Guatemala Field Station Blog

This is probably the last post that we are going to release concerning the first research field trip in the field station. We have been back home for one week and I have to confess that I have been postponing this moment. This experience, which was a field work debut for most of us, was intellectually and personally challenging. The rewards that we got though are beyond measure. The time just went so fast ... After our presentation at UVG, the day before our departure (6/30/2016), Pedro and Ana invited us for a final dinner with them. There was good food, good drinks, good conversation, good stories, plans for the future, laughter, ... The farewell next morning was the worst part of the trip. My host family in Patzún Omer and Pedro It was difficult to leave our host families and people who helped us so much. It was also difficult for most of us to express in Spanish or in Kaqchikel how grateful we were to all of them. I would like to express here my gratitude t

On 26/6, our last Sunday in Guatemala, part of the group went to a hike in the Pacaya volcano .  View from the Pacaya Volcano - starring:  Volcano de Agua. (credit: Omer) Starting the hike We arrived there around 9am and after some negotiation we hired a guide and started our journey. The path was steep, but the group was excited to reach the top of the mountain (especially after the eruption demonstration that we had from one of the volcanoes in the area the week before). Halfway up the mountain Our guide told us about the last eruptions, the last one in 2014. Almost at the top, we halted at the place where one of the last eruptions happened and we were able to prepare some marshmallows in a small crack on the ground, which still emanates heat (no one believes me when I tell this part of the story, but it is true – I swear!). Marshmallows We then went on and had lunch at the highest part of the mountain that tourists are allowed to go.

Good news! The audio recordings of our Kaqchikel classes are now all organized and available online in .mp3 version (for .wav you need to contact me directly) Here's a good visual representation of how much fun we had - bursts of laughter and/or clapping every 20 sec in this sample waveform: There are also many gems like this: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx3AZxTWgaReY3gwN182VkplVVE

Conexíon Brasil in the bookstore! On Thursday, June 23, Gesoel, Omer, Paulina, Rodrigo, and I took a mini-group trip to Antigua to have dinner with two renowned linguists and Mayanists, Ryan Bennett (Yale) and Robert Henderson (Arizona). We arrived in Antigua in time to have a late lunch at Hector’s Bistro, right across the street from Iglesia La Merced, a gorgeous colonial church. While our dining experience in Patzún was delightful (I’m still craving frijoles!), it was lovely to have a taste of fine dining at Hector’s. We followed up our leisurely lunch with a little bit of gift shopping for our host families at the market and at a lovely little bookshop. Learning about Kaqchikel from the experts! After a brief nap at the hotel, we took off to meet Ryan and Robert in the central park of Antigua. We grabbed drinks and chatted up a storm about all manner of Mayan linguistics–phonology, syntax, and semantics included! The conversations continued at Micho’s, where we enjoyed t

On June 29 th , we made our way back to Universidad del Valle (UVG), altiplano campus in Sololá, to present the results of our research in Tecpán and Patzún. This part of our trip was particularly important, since we wanted to showcase what we’d accomplished in a short period of time and also encourage/invite UVG students and scholars to work with us in future trips. One of the main drives of the research station is to create opportunities for researchers like us and local students to collaborate across disciplines, so it was crucial that we piqued the attendees’ interests. Rehearsing the talks at Pedro's in Patz ún Following opening remarks by Pedro and Omer, we each gave the following talks—Gesoel and I’s was a joint endeavor, so we got to give a more detailed account of our data: RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS a.         Gesoel and I : Extracción de Adjuntos en Kaqchikel y Tz’utujiil ( Adjunct Extraction in Kaqchikel and Tz’utujiil ) b.         Paulina : Consonantes

Our Tz'utujiil contributor Doña Rosario (or Doña Sara, as she's better known in Patzún) is famous in town for her “patines”, a dish from the Tz’utujiil area surrounding Lake Atitlán. Every week, she gets requests to cook the dish, which consists of a spicy tomato sauce and one of several kinds of meat: fish, shrimp, chicken, or “cecina”—beef that has been marinated in pure lime juice overnight. Our last week of working in Patzún, Doña Rosario prepared her “cecina” patines for us, and they were DELICIOUS! The photo below shows the carefully wrapped meal in “maxán” leaves—in Tz’utujiil, the dish is known by the name in (1) below: (1)        Jk’omik           chu-pam                      tz’alem             sauce               PREP.3sgPOSS-belly maxán.leaf             Literal: ‘sauce in the belly of the maxán leaf’ / ‘patín’ IPA:     [χkˀo.ˈmik    ʧu.ˈpam    ʦˀa.ˈlem] Amazing patines!  Gesoel, Paulina, Carola, and I were lucky to work with Doña Rosario for