eKaqchikel 2009 - More Kaqchikel
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Tuesday, July 21 - Shooting all day today - four dialogues in three locations. Fortunately, able to do them all in the hotel, some on the garden area outside our rooms, and one actually in Marie's room. It's truly amazing how much use we've been able to make of these hotel grounds, and even our rooms, as production locations. Thank god for the Hotel Posada de Don Rodrigo!
Once again it's late and they're going to shut my Internet access off in a short while, so I'll have to put my own update off until tomorrow, including details on my geo-tagging experience. In the meantime, Valerie wrote an entry for posting. My first guest blogger!
Valerie: Over the past three days, Marie and I have been working furiously to write dialogues, translate them into Spanish, then get the Kaqchikel translations and then assist in filming. In between we are running to the bank, the store, speaking to managers and arranging for props and setting up potential sites to shoot the dialogues. Both of us are going to return to New Orleans sorely needing a vacation.
Monday was our first day working with our colleagues from the Oxlajuj Aj program, Ixnal and Ixim Nik'te. These two women are superb educators and really understand what we are trying to do even when our explanations aren't exactly superb in Spanish (and truthfully it's hard to relate what we are trying to do in English so it's doubly challenging). Yesterday morning (Monday) we met up with Ixnal and Ixim Nik'te at their hotel and of course had to exchange our greetings and show pictures and tell stories of how the last year has been for all of us. Luckily the Oxlajuj Aj group had a field trip so we were able to use their classroom up on the top floor of the hotel where all the teachers, students and co-directors (Judie Maxwell and Walter Little) of the program are staying. We worked until noon modifying our dialogues and putting in the Kaqchikel translations for what we had finished at that point. Of course, we went to lunch together and continued discussing the work and some personal matters, but truthfully we talked more about the program and what our goals were for this year's shoot. In the afternoon, we returned to our hotel, the Posada Don Rodrigo, and started right away with filming two dialogues. These two women are amazing - they are able to write the dialogues, memorize them and then act them out in front of the camera over and over without much practice.
I do need to expand upon our adventures in exchanging money though. At 1:30 on Monday afternoon I proceeded to the bank where I usually exchange my traveler's checks to be told there was a limit on how much I could exchange (less than what I wanted) and as we were doing the transactions their computers went down. I was told to come back in two hours – ugh! I tried a hotel where they exchange traveler's checks (at a worse rate but I needed quetzales), only to be told that the phones were down. So I returned to the Rodrigo, cashless, to help with the production. But at 3:30 I headed out again – this time success. Two banks and the amount I wanted in quetzales later, I was back at the hotel. And thus one of the challenges of travel and money – you can't always get the kind of cash you need or want depending on infrastructure and how much cash on-hand the bank has. In these fragile economic and political times, it's even more precarious. But fortunately Marie was able to go out Tuesday morning to exchange her traveler's checks.
Tuesday was a superstar day for our team. We were able to record dialogues about shopping for chicken, vegetables, and tortillas; and a very involved dialogue about setting a table. As always our "talent" (the teachers) were fabulous. And Ixnal had more help than usual bringing her brother Kawoq' and another teacher, Ixey, to help with filming and translation. Marie and I also realized we could eliminate some of the planned dialogues for cooking the food and for buying beans – it really helped with our schedule. I was able to change more money today and this evening we are somewhat relaxing by catching up on blog entries, photo uploads, emails, and news from the outside world.
I can't share with our readers enough how well we work as a team. And now that we are on our fifth trip (our third as a team of four), we pretty much have it down what we want to do and how to do it. But our efficiency would not be possible without the additional teamwork from the teachers, especially Ixnal, who is able to organize the teachers, the content and help with the myriad of things we are trying to get done.
