“UHHHH…”
This is the typical world racer’s dialect here in Antigua, Guatemala. With the broken/little knowledge of Spanish that we have there has been a lot of room for dependency on God. Here’s a quite funny conversation fellow teammate Allan and I had with a man at a market when trying to buy eggs for our squad breakfast the next day.
Allan and Brooks walk p to a local shopkeeper
Us – “Hola! Cuanta questa por un Juevo?” (Hi! How much for one egg?”)
Local shopkeeper – “Un quetzal.”
Us (confused looking at each other) – “Uh…”
Us – “Cuanta questa por un Juevo?” (Yes we asked again thinking we’d understand what he’d say)
Local shopkeeper (with no difference in his tone of voice nor facial expression) – “Un quetzal.”
At this point Allan and I turned away from the man to have a private conversation. As we talked with each other apparently our feet started moving away from the little shop thinking that the other person understood what the man was saying. After very nonchalantly walking away from the shop thinking that the guy was going to charge us $14 per egg we decided to get a second opinion, still confused about what the guy was talking about.
We walked up to another shopkeeper who happened to know very little English but just enough to understand that the previous local shopkeeper was charging us Q1 per 1 egg. We found out that what he was saying was the local currency….”one quetzal (Q1).” Q is the local currency and to give you an idea of the rate, it takes a little over Q7 to equal 1 US Dollar. Allan I couldn’t help but laugh at our ignorance and at how funny it must have been for that shopkeeper to see us walk away looking like we knew what he was talking about.
All in all training here in Guatemala for the rest of the race has been awesome! Thanks for all your prayers and support. More to come soon!
