Day Ten, Antigua

Classroom in Casa Herrera

Monday, September 5th was our first day with Prof. Guridy, who is taking over the History of Guatemala class for Prof. Burnett for two weeks, and with Steven, our TA, taking over the Religion of Guatemala class.
Our reading for history class was the first chapter from "A Short History of Guatemala" by R.L Woodward. The book is very dated in some of its information, points brought up in class by several students and the Prof, but it has lays the building blocks for understanding the history of Guatemala alone and in the framework of Central America. The first chapter is an overview of the events leading up to the conquest in Guatemala. It was reiterated in our class that the book is dated and that some information and terminology are no longer accurate or politically correct. An example of a reading about Guatemala being dated is when a reading refers to the indigenous Maya people as "Indians."
Class was very different with Prof. Guridy; every other day we will do more discussion instead of lecture, and Prof. Guridy's focus is more on Cuba and the dynamics of African populations in Central America, so thus far we are looking at Guatemala through a slightly different and more broad lens than with Prof. Burnett.

For religion we read an excerpt from The "Spiritual Conquest" of Spanish America by Robert Ricard. The excerpt focuses on the Friars attempts to convert the indigenous populations to Catholicism. It reviews the decisions made by the church and the branches of the church in Central America throughout the 16th century. The changing atmosphere of Central America post-conquest led to much experimentation and reform of the method in which the Friars brought Catholicism to the native peoples. The article looks at the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians, and the angle in which they approached converting the indigenous Maya.
In class we reviewed the information in the reading and looked more closely at the religious environment in Spain and Guatemala in the time directly following the conquest.

At 3pm all the student from Casa Herrera went to their language classes at PLFM. In my class we reviewed the verb conocer (to know), we learned about genero (masculine or feminine) and numero (singular or plural), we learned some nouns which represent these concepts, and we learned presente indicativo (present indicative). On Wednesday will will be reviewing all that we have learned thus far. I have made several flash cards for what we have learned thus far, but the best way to learn is really to be immersed in the language as much as possible.  

On a more personal note, some very good travel advice is to be very aware of the business hours of service oriented places in a foreign city. In Antigua, when using a lavanderia (laundromat) one leaves there cloths with the person working there, who weighs the clothing and gives you a receipt before you leave. On the receipt is the time your laundry will be done and you can pick it up. However, timing is not always what you expect, and when my clothing was not ready at the time on the receipt it led to a comedy of errors, showing up at the lavanderia four times in two days to find it closed and going that time without a change of cloths or a towel. Being aware of timing, and how time works in the foreign country being visited is always helpful to the traveler. Though the lavanderia was a few hours behind when my laundry was suppose to be ready, it was most definitely closed on time.