Patience is a virtue

I am a patient person. This is something that I've been told all my life by friends, teachers, colleagues, whoever. And I take pride in my ability to entertain myself, spend long periods of time alone, and deal with children and difficult people. But my God. They really know how to test me here. Their 15-minute-long National Anthem is a wonderful example of how Guatemalans love to draw things out. Give a Guatemalan a microphone, we say among volunteers, and be ready for a 30-minute speech about nothing at all. Formalities are so prevalent in the culture here that nobody seems to notice how much time is actually consumed by these niceties. Don't take me wrong, I'm not culture bashing. But being an American, from the land of time-savers and getter-doners, I still find myself amazed on a daily basis at how much time is wasted here with simple formalities. Just thrown on down the toilet.

I'm just getting back from a teacher's meeting at the local school. I was there teaching my segundo class, when the director invited me to sit in on a meeting to plan the Independence Day festivities. Easy enough, right? Plan 3 days of activities, make a schedule, batta bing batta boom. No no no. Silly Hannah. The meeting that was planned for 4pm started at 5pm, with the director welcoming everybody, commenting on the weather, and, 20 minutes later, getting down to business. 7pm, and all we've decided is that there will be a drawing competition one day, and a poetry competition another day. And maybe a beauty pageant. I wanted to scream. I was hungry, tired, and knew that we weren't getting anywhere fast. Then it started to rain. "It's raining too hard for you all to leave anyway so we may as well continue the meeting," said the director. I thought about leaving, but didn't want to offend anybody. At 8pm, she wrapped it up. By then we had kind-of-sort-of decided on a drawing competition (of which I am one of the judges), a singing competition (solo and groups), a poetry competition, and a beauty pageant, with dates and teachers assigned to each. Now, we did what we needed to do. But in my American mind, we could have accomplished that much in about 15 minutes. Or a series of emails. Not a 3-hour long meeting.