After class today, as I stood in yet another cold shower, having forgotten both my face wash and razor back in my room, I felt over it. Everything is just so hard, I'm ready for things to be easy. Later that day, I continued to feel like everything was a struggle, as I tried to work my way through the crowd to get to the chicken bus stop. In the states, when we need something, we go to Target, stand in a short line, and pay the stated price for whatever we went to buy. Here the market is a bustling place full of vendors trying to get you to bargain for every little thing, from socks & underwear to apples & beans. It's absolutely exhausting! And then once I'd finally made it to my bus, sitting there as the vendors came through trying to sell yet more stuff, I realized, this is their livelihood. These people know no different then this very difficult life, they may not even get the cold shower while I complain about the little inconveniences that I'm not used to in my privileged little life where everything has become so convenient with our cars, superstores, and hot showers.
In any case, last minute, I decided that I did not want to stay in Xela for New Year's. It seemed like everything was going to be closed and my friends had moved on for the week to Lake Atitlan. And since I really like my teacher, I decided I did not want to study the next week at the Lake but stay in Xela for another week studying with Ari. However, the house manager at the hostel said I wouldn't be able to get a bus back on New Year's Day for my class on Friday. In the end, I decided to go anyway and forgo my Friday class justifying it by saying I needed a break and that I wouldn't have another opportunity to go to the lake.
By the time I took a minibus through the rush hour traffic, made it through the market, and took the 4 hour ride to Panajachel while watching the sunset, it was dark and New Year's Eve. Luckily, there was a lot of activity in the very touristy town and I quickly found the restaurant that I saw in my tour book that had wifi. However, once there, I discovered that my friends were actually in another city on the other side of the lake.
While ridding on the bus and listening to Spanish I was beginning to think that perhaps my Spanish was now better than my German. However, while eating my dinner, there was a large group of German youth at the other table and I found that I understood much more than I do Spanish. However, with this trip, I am noticing that I am now able to communicate basic needs to Spanish and while I sat at my table doing research about possible hotels for the night, I got approached by an older gentleman who was hitting on me. I was able to engage with him in a bit of a conversation though there was some confusion about my refusal for help finding a hotel for the night and I needed to clarify several times.
However, once I had been wondering around disorientated about direction for quite some time I wandered what was more stupid, accepting help from a kind gentlemen or wandering around in a new city without a place to sleep at 8:30 on New Year's Eve. Eventually I found the place I was looking for and they had a room. However, the fireworks I was trying to avoid after my experience on Christmas Eve were on the street below my door and window. I decided to go to be early anyway and try to sleep through the New Year's Celebrations.
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