Guatemala Field Station Blog

We've already finished the first week of this year's field school, so we have a lot to catch you up on! This is the third annual trip to the Guatemala Field Station  in Patzún for the summer field school .  Students and faculty visit Patzún for a month, including two weeks of intensive language classes and two weeks of mentored research and data collection. Last weekend the first group of linguists arrived in Patzún and settled in with their host families. On Monday, they began the immersion course in Kaqchikel. It's a diverse group of students from different universities and stages of training: Akshay Aitha just graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Linguistics and Applied Math.  Caleb Ewing is a graduate student in Linguistics at the University of Florida. Brecken Keller is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, majoring in Linguistics and Computer Science.  Polina Pleshak is a graduate student in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at...

We've safely arrived in Guatemala! The countryside is unbelievable, the people are awesome, and tomorrow we get to start Kaqchikel classes! The view as we descended towards Guatemala City We arrived at La Aurora airport in Guatemala City and met up with our shuttle group to head over to the hotel. Hotel room view! We enjoyed a nice dinner and then headed to bed so that we could get up the next morning to take the bus to Patzún, where we will be spending the month working on our research. We enjoyed our two hour drive to Patzún accompanied by Ted's 1980's Trivial Pursuit game and beautiful mountain vistas. beautiful mountains everywhere When we arrived in Patzún, we headed to Pedro's house where we had lunch. Apparently, today was a celebration to mark the end of the  feria  which had taken place for the past week. Pedro ushered us outside to watch the processional and see the dancers. Meeting Pedro The processional passes by Pedro's house ...

The first few days in Patzún have been amazing. There is a wonderful view in every direction, there are plenty of adorable animals, and everyone I have spoken with has been more than kind. My host family welcomed me with open arms and has made Patzún feel like a home away from home. As for the Kaqchikel classes, they have been tiring, but fun. Everything has been demonstrated in Kaqchikel, which is exhausting because of the amount of attention it requires, but also incredibly helpful for practicing.

Hello! Welcome to a new year of the Guatemala Field Station blog. The majority of us will be arriving tomorrow for the second annual trip to the University of Maryland's Language Science Center Guatemala Field Station, held this year in Patzún, Guatemala. This is a joint effort between the Language Science Center (LSC) and Wuqu' Kawoq , a local NGO in the Guatemala highlands that concentrates on bringing health services to rural communities. Our team is led by Dr. Maria Polinsky , Dr. Omer Preminger , and Dr. Pedro Mateo Pedro , experts in fieldwork and Mayan linguistics. The Field Station offers researchers unique opportunities in on-site research, training, and collaboration with local students and scholars. Our main goals are (i) to do linguistic field work with Kaqchikel, an understudied Mayan language spoken by about half a million people in the highlands of Guatemala and (ii) to continue this collaborative effort started last year. This year we have linguists from a...

Hi all! Time to give a report for our past week. W e left Guatemala City on Wednesday (6/1) morning. We split ourselves in Rodrigo's car and a Van provided by Wuqu' Kawoq. After two hours we finally arrived at the field station, which is being placed in one of the Wuqu' Kawoq buildings in Tecpán. When we arrived we met Emma, Sasha, Jessica and Lisa, the other members of the team who were already here, as well as Pedro Mateo Pedro, Soraya (who works at the Wuqu' Kawoq) and our three Kaqchikel teachers. We then were taken to our host families to settle in, get to know them and have lunch. All of the families' houses are  walking distance from the field station (only one block in my case), which is very convenient. They all were carefully chosen by Pedro, and they seem to have experience in this kind of thing. Dona Marta is the mother of my host family, she has three sons. We all have a room only for us with space to work. After lu...

Welcome to the Guatemala Field Trip 2016 log! The journey has already started! I'm part of group of Linguistics grad students and professors who will spend 30 days studying Mayan languages in Guatemala. The team is led by Dr. Masha Polinsky, Dr. Omer Preminger and Dr. Pedro Mateo Pedro, three leading Mayan scholars. The whole project is a partnership between the Language Science Center of the Univeristy of Maryland and the NGO Wuqu' Kawoq , which provides health to impoverished communities in Guatemala. Our mission in Guatemala is twofold: (i) doing linguistics; and (ii) being the first team to work on the field station fruit of this partnership. Our team includes researchers from different countries (US, Guatemala, Poland, Russia, Israel, Germany, Holland and Brazil), with a variety of interests. Some of us spent the whole Spring studying together Mayan syntax, morphology and phonology at the University of Maryland and preparing ourselves to the challenge.  I, Paulina, ...