Who would have thought that I would have had to adapt to a new vernacular? I had naively assumed that because Guatemala was a Latin country, I would have been able to fit in with the locals. During my first weeks I found it difficult to communicate in the school. A large portion of the faculty spoke Spanish only and many of the locals said things I didn’t understand.
When I asked, “¿Cual cajón es mio?”, my Guatemalan roommates gave me a bazaar look as if to say,, ‘what planet did you fall from?’. I would turn to a Mexican roommate for support as if to say, ‘tell them I’m not crazy’. One of the Mexican girls—Inéz, who was from second year and happened to be my dorm monitor helped me adjust my Mexican Spanish to Guatemalan.
“They call them gavetas here,” she taught me.
Inéz was friendly, but we never shared anything besides friendly greetings and polite conversation. It was difficult to make new friends when everyone was already comfortable with their classmates whom they had shared all of those two years with. Even if many of us had wanted to, it was simply easier to bond with our roommates or our friends of two years. Inéz and I were not close. She had an exotic look about her. She had ethnic looking hair, voluminous, black and tightly curled. She hardly ever straightened it because of all the effort it took. She owned a rich earthy tan and large eyes that matched her hair. Her thick lashes threatened to hide her eyes when they weren’t curled upwards.We shared a mutual friend from California—Alexus. Throughout the years we simply became distant from one another and even on campus we never sought each other out. Despite Inéz’ friendships outside our room, she was a responsible room monitor. She made sure we were all accounted for by our 10 PM, our curfew. Inéz had no qualms about telling us whether some of our clothes was on the borderline of the modest dress code either.
“Has anybody seen my cachucha?” I asked once.
“That sounds so funny,” a girl from Ecuador laughed, “what is that?” sometimes when no one understood me, I felt irritated. Some of them doubted some of my words were real.
“It’s what we call a baseball cap girls,” Inéz would butt in. I couldn’t help looking around the room at them as if to say ‘see?’ It feels so childish now when I look back at it. I don’t know how such a little thing could have bothered me.
“Does anyone have unos ganchos I can borrow?” That day Inéz wasn’t around to translate for me. I made hand motions like in charades and gave them the dictionary meaning until they understood I wanted some clothes hangers.
“Oh, you mean cerchas?” cerchas? What in the world? And they think I’m the weird one, I mused. Eventually everyone in my dorm became educated about cultural differences.
I learned that in Ecuador, to say, “¡Que bestia!”, it wasn’t to say you were a beast, but slang to say, ‘that’s funny’. Whenever the Guatemalans called me patoja, I realized it wasn’t a strong word to cause offence, but the term for a young girl. When I heard the locals say, “Alagran” or “púchica”, I learned it wasn’t a curse, but an expression of amazement. Bible school, served not only to know more about scripture or build a stronger relationship with God, but it was the beginning of a trip that broadened my curiosity and awareness for cultural diversity.
In our class of Genesis II, we learned how Noah—a man of faith was willing to be in an ark with all those animals inside along with his family.
“Imagine the stench!” the Instructor pointed out. Imagine how it must have smelled in those enclosed quarters.” The ark was compared to the church and the diversity of animals to people—“some leave the ark because they are offended. Some have found disappointment in the church, having expected perfection; some cannot tolerate the smell of the other animals and are compelled to leave the ark because of it…” this was my first course I received and it couldn’t have come at a better timing when many of us were still new and trying to adapt to all the different cultures that surrounded us in the dorms. During volunteer hours while we worked side by side, or during our time of fellowship there were many instances that could have opened the door to offenses and separation, but through these words we were united by remembering that we shared the same goals—to learn more about God and the scripture he had given us, and to grow in our relationship with Him.
And of course, a new joke was given birth inside the dormitories, “If we can live through this stench of one another, we can survive anything!” we laughed. My esperiences varied in differences of our vernacular, cultural customs such as cleanliness, relationships and even character.
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