My first three days and Guatemalan hot chocolate
Trip Start
Jul 14, 2007
1
5
11
Trip End
Aug 11, 2007
Quetzaltenango,
Guatemala
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
On Sunday, I found out what happened. Apparently, my host family went to the bus terminal to meet me, but the bus was late. The taxi they had hired left for a minute to get gas. In that time, the bus arrived and Mary and I got off the bus, got out bags, and took a taxi to El Puente. When my host family came back, they couldn't find me. They called the director and everyone went to the school to see if I was there. Then they walked around the block to El Puente. Of course, by that time, Mary and I had already set off to find a hotel for the night. Everyone was a little worried about me, but it all turned out ok. The whole situation sounds like the plot of a slapstick movie, but that's really what happened.
I spent Sunday night hanging out in my new room and getting ready settled. On Sundays, I fend for myself for dinner, but I wasn't really all that hungry and I wasn't sure I could find my way back to the house if I left because we had to take a taxi from the school due to rain. I plan to make a separate entry about my host family (Albina, Eric, and Diego) and their house at some point soon, but it's enough to say that I'm pretty comfortable here and decided within about a day to stay another week.
Monday was the start of school. My teacher for the week is Julia (the school changes instructors each week unless you ask them to do otherwise so that you hear a variety of accents). She's quite patient and has a great sense of humor. Even with my broken Spanish, we've talked about movies, books, our cats, and even a little about politics.
Peeling the hot coco beans
Every night, I have a little homework to practice what I learned that day. In the first three days, I've blown through the first three weeks plus of my conversational Spanish class and have even picked up a few new conjugation types.Honestly, there is so much Spanish in my mind now (Wednesday) that I'm exhausted. Julia says that's pretty normal for new students and that next week should be easier. That gives me something to hope for. In the meantime, the local bookstore is going to make more quetzales off me as I buy two more sets of 100 flashcards so that I can try to learn all of the vocabulary that I've gotten in the last 3 days. Honestly, they aren't that expensive at Q4 per pack. Another student told me that I can get them cheaper, but I honestly don't think it's really worth it to wander around looking to save Q1, which is about 12 cents.
The school itself has been pretty cool, too. The staff is friendly, as are the other students. I get 5 hours of free internet per week, which is working out well for me because it allows me to read a little of what's going on at home. I write a bit on my palm and take the card with me so that I make the most of the time. Wednesdays is laundry day and if you bring in a bag of laundry, they will send it out to a local Laundromat to be cleaned. At Q20, it's not the cheapest laundry serve, but once again, it's worth the 50 cents or so to drop it off at 8 and have it by 1.
In addition to classes and the other services, the school has at least one event Monday through Sunday. Some have a small cost associated (for transportation or materials), but they aren't that expensive. Monday's extracurricular trip was to Salcaja (for about Q10 in bus fare), which is a nearby town.
Pounding on the chocolate to make it smooth
The town has the oldest cathedral in Central America. But, I didn't go because it was raining pretty heavily by the time I got back to my house for lunch and I felt like resting. Tuesday, the school arranged for a demonstration of the process of making the local hot chocolate. We bought the coco beans and shelled them at 1/2 hour break and then brought them to a local grinder in the afternoon. There, the beans were ground, which produces almost a coco mash that is shiny and sticky from the released oils. They mix that with sugar in a 2 parts sugar to 1 part coco ratio and grind it two more times. After the grindings, it becomes a grainy, sticky mass and it is divided into portions by weight. To make the end product creamy, you put the mass of soft chocolate onto a reed mat and beat on it until it is shiny, which means its releasing the oils. THAT is a workout because anytime you lift the now flattened chocolate up from the mat, it crumbles apart and the back isn't shiny. So, as best we can figure, you beat on it until you're tired of beating on it. Then you shape it into a shiny brick, and if you're smart, you score it with a knife to make it easier to break later. That brick sits out to dry for about 10 minutes and starts to get pretty hard. Then it gets wrapped in some brown paper. To make the chocolate, you boil water and break some of the brick into the water. As far as we can tell, there's no real recipe; it's more of a to taste thing. Bring the water back up to a boil and serve.Unfortunately, I overslept after lunch, so missed the actual trip to the grinders, but some of the other students showed me pictures and explained the process. They brought the chocolate back to the school for us to beat it into submission and made some for us to try. As you can imagine, it's incredibly sweet, so much so that most of us couldn't finish even what was in our small coffee cups. Even with my sweet tooth, one was all I could manage. When I talked to Albina, my host mother, she said that she can't even drink it because it's too rough on her stomach. So, I'm not sure what to do with this brick of chocolate. It may not make it home with me, but it was fun to learn how it's made.
