following the prints: Learning to live with questions

One of the things I think I've learned the most distinctly over the past few weeks is how to know that I'm okay even if I don't know things, and how to live and thrive in the tension of not knowing. This is the first year since I was 4 that I haven't been in formal education (is preschool formal?), and therefore, the first year that my objective in life is not to master knowing things, but to learn how to notice them, think about them, and go with the flow.
The fact that I'm living in a country where only my second language is spoken makes this lesson of living in the tension of questions much easier to grasp. Although I am learning a lot more, I am in a world where the only English I encounter is when I am teaching it to my host family, talking on the phone to other volunteers or the states, journaling, or reading. This leaves me with a lot of questions.

There are three categories of questions that are common in my life.

There are the questions of activities, usually these questions result from someone telling me something numerous times and I obviously did not understand, so then I find myself in the back of a pickup with 10 other people wondering, "where in the world are we going?" These questions usually are answered in a reasonable amount of time and those answers may or may not lead to more questions.

Then, there are the questions that take some more time to learn the answers to... these are questions of culture, such as, "what is this family's daily schedule?", "why are we walking through a dark alley with a hand trolley full of wet corn?", or "what is the custom at baby showers in this country?" These questions, I'm learning, are important to ask myself without the objective of judging, simply to learn why people do what they do. I'm sure that they ask the same questions of me.

Finally, there are the questions that may never be answered, yet are important to ask anyways. They are also about culture, and for some the answer, "it's cultural" appeases their questions. That's not true for me. I want to know WHY, but I'm not sure if I'm equipped to find the answers. These questions require extra caution, because it's important that I approach them as questions and not as angry rants against the cultural differences in Guatemala, because angry rants without thoughts to back them up tend to be much less fruitful. Some of the questions are funny, such as, "why do the bathroom signs say to throw your toilet paper in the basket but the basket has the symbol of a recycling bin?", but others are aggravating such as, "why does my 9 year old host brother have homework tonight of writing out all the multiplication tables 1-10 25 times each number?", "why is machismo so prevalent?", or "why are so many girls pregnant?" (the article below... which I just realized is not of the best quality and is also written in Spanish... talks about the influx of pregnancies among young girls. I began reading it, interested because my 19 year old host sister and her 16 year old husband are expecting their first kid any day now, but then I realized that the article classifies young girls as "ages 10-14"...).

Learning to ask, learning to live in tension, and learning to be okay with the tension of the questions has been really good... I highly recommend it.

Here are some pictures from the past two weeks... with their corresponding questions :)


How do you say Baby Shower in Espanol? Oh right... Baby Shower!!!

What games do you play at Baby Showers?

You chug Pepsi... the person who chugs fastest wins. Even if that means you're competing with a baby on your back

You blow up balloons and pop them with by smooshing your and your partners' bellies

You put a Quetzal (coin) between your knees and waddle to a cup trying to drop it in the cup. You do this if you're dressed for church with the head dressing...