Cafe y Guatemala

One of my lovely students brought me some coffee from Starbucks, just because. He can because he works there, but mostly, just because. Anyway, he asked what I liked in terms of coffee and these were my only 2 specifications: medium-bodied, french press grind. Here's what he brought me: Casi Cielo (trans. Almost Heaven). I was already smiling and enjoying my coffee and his nice note on my One-A-Day Spanish Calendar when I realized that I was drinking Guatemalan coffee--and no less, coffee from the highlands near Antigua. Ahhh, memories.

One of my favorite parts of my trip to Guatemala last summer was my trip to Finco la Azotea, a coffee farm and museum in Jocotenango. It was a bumpy ride to the farm--my first trip on a local bus (or chicken bus). And at the museum I had the good fortune of attaining a private tour in slow, careful Spanish with a kind teenage boy, who spent an hour explaining the coffee production process on the farm and letting me taste the sweetness of a fresh-picked coffee bean. That trip was not only an education on coffee in Guatemala, but it marked the precise moment that I had begun really working hard on relearning and improving my Spanish. It was like a private language lesson only with much better surroundings--a walk around a coffee farm!

So it feels like it all came full circle when my coffee-gifting student asked if I was working on my Spanish and offered to help me with any phrases if I needed support.