Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

Still getting settled back into Xela. I was feeling kinda blue – most of the people I was close to in Xela left, but I just had an excellent evening at Buddha Bar Karaoke night, so I’m feeling optimistic about making new good friends. Thursdays at Buddha have got to be the most fun night out in Xela. It’s usually about 70% locals, 30% foreigners, all laughing and mixing and singing together. It’s great for learning the lyrics to Spanish songs, and meeting Guatemalans who aren’t casagringas (white girl hunters.)

Anyways. I haven’t had much of a chance to sit down and think and write, so I might as well repeat one of the funniest conversations of the past month.

While in San Pedro la Laguna, I was staying at Jarachik, a great hostel that used to be owned by foreigners but is now owned and run by a really lovely Guatemalan family. They have a couple young guys working there, all very earnest, fun and polite. After I taught them how to play poker one evening, the two guys invited me to go see their soccer game. At the game, I met all their friends (all around 18-19 years old) who were chattering away in their local Mayan language of Tz’utujil.

One of the boys, who obviously thought he was hot stuff with his slicked back hair, came and started chatting me up.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

“Um, yes,” I said, inventing an imaginary boyfriend.

“Is he a serious boyfriend or a normal boyfriend?”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, here we say serious boyfriend if you’re having sex, but normal boyfriend if you’re not,” he replied.

“Uh,” I said. What the hell kind of question was that? In any case, I wasn’t sure whether it would be better to reply that my imaginary boyfriend was “serious” or not, so I laughed and changed the subject.