Warren, not Wayne.

My entire life has been a hyperbolized struggle to communicate my name in its entirety. Warren Currie Mackie-Jenkins. It never fits on the scantron. I must always repeat it at least once to explain that it is hyphenated. It’s “Warren Mackie-Jenki” on my credit card. But never have I had trouble with my first name until my arrival in Xela.

I traveled más o menos a day and a half and stepped off my bus to breathe my first breath of Quetzaltenangan air. The 4.5 hour bus ride passed very pleasantly with the new friends I had made from Columbia’s Teacher College. We made casual small talk about the things you would expect—“What brings you here?” “Do you speak Spanish?” “What do you study.”

Guatemala makes the Blue Ridge Mountains seem like mere speed bumps over a smooth plateau. Its horizon is accented with a handful of volcanoes (some active, some dormant) and expanses of mountains and summits and foothills. The only flat spaces are the lakes that have filled in craters created by volcanic eruptions in both the near and distant past. As such, the 200km trip from Guatemala City to Xela tracks up and down laterally through the mountains, but our bus driver flanked the precipices with ease and finesse unmatched to any American driver I have seen.

I stepped off the bus, birthed into a new, though not foreign, world. I was at last in the city where I would spend the next 8 months of my life. My gap year.

I peered anxiously to my left and right, having no idea who would be picking me up at the Linea Dorada luxury bus stop. Would it be my host family? Would it be Jessica, the person I had spoke to on the phone and Skype for the last several months? What excitement!

I heard over my should a Guatemalan man say (phonetically) “Wan.” Unsure if he was talking to me, I turned around. “¿Perdón?” I asked. “¿Wan, es Usted él?” Yes! That’s me! To be honest, I was expecting to have to wait a bit on the side of the road, approaching anyone who appeared to be expecting a passenger from the bus.

I walked to the car with the very nice man and found his wife and adorable daughter waiting for me. We exchanged introductions. They were so excited to see me, especially the little girl of probably 8 years. They helped me schlep my luggage to the car and put it in the trunk. And not that I am a heavy packer, but I am staying for 8 months after all, so I had a lot of crap.

We drove around the city, with my driver and passengers explaining the city and some of the essentials to get my foot in the colloquial door of Guatemalan life. It was an enjoyable conversation. If my host family was anything like this family, I thought, I was off to a good beginning.

We arrive at the Spanish school to meet my real host family. El Quetzal was the name. This was not the name of the Spanish School I was to be attending (Celas Maya). I politely told them I didn’t think this was the right school. “Of course it is, you’ve already paid for it!” Uhhh, I hadn’t paid for anything save the bag of cashews I bought for the bus ride over. In the words Hamlet or whatever, something was rotten in the State of Denmark, and it wasn’t my piss-poor attitude. “You are Wayne, aren’t you?”

“No, I am Warren. W-a-r-r-e-n.” Silence. I proceeded to explain in my nervous, broken Spanish that I thought they were saying “Warren” and mispronouncing it back at the bus stop. The double r is, after all, pronounced differently in Spanish. We drove back to the bus stop to find Wayne standing like a deer in headlights. He didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so the nice family agreed to take me to my Spanish School if I would recreate the conversation of the previous car ride in English. Of course, I graciously obliged. 5 minutes in Guatemala and I had made a fatal error. Gracias a Dios that Guatemalans are the nicest people in the World.

Warren Currie Mackie-Jenkins. Here’s to an 8 month adventure. Cheers!