In Guatemala, there aren’t a lot of white people. In fact, in the community that I live in, I’m the only white boy in town. This makes me a target for a lot of things. One of those things is the english language.

Anyone who knows any english at all wants to say it to me, regardless of the situation. I hear “Hello” and “Bye bye” from random people every day. Random bits of english will be yelled at me as cars pass by. Some store clerks won’t even let me talk to them in spanish. It’s an extremely peculiar experience. Though, usually it’s only a word or phrase at most, because people aren’t confident enough to try and have a conversation (which I get, since I am always struggling to have one with them in spanish).

The exceptions to this are my friends the drunks. They see me, and they come a-stumblin’. And while alcohol might make someone more loquacious, it doesn’t make them any more articulate. To this day, there has only been one conversation I’ve remotely understood what the person was saying, and he was trying to buy a girl that was here with a group (I didn’t sell). This exchange is only made more frequent by the fact that I live across the street from a cantina (I call them my neighbors, when I see them laying passed out on the sidewalk). Continue Reading…