The language barrier is significant and it's forcing me into experiences of growth. A few evening ago in the kitchen, I had an exhausting yet necessary experience. I felt embarrassed and on the edge of shame as I continually did things wrong because of misunderstanding and lack of technical cooking knowledge. Patrona, a Guatemalan woman who I work with in the kitchen, was patient and taught me a few things about chopping. Her patience and kindness made things easier for me and I found myself able to step away from my judgmental, negative mind and into a space of kindness and compassion toward myself. True, it was a long night and dinner was about 45 minutes late, but it was the first experience of working and helping en Espanol and it's made all of the following interactions that much easier.
All of our experiences with the language haven't been as tough, some have been quite funny. Dustin and I ventured out to an adjacent town recently to exchange our American money into Guatemalan Quetzal (about 7.6Q to 1$) and it was quite an excursion. Just getting out of The Yoga Forest can be crazy, it's all untamed forest and swallows my sense of direction. There are over 80 rock steps that you have to climb to get to the forest, and then another 113 to get to our cabana, Lakshmi. All of the rocks have been carried up on the backs of Guatemalan workers and laid by hand. It's a labor of love and it's incredible.
On our adventures, we had to take a lancha, or small boat, that took us across the lake to the adjacent town of Pana. The trip across the lago was beautiful. The land is immense, covered in green, inclines on inclines as the land reaches up the volcanoes. Pana was bustling with activity and traffic and it took awhile to find a place willing to exchange our money. In one incident, Dustin and I walked up to a bank and were met with a man guarding the door with a shotgun. The guard asked a questions in Spanish and Dustin, in his cheerful and agreeable demeanor, said "si". The guard then pointed around the corner and shut the door in our face. "What did you say yes to?", I asked him. "Oh, I said yes?" he shrugged and said with a smile, "Oh, I don't know". After a few moments of reflection and laughter, we inferred he was pointing us to an ATM and we then agreed to keep our initial reaction of "si" in check. We exchanged money (thanks Western Union!) and made our way back after a Gallos at a lake-side restaurant.
Dustin has also referred to me to the locals as his abuela, which has given us quite a laugh. For those of you non-Spanish speaking readers, abuela is grandmother. Wait a second, was he getting fresh? Was that a jest at my age?! Now he's in trouble! Either way, I'm now lovingly referring to my husband as abuelito. We've shared many laughs over our communications and believe it or not, we are getting more and more confident here as we continue to conduct business in Spanish, poco a poco!
One last note on the Spanish language and perhaps some food for thought... to express hunger in the Spanish language, one would say "yo tengo hambre" or "I have hunger" while English declares, "I am hungry". This is a very notable difference as having hunger implies something temporary and controlled, like holding a small box of hunger in your hand; this hunger is something outside of yourself. "I am hungry" is almost insatiable, it is a declaration of the hunger as the Self; it is to be consumed by hunger so that you are nothing other than the hunger itself.
On a larger scale, English speaking nations are the essence of commerce and consumerism, money and capitalism rule: if you can conceive it, you can market it and become a millionaire -- nations of people with unappeasable appetites of food, material goods, entertainment, sex and drugs. They are indeed hungry.
If the words what we speak (vibrate) create our reality, what kind of reality are we creating by declaring ourselves to be hunger? Or in other words, by saying: I am frustrated, I am depressed, I am unhappy, I am sad.
To have something can be a choice. If you no longer want it, if it no longer serves you, give it away: To God, to a friend, to the Earth, be done with it. Having anger, (or any other emotion/feeling/sensation) as opposed to being anger, creates space from internalizing it to the level of Self; to witnessing it as a sensation or as something outside of yourself, as fleeting or passing. It creates space so we do not have to be overcome, but can choose to engage, to keep it, or to give it away.
To see and hear more about this piece of heaven called The Yoga Forest, please visit http://www.theyogaforest.org/
Peace and many blessings!
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