountains surrounding the city.  True, there are ten mountains encircling the valley on which Xela rests, but locals say that the name refers to the ten allied Quiche kingdoms that were ruled from Xelaju (the Quiches were a sister-tribe of the Maya) before the Spanish came and defeated the Quiche in a heated battle near the current city center.

Despite the conquest and colonization, the city retains its strong Quiche heritage.   Some women still walk around Xela in Mayan dress.  Mayan clothing always contains a plethora of colors and patterns, which are symbolic of their status in Mayan society.  For example only single women wear red, while married women wear green.  The majority of the population of Xela as well as the county at large is indigenous and they are proud of it.  Mayan descendants love to tell you how their ancestors devised a calendar thousands of years ago that wasn’t surpassed in accuracy until the NASA era.

Like I’ve said, I’ve been here for three weeks.  We receive one-on-one tutoring at a Spanish school called Celas Maya for fives hours a day.  Our afternoons are free and we’ve been exploring the city with this time.  I’ve been to a natural hot springs, a natural sauna, the local market and many other sites.  In two weeks we are taking a weeklong trip across the country and after that we start university courses.

We live with host families.  My family includes Dulce Mariola Cojom, her father Jose, her brother Jason and his wife, her 18-month-old daughter Sofia and nephews Gustavo and Eddy who stay here during the week to study at a nearby high school.  Family life revolves around Sofia who like any one-and-a-half-year-old is an attention-whore.

Sofie loves to dance or should I say make us dance when we put on mariachi music for kids.  She also loves to throw her sippy cup or her food on the floor about halfway through a meal.  But, seeing her scamper around the house always looking dangerously close to falling, you can’t help but love her.

The first weekend I had to a fun Friday night at a discoteca called La Rumba and spent the rest of it battling “stomach problems” (euphemism for explosive diarrhea).  The second weekend we took a group trip to Antigua and I enjoyed overpriced but gringo-friendly food and gawked at colonial ruins.  This weekend, I hiked to Laguna Chicabal, a sacred Mayan lake in a volcano crater and have otherwise relaxed.

Sometimes my heads aches as I try to fracture it into English and español speaking areas and I certainly miss my family and friends, but I have to say I am making great strides in being a passable Spanish speaker and minor strides in being a passable salsa dancer, and, if I keep this up, I might one day fit in here—or at least come home and be way cooler than my friends.